The latest polls credited Benjamin Netanyahu’s “right bloc” with 60 seats, just one from the threshold of a majority, against 56 for current Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his allies.
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Will Benjamin Netanyahu return to power? Will the centrist Yaïr Lapid keep his young title of Prime Minister? The Israelis vote Tuesday, November 1 for the fifth legislative in less than four years and whose outcome holds the country in suspense. “It is a duty and a great honor to be able to vote (…) I hope that we will end this day with a big smile”said Benjamin Netanyahu who voted in Jerusalem.
For this proportional ballot, the 6.8 million registered voters have the choice between some forty lists which are mainly divided into two camps: that favorable to a return to power of the right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu, tried for corruption in a series of business, and the one wanting to maintain in business a young heterogeneous coalition led by the centrist Yair Lapid.
At 73, Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving head of government in Israel’s history, is trying to rally a majority of 61 deputies, out of the 120 in parliament, with his allies from the ultra-Orthodox parties and the far right. , led by Itamar Ben Gvir, who is on the rise.
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Faced with this “right-wing bloc”, Yaïr Lapid, 58, Prime Minister since July, leader of the Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party and leader of a coalition unique in the history of Israel because it brings together parties from the left, from the centre, from the right and an Arab party, is trying to convince that the course given in recent months must be maintained. “Go vote today for the future of our children, for the future of our country. Vote well!”said Tuesday the centrist candidate who voted in his stronghold of Tel Aviv.
The “coalition for change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yaïr Lapid ousted Benjamin Netanyahu from power in June 2021 before losing his majority in the chamber a year later, rushing Tuesday’s poll, the fifth since spring 2019 in a divided country. politically which is struggling to give birth to coalitions or to maintain them.