Alwaght- The Israeli election results came out as the polls had predicted and the far-right parties managed to secure more that half of the 120 parliament seats.
According to the votes counted, the Likud, led by the ex-PM Benjamin Netanyahu took a lead with winning 31 seats. The Religious Zionist Party, featuring Itamar Ben-Gvir, won 14 seats, Shas, led by Aryeh Deri, won 12 seats, and United Torah Judaism, led by Moshe Gafni and Yitzhak Goldknopd, won 8 seats. So, Likud together with its allies won 65 seats and is set to form a new government.
61 seats are needed to form a cabinet, and Netanyahu and his allies will not have a difficult path forming a cabinet. On the other side, the left-wing and moderate camp led by the current PM Yair Lapid won only 50 seats. In addition to the two present factions, Arab parties present in this election won 5 Knesset seats in total.
The turnout rate was reported 66.3 percent, which shows a 5.4 percent increase compared to the previous elections, and it is the highest participation rate since 1999. It seems that the propaganda of the hard-liners has been effective in convincing the Israelis to vote.
Netanyahu, who has been out of power for 17 months, now finds himself one step away from the prime minister's seat and will likely form a cabinet of his choice in the coming weeks with the help of far-right parties.
Netanyahu, served as PM from 1996 to 1999 and from 2008 to 2021, is preparing for another four-year term. He, who was involved in corruption cases for the past three years and at stake of imprisonment, is seeking to regain power and escape from the ongoing corruption trial by assuming the PM post again. He, 73, supports settlement projects in the West Bank, which has been occupied since the 1967 war. Settlements in these areas are considered illegal under international law but the Israeli governments have never yielded to international rulings and resolutions.
Netanyahu’s most har-line cabinet
Given the election results, the upcoming cabinet will be the most hard-line one in two decades, and this issue will lead to fundamental changes in the occupied territories with the regard to the tendencies and stances of the far-right leaders. As the Palestinians put it, the rise of the far-right is indicative of the growing racism in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Among Likud allies is Ben-Gvir who had been charged with support to a terrorist organization and racism incitement. He has several times caused controversy in settler demonstrations in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and called for serious confrontation of the Palestinians and even their massacre for full occupation of their lands.
Some experts predict that Ben-Gvir will be given the post of public security as he had expressed his interest for this post. Last year, during the clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Al-Quds, Ben-Gvir was among the Israeli soldiers and shot at Palestinians. He even called for Arab politicians to be expelled from the Israeli political scene. His extremist policies have even triggered the criticism of the fellow Israeli politicians who argue his actions provoke the Palestinians.
After the Knesset result were almost fully counted, in a Twitter post, he said that it is time to form a full-scale far-right government. “It is time to have a home in our own country,” his tweet continued. It seems from such remarks that his presence in the cabinet is enough to approve any racist plans in the occupied territories, since because of the 14 seats that his party won and because he will be weighty in the new cabinet, Netanyahu will entertain some of his demands in order to maintain the coalition and stay away from risks of collapse. After all, his rivals will be lying in wait to take power again if the cabinet of hard-liners collapses.
Having in mind that other Likud-aligned parties have extremist views similar to Ben-Gvir's, conditions will be ripe to change some laws and social values.
In need to close his corruption case, Netanyahu will very likely reform the justice system and work to undermine it, and even dismiss the judges working on his case to put the skids under the legal process against himself and advance his ambitious agenda. Netanyahu's allies have vowed that if they take power, they will do their best to take over the process of appointing judges, while giving the parliament the power to overturn Supreme Court rulings.
Given the fact that the far-right parties are for settlement projects and against the two-state solution in the occupied territories, their rise to power will intensify the tensions with the Palestinians and stir another war in the region. The Palestinian resistance groups have warned that it does not matter to them which parties will lead Israel and they are always ready to defend their lands and in the event of a conflict in the future, they will surprise the Israelis. Given the tense situation in the West Bank these days, this issue can accelerate the war.
Although Netanyahu hopes to form a cohesive and powerful government in association with the far-right parties to last four years, past experiences tell that despite alignment of stances among the allies, they face problems mid-way and stop working together. Having in mind that even exit of a small party can sink the government, there are concerns and doubts about the future of the political stability in the upcoming government. Actually, the citizens and even the top Israeli leaders are not optimistic about an exit from the two-year political crisis.
The parties have three months after the elections to present a cabinet and if they fail, next year, they have to hold new early early elections which aside from the heavy costs will bring increasing public disappointment with the continuation of the political impasse in the occupied territories and distrust in the political institutions.
