Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on pace to win 60 seats for his bloc of right-wing and religious parties in Monday’s election, one short of what he needs for a majority in the Knesset, The Jerusalem Post reported, citing exit polls on the country’s three TV networks.
“A giant victory for Israel,” Netanyahu, 70, tweeted after the projections were released.
The exit polling data showed that Netanyahu’s Likud won 36 to 37 seats. Its allies in the Shas, UTJ and Yamina parties rounded out the 60.
The polls indicated challenger Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party will get 33 seats.
Arab-majority alliance Joint List was set to win 14 or 15 seats, Yisrael Beytenu 6 to 8 and Labor-Gesher-Meretz 6 to 7.
Gantz, 60, stopped short of conceding defeat in his own posting on Twitter, telling supporters he would “continue to fight for the right path, for you.”
A spokesman for Netanyahu’s Likud said the prime minister would deliver a victory speech at the party’s election headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Turnout was 71 percent, the highest since the 1999 elections — despite Monday’s election being the third in under a year. Turnout for the most recent election in September was 69.8 percent.
Official results were expected to come in overnight.
Netanyahu tweeted a heart emoji and the words, “Thank you.”
Likud member Miri Regev called it an “overwhelming victory.”
“The nation had its say, a referendum that proved the trust of the people in Netanyahu and in the Likud, with all the indictments and all the attempts to depose Netanyahu,” Regev said.
Netanyahu, who failed to amass a governing majority in elections held in April and September, has been dogged by corruption accusations and will stand trial on March 17 on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges.
Gantz during the campaign had referred to him as the “defendant.”
But Netanyahu, who has proclaimed his innocence and called the case against him a “witch hunt,” portrayed himself as a statesman and touted his work with President Trump, whose administration unveiled a Middle East peace plan in January.
His projected win is testimony to the political durability of Israel’s longest-serving leader and will allow him to form a right-wing coalition after having headed a caretaker government since December 2018.
It would also pave the way for him to make good on his pledge to officially annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the region’s Jordan Valley, under President Trump’s peace plan.
Palestinians have rejected the proposal, saying it would kill their dream of establishing a viable state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. With Wires
