Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s battle for political survival looked ready to continue for days or even weeks after Israeli exit polls released after Tuesday’s election showed the race too close to call.
The surveys by Israeli television stations showed Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party with 31 to 33 of parliament’s 120 seats compared with 32 to 34 for the centrist Blue and White party led by former general Benny Gantz.
The exit polls indicated that Netanyahu’s ally-turned-rival, ex-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, could be the kingmaker, with the backing of his far-right Yisrael Beitenu party critical to the formation of any ruling coalition.
Polls closed at 10 p.m. Israel time — 3 p.m. New York time — and according to Israeli law, the exit polls could be released as soon as the voting stopped.
Earlier, his voice hoarse from weeks of campaigning, the veteran PM took to the streets and social media, at one point using a megaphone in Jerusalem’s bus station, to urge voters to extend his decade in power.
Polls put former armed forces chief Gantz’s Blue and White neck-and-neck with Netanyahu’s Likud.
Barred by law from campaigning on mainstream media, party leaders took to social networks to mobilize support.
Describing a possible outcome if his supporters don’t show up at the polls, Netanyahu wrote on Twitter: “High voting percentage in left-wing strongholds. Voting percentages low in right-wing strongholds. Disaster!”
Without their support, “we will get a left-wing government with Arab parties,” he wrote.
Gantz posted a video of himself leaning out a car window in traffic during a random encounter with a supportive commuter.
Gantz’s co-leader, Yair Lapid, urged left-leaning constituents to come out and vote and said, “Bibi is lying,” using Netanyahu’s nickname.
The two main parties’ campaigns in Israel’s second parliamentary election in five months pointed to only narrow differences on many important issues: the regional struggle against Iran, the Palestinian conflict, ties with the US and the economy.
An end to the Netanyahu era would be unlikely to lead to a big change in policy on hotly disputed issues in the peace process with the Palestinians that collapsed five years ago.
Netanyahu has announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinians seek statehood, a move applauded by President Trump, a close ally.
But Blue and White has also said it would strengthen Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank, with the Jordan Valley as Israel’s “eastern security border.”
The Palestinians and many countries consider the settlements on land seized after the 1967 Six-Day War with neighboring Arab states to be illegal.
The election was called after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition following an April election in which Likud and Blue and White were tied, each taking 35 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. It’s the first time Israel has had two general elections in a single year.
Netanyahu, 69, has cast himself as indispensable and blighted by voter complacency over his tenure — the longest of any Israeli prime minister.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. Israeli time.
Both Netanyahu and Gantz, 60, have tried to energize their bases, and poach votes from smaller parties.
Netanyahu portrays Gantz as inexperienced and incapable of commanding respect from world leaders like Trump.
Gantz accuses Netanyahu of trying to deflect attention from his possible indictment on corruption charges that the prime minister has dismissed as baseless.
With Reuters