Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing bloc pulls ahead after Israel elections

Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed “a huge vote of confidence” in Tuesday’s parliamentary elections, with a partial count putting his rightwing bloc on course to win a majority that would seal a dramatic comeback for the veteran politician.

Polls by Israel’s three main television channels, released after voting closed, forecast that a bloc combining Netanyahu’s Likud party, the extreme right Religious Zionism grouping and two ultra-Orthodox parties that have traditionally backed Netanyahu would win 61 to 62 seats.

The Yesh Atid party of Prime Minister Yair Lapid and several smaller allies were forecast to win 54 to 55 seats between them, while the non-aligned Arab Hadash-Ta’al grouping was predicted to win four mandates.

Final results will depend on whether various small parties, including the Arab nationalist grouping Balad and the leftwing Meretz, clear the 3.25 per cent electoral threshold.

But with 80 per cent of votes counted, Netanyahu was on course to return to power less than 18 months after he was ousted by Lapid’s sprawling eight-party coalition, thanks to a large extent to a strong showing from Religious Zionism and its figurehead Itamar Ben Gvir, a once-fringe ultranationalist previously convicted of incitement to racism.

Amid jubilant scenes at the Likud party headquarters, with supporters chanting “Bibi, king of Israel,” Netanyahu said he would form a “stable, national government”.

“We are on the brink of a great victory,” he said.

Lapid, meanwhile, urged supporters not to give up hope, telling them that “nothing is final” until the last vote is counted.

Tuesday’s election is Israel’s fifth in three-and-a-half years of political stalemate, and, like the previous four, was widely seen as a referendum on 73-year-old Netanyahu, a divisive figure who has ruled Israel for 15 of the past 26 years.

For his supporters, the pugnacious former prime minister is a guarantor of stability in a volatile region. “He is a smart person . . . and he has got crazy [amounts] of experience,” said Ze’ev, a 66-year-old who voted for Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “People are jealous of him because he is successful, and just want to bring him down.”

But for his critics, Netanyahu, who has spent the past two years battling allegations of corruption, and his extreme-right allies, who have proposed sweeping changes to Israel’s judiciary, represent a threat to democratic institutions.

“Netanyahu is ready to bend all standards of good governance to get to power,” said Laurie, a 69-year-old who voted for Lapid’s Yesh Atid.

Netanyahu has dismissed the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, on which he is standing trial, as a witch hunt. But, in combination with feuds with former allies, they have limited his options for coalition building, and left his fortunes increasingly dependent on the far right, whose support has surged over the past year.

Much of that increase has been driven by Ben Gvir, who along with Bezalel Smotrich, spearheads the Religious Zionism grouping, which was forecast to come third behind Likud and Yesh Atid.

The prospect of a coalition involving the far right has prompted rumblings of concern from some US politicians, and during last year’s election cycle, Netanyahu said Ben Gvir — who used to keep a picture of Baruch Goldstein, an extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians in a mosque in 1994, in his home — was not fit to be a minister.

But as the popularity of Ben Gvir — who said over the weekend that he would demand to be public security minister in a future government — has grown, Netanyahu has changed tack, and conceded that Ben Gvir could serve in his cabinet.

Netanyahu’s allies have sought to play down the influence that Ben Gvir would hold in a coalition with Likud. But other observers are sceptical about the extent to which Netanyahu will be able to control him.

“Ben Gvir is not going to be playing to Netanyahu’s tune. He has everything to gain by being more radical,” said one western diplomat. “So it will be hard for Netanyahu, even with his experience and skill, to control this guy. I don’t think that paying him off with a ministerial rank will be enough.”