JERUSALEM: Arab parties made significant gains in the Israeli elections, with pollsters projecting Raam and the Joint List to win 17 or 18 seats combined, driven by high turnout among their base.
The first exit polls from Israel’s elections showed the opposition bloc with a slight edge over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp as voting ended Tuesday, but still shy of an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
The country’s main pollsters — Channels 11, 12 and 13 — projected the opposition bloc to win 52 or 53 seats, and Netanyahu’s bloc to win 50, although his Likud would be the largest single party in the parliament, with 24 or 25 seats.
In the last election, Likud had walked away with 32 seats, enabling it to cobble together a coalition with smaller far-right parties after Netanyahu’s traditional allies balked at the corruption cases the premier was facing.
This time around, those mainstream right-wing parties, by and large, vowed to work with main challenger Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party to form an opposition coalition capable of unseating Netanyahu.
After the poll results were released, Eisenkot said they showed a “complete lack of confidence” in the prime minister.
While Raam and the Joint List do not belong to the opposition bloc, they have expressed openness to supporting it.
Tuesday’s poll was marked by high turnout, with many voters saying they saw it as pivotal for the country’s future.