Unlikely bedfellows hold key to new Netanyahu term

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been dubbed "the magician" for his political skills but even he will be hard put to bring far-right Jewish nationalists and Islamic conservatives under the same coalition roof.

With the full results from Tuesday’s general election now in, Netanyahu needs the support of both the Islamic conservative Raam party and the far-right Religious Zionism party, which is openly hostile to Arabs and Muslims, to extend his premiership.

"It’s historic, it’s ironic ...it’s absurd" to see the political future of the only Jewish state in the world linked to that of part of the Islamic Movement, says Gayil Talshir. The professor of political science at the Hebrew University of al-Quds is an old hand at tracking the convulsions of a country which has just held its fourth election in less than two years.

But even she is almost lost for words this time. Full results of the latest vote, Israel’s second since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, were published on Thursday night.

After calculating the distribution of parliamentary seats under Israel’s system of proportional representation, they showed Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party in a strong first place with 30 of the 120 seats in parliament.

The centrist Yesh Atid was a distant second with 17 seats. Below them is a scrum of parties with wildly different agendas; Israeli Arabs, ultra-Orthodox Jews, leftists, conservatives and extreme right-wingers.

Netanyahu and his declared right-wing allies command 52 seats, while Yair Lapid and his potential anti-Netanyahu partners have 57. Each side is scrambling to reach the holy grail of 61 seats needed for a majority.

To retain the premiership which he has held for 12 consecutive years Netanyahu must woo defectors from opposing parties or recruit one of two currently non-aligned "kingmakers" to back him. One, Naftali Bennett, is a leader of the Jewish hard right, while the other is Mansour Abbas, head of the Raam party, which surprised analysts by winning four seats.