by Maayan Lubell
JERUSALEM, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked set to return to office on Wednesday as exit polls after Tuesday’s elections credit the united conservative bloc around his party, the Likud, a majority in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.
According to partial results released Wednesday and covering around 70% of the ballots, the conservative bloc led by “Bibi”, which brings together the far right and ultra-Orthodox parties, is credited with 67 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
“We won a huge vote of confidence from the citizens of Israel,” Benjamin Netanyahu, 73, told supporters gathered at Likud campaign headquarters overnight.
“We are on the verge of a very big victory,” he added, promising to form a “stable” government, during an intervention interrupted by the crowd who chanted “Bibi, king of Israel”.
Head of government from 1996 to 1999, then from 2009 to 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu – who continues to have trouble with the justice of his country for corruption cases – specified that he would wait for the final count of ballots, including the results are expected in the coming days, to officially claim victory.
After the broadcast of the first projections, the outgoing Prime Minister, the centrist Yaïr Lapid, 58, at the head of a heterogeneous government coalition bringing together parties of the right, center, left and an Arab party, warned that he would await the final outcome of the elections.
“We have no intention of giving up,” he told his supporters. “We will continue to fight for Israel to be a Jewish, democratic, liberal and progressive state.” (Report Maayan Lubell, French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)