The exit polls of the fifth elections in Israel since 2019 grant victory, with between 61 and 63 of the 120 deputies of Parliament, to the bloc of the former prime minister and leader of the conservative Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, against the broad coalition led by the centrist Yair Lapid who seized power from him last year.
The extreme right, which has increased its representation to 150%, has been the most benefited by the high turnout, unprecedented since 1999. If the count confirms it, Israel is on the way to resolving the political blockade that has made it the country that has gone to the polls since 1996, every 2.4 years.
The three exit polls on channels 11, 12 and 13 of national television, broadcast at 10:00 p.m. (9:00 p.m. in mainland Spain), give victory to Likud, with between 30 and 31 seats (30 in 2021) .
The other three lists of the pro-Netanyahu bloc add between 31 and 33 deputies.
One of them, Religious Zionism, makes a great leap in just one year: from six to 14 or 15 deputies.
Made up of three parties with an ultra-nationalist, racist and homophobic message, the list would become the third force in the Knesset.
His number two, Itamar Ben Gvir, has been the sensation of the campaign and the parsley of all the debates that marks what is being talked about and how it is talked about to the rest of the forces.
The other two lists that support Netanyahu, the leader who has governed Israel for the longest (15), represent ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The Sephardic Shas rises from nine to ten seats and the Ashkenazi United Judaism of the Torah adds seven.
The government bloc drops to between 51 and 58, despite the growth (from 17 to between 22 and 24) of Prime Minister Lapid's party, Yesh Atid, who on Tuesday wanted to symbolically connect three generations.
First, he visited the grave of his father, fellow journalist Tommy Lapid, who held the Justice portfolio with Ariel Sharon at the head of a secular party opposed to the ultra-Orthodox, Shinui.
Then, when depositing the ballot in Tel Aviv, he asked the population to go out and vote: "For the future of our children and our country."
National Unity, led by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, reduces its presence (from 11 to 13) compared to the 14 that the two parties that make it up, Blue and White and New Hope, obtained separately in 2021. And Israel Beitenu , from Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, falls from seven to four or five.
They are two ex-partners of Netanyahu who changed sides when they felt cheated.
The historic Labor Party and the pacifist left of Meretz save the dishes by exceeding the 3.25% of votes necessary to have parliamentary representation.
Meretz will have four or five MPs, while Labor will have five or six.
Neither the well-known journalist Merav Mijaeli has managed to remove from irrelevance the Labor Party that led the country during its first three decades, nor has Zehava Gal-On managed to resurrect a Meretz still weighed down by stigmas and internal struggles.
The United Arab List (the first representative of the Palestinian minority with Israeli citizenship who has entered the Government since the creation of the country in 1948) wins one seat and stands at five.
Outside the blocs there remains only one other Arab list, Hadash-Taal.
She has been willing to support the investiture of Lapid, without entering the Government, more out of fear of the extreme right than out of conviction, but her four deputies are far from finally adding 61.
Yair Lapid, at his polling station in Tel Aviv, this Tuesday. POOL (REUTERS)
The division generated by Netanyahu was noticeable from the first hour even in one of his fiefdoms, Jerusalem.
A group of girls complained that a passer-by had refused to photograph them posing next to the phrase “
Rak Bibi
” (Only Bibi).
And many at a polling station near the historic Nahalat Shiva neighborhood couldn't help but show their support, or their dislike, for Netanyahu as they walked past
the Likud
booth .
One of them, Itzhak Levi, 65, stuck a party sticker on his jersey.
“Let everyone see it!” he would say before pointing a finger at a poster of Netanyahu and adding excitedly: “What a pity that he is so old [73 years old]!
Who will be like him later!?
We need it because [the Jews] have only one State and so many enemies…”.
Despite having support as close as Levi's, Netanyahu did not seem to have it all with him while the polls were still open.
Already in the morning he made a ten-minute direct on Facebook in which he reviewed the feuds in which the participation was modest and called on his followers to "set the alarm clock" and vote against "the Government of Lapid and the Muslim Brotherhood" .
Since election day in Israel – always on a Tuesday – is declared a holiday, he began to tour shopping centers where he – he assured – saw “many” of his supporters while the left filled the ballot boxes.
In an attempt to encourage the participation of his own, he spread on Twitter a montage of two photographs: one of people queuing, with the phrase "Ballot box of the left in Tel Aviv", and another of an empty corridor, with "Ballot of the Likud in Holon”,
a nearby town.
The image is actually from 2019.
אחוזי הצבעה נמוכים במעוזי הליכוד>>
רק מחל!
pic.twitter.com/vz8c5yvN5D
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) November 1, 2022
Abraham, who defines himself as “quite right-wing and quite religious”, has not voted for him.
He believes that "the time has come for him to step aside" and has preferred National Unity, Gantz's party, despite the fact that he governs with two leftist formations and one Arab.
He emigrated from the United States at the age of 59, in 2018, and considers that "Israel only belongs to the Jews" and that creating a Palestinian state would be "dangerous", but also that the country needs to accommodate the "different perspectives" that it harbors and “get along with your neighbors”.
It is precisely the sense in which Gantz expressed himself - the only candidate who openly defends a coalition between forces of both blocs - when depositing his ballot: "We are tired of incitement and polarization"
Abraham's daughter, Eliza, 21, a soldier in a combat force in the Army (for which, in the case of the girls, involves volunteering and receiving the green light from the family), has chosen Zionism instead. Religious, which he describes as "slightly to the right."
"Each one puts the center in one place, right?" She clarifies.
She is in the age range – 18 to 24 years old – more to the right (70%) than the national average (63%).
A man votes in a special ballot box for people quarantined by covid, this Tuesday in Jerusalem. AMMAR AWAD (REUTERS)
Religious Zionism had more young people handing out leaflets in the city, from the Christian quarter of the old town to privileged Rehavia, than any other formation.
The general feeling among his supporters was that, as his election slogan puts it, "Ben Gvir's time has come."
No other force is up that much, according to exit polls.
His enthusiasm contrasts with that of the majority of voters from the rest of the parties, who justified their vote as the lesser evil or for fear of being left out of Parliament.
This is the case of Sonia Kazovsky.
She is 33 years old and has lived in Amsterdam since she was 20.
Like hundreds of thousands of other eligible Israelis living abroad, she can only vote in person in the country.
"I didn't come on purpose, but since she caught me here, I'll do it," she explained at the gates of the polling station.
She used to opt for Arab parties, but this time she wavered until the last moment between Labor and Meretz.
She decided on the second, who entered the Executive in 2021 for the first time in two decades.
"I'm not sure it's the left that I identify with, but I see it easier for Merav [Mijaeli] to pass than Zehava [Gal-On], so I chose to help her."
“In any case”, she adds, “everything is very difficult here, very violent.
It is to come from 'my body, my decision' from Amsterdam to the politics of identity”.
Shalom, 73, also chose Meretz: “I have always voted for the left.
I'm not going to stop doing it right now when it needs a boost.
I am aware that I am now a minority here.
The left has moved to Los Angeles [considered the city outside the country where the most Israelis live].
All of Israel has gone right.”
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