Israel Election: Netanyahu’s Likud wins Israeli election

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to form a new government within weeks after defying the polls.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to supporters as reacts to exit poll figures in Israel's parliamentary elections.

ISAAC Herzog has phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him on

winning the national election, applying the icing to a stunning comeback for the ruling conservative party.

But the head of the centrist Zionist Union, outpolled by a forecast 24 seats to 30 by Likud, won’t say whether he will sit in opposition or join the coalition Mr Netanyahu is now pulling together, should he be offered a role in the new government.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Mr Herzog had put in the call to the PM despite earlier refusing to accept defeat. Zionist Union had gone into the election with a four-seat lead over Likud in the final round of published opinion polls.

Mr Netanyahu immediately opened talks with Likud’s traditional nationalist and orthodox religious allies to build a Right-facing coalition. However, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who will decide who between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Herzog gets first shot at forming a minority government, has already signalled that he favours a national unity government involving them both.

Mr Netanyahu vowed to waste no time stitching together a deal.

In a statement, he said: “The reality isn’t waiting on us. Reality isn’t taking a break. The citizens of Israel expect us to quickly put together a leadership that will work for the sake of the country’s security, economy and society as we promised to do, and that is what I will do.’’

Chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat accepted that Mr Netanyahu had been returned for a potentially historic fourth term as PM. If he sees it through, he will eclipse modern Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, as the country’s longest-serving leader.

Mr Erekat immediately vowed that the Palestinian Authority would step up its push to have Israel prosecuted in The Hague for war crimes during last year’s war in the enclave of Gaza, controlled by the militant Islamist group Hamas.

An elated Mr Netanyahu, written off by his critics and sections of the Israeli media prior to the

election, hailed the “great” victory when he fronted a victory celebration with the Likud faithful in Tel Aviv.

Voters who had been flirting with going for more right-wing parties than Likud, according to the pre-election polling, appear to have been brought back by Mr Netanyahu’s repudiation of a two-state peace deal with the Palestinians in the closing days of the campaign.