It's a... tie!?!block against Netanyahu forming a government after all. During the night, the results shifted, and the Left and Right blocs are now tied with 99% of the vote counted.
The 19th Knesset show 31 seats for Likud - Beytenu, Yesh Atid as the second biggest party with 19, Labor in third at 15, with Shas and Bayit Yehudi at 11 seats each, the Central Elections Committee announced.
United Torah Judaism received 7 seats, and the Tzipi Livni Party and Meretz received six seats each.
For the Arab parties, UAL - Taal received 5, Hadash 4, and Balad 3.
Kadima just passed the threshold with two seats.While the Left can block a government from being formed, it would have to undo 65 years of precedent in order to form a government itself. That's because there has never been a government with an Arab party as part of the coalition. That's unlikely to happen now either. And even if they did get together 60 seats to form one, they couldn't get a 61st seat to govern.
That's also just the start of Netanyahu's problems.
But other officials in the Likud said in closed conversations that Netanyahu had proven that he was no longer “king of Israel,” as he had been crowned by Time magazine in May. They said he could expect a challenge to his leadership in the Likud.
Likud officials also blasted Netanyahu for brokering an unsuccessful deal with Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, and religious Zionists for joining Likud en masse but then voting for Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi party.Well, I'll bet that if Bibi weren't at the top of the list and someone else whose initials are MF was, a lot of those religious Zionist votes wouldn't have gone to Bennett....
The Likud's membership has changed over the last decade. Netanyahu, and before him Ariel Sharon before he formed Kadima, played all kinds of games to prevent the election of a new central committee in order to try to keep all those religious Zionists from gaining control of the party. Now, that could change too.
But first, we will have to try to form a government. Despite the Left-Right split there are parties that could go either way: Lapid, the Haredi parties and maybe even Jewish Home, depending on what the government's fundamental lines are.
What could go wrong?