JERUSALEM, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu on his election victory on Thursday, as final results confirmed the former prime minister’s triumphant comeback at the head of a solidly right-wing alliance.
Netanyahu’s victory will end an unprecedented stalemate in Israel after five elections in less than four years.
This time Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of his generation, won a clear parliamentary majority, boosted by ultra-nationalist and religious parties.
Tuesday’s vote saw out the centrist Lapid and his rare alliance of conservatives, liberals and Arab politicians who, during more than 18 months in power, made diplomatic forays with Turkey and Lebanon and kept the economy moving.
With the conflict with the Palestinians escalating again and causing Jewish-Arab tensions within Israel, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and allied parties took 64 of the 120 Knesset seats.
Netanyahu has yet to receive the president’s official mandate to form a government, a process that could take weeks.
“The time has come to impose order here. The time has come for an owner,” tweeted Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Religious Zionism party, a likely main partner of Likud.
He was responding to a stabbing reported by Jerusalem police. In the West Bank, troops killed an Islamic Jihad militant and a 45-year-old man in another incident, medics said. Asked about the latest death, the army said it opened fire when Palestinians attacked them with rocks and petrol bombs.
[1/3] Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu waves as he addresses supporters at his party’s headquarters during Israel’s general election in Jerusalem, November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Later in the evening, air raid sirens sounded in southern Israel after militants from Gaza fired a rocket that was apparently intercepted by missile defenses, the army said.
A West Bank settler and former member of Kach, a Jewish militant group on Israeli and American terrorist watch lists, Ben-Gvir wants to become police minister.
Israeli media, citing political sources, said the new government could be secured by the middle of the month. Previous coalitions in recent years have had smaller parliamentary majorities that made them vulnerable to no-confidence motions.
With coalition-building talks yet to officially begin, it was still unclear what position Ben-Gvir might occupy in a future government. Since the election, both he and Netanyahu have pledged to serve all citizens.
But Ben-Gvir’s ascendancy has raised alarm among the 21 percent Arab minority and center-left Jews, and especially among Palestinians whose US-sponsored state talks with Israel broke down in 2014.
Although Washington has publicly reserved judgment pending the formation of the new Israeli coalition, a US State Department spokesman on Wednesday stressed the countries’ “shared values”.
“We expect all Israeli government officials to continue to share the values of an open and democratic society, including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, especially minority groups,” the spokesman said.
The US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, said he spoke with Netanyahu and told him he hoped to “work together to maintain the unbreakable bond”.
Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta and Nidal-al-Mughrabi; Written by Dan Williams Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Jon Boyle and Howard Goller
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