Free Republic

How is 56 greater than 60? Call it Netanyahu’s new math. “After we established the right-wing bloc, there are only two options,” Netanyahu said. “Either a government led by me, or a dangerous government leaning on Arab parties.” Netanyahu’s only chance to remain prime minister is by making sure that his potential coalition partners don’t start wandering over to Blue and White’s side. The way to make sure they don’t do that is to promise he will stay with them and not follow what seems like the more obvious path to a coalition, to reach across the aisle himself.

Right-wing factions convened at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon, deciding to establish a "right-wing bloc" headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, that will work for the establishment of the next government. It was decided to form a joint coalition negotiations team for all factions in the bloc. In addition to Netanyahu, the meeting saw the participation of Minister Yariv Levin and faction heads: Yaakov Litzman, Moshe Gafni, Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, and Bezalel Smotrich. Minister Aryeh Deri met with Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this morning, as he was unable to attend the meeting due to the memorial ceremony...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan are tied but neither can secure a ruling majority, with 92 percent of the votes in Israel's Tuesday election counted, according to a source in Israel's Central Elections Committee. (Who is Benny Gantz? Read the full profile) >> The election is here. Subscribe now - save 30% According to the partial results, Likud and Kahol Lavan won each 32 out of 120 Knesset seats. Netanyahu's bloc, comprised of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, currently stands at 56 seats. The center-left bloc, excluding Arab parties, has 43 seats. Avigdor Lieberman, whose...

The Central Elections Committee issued an injunction tonight (Sunday) against the left-wing NGO Zazim‘s initiative to bus 15,000 Arab voters to voting booths on election day, ruling that the initiative is in violation of the election laws. Zazim (movement) is an NGO that is backed by the New Israel Fund (NIF) which is backed by billionaire currency manipulator George Soros. The injunction came following a petition submitted by the Likud arguing that Zazim, which is heavily funded by the US-based New Israel Fund, is violating the election the laws. In 2017, the Knesset passed the “V15” law aimed at preventing...

The prime minister says media giant folds to Left pressure, and repeated his previous statements that the media is falsely reporting that large numbers of right-wing voters are casting their votes. BY JERUSALEM POST STAFF SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 19:53   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed social media giant Facebook for closing his chat bot on Tuesday, as he was using it to ask users whom are they voting for. Netanyahu repeated his previous statements that the media is falsely reporting that large numbers of Right-wing voters are casting their votes.  "This is a spin of a spin," he shouted on social media,...

The District Court of the Hague will hold a hearing on Tuesday about whether a war crimes case against Benny Gantz is admissible relating to his command decisions during the 2014 Gaza War. Israeli soldiers and commanders may also be on the hot seat at The Hague before the International Criminal Court, but Tuesday’s hearing, which also happens to be Election Day, is a local Dutch court proceeding that is unrelated to that. In fact, the ICC preliminary probe of Israel’s conduct of the 2014 war is moving slowly and is not expected to come to any conclusion earlier than...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce later Tuesday his intention to promote annexation steps in the occupied West Bank if he wins the next week's elections, an Israeli official tells me. Why it matters: Netanyahu has already spoken about annexation before Israel's elections in April, but he didn’t commit or promise anything. Netanyahu’s statement is directed at his right-wing base and the settler lobby in order to boost support for his Likud party over other right-wing parties, ensuring that Likud wins most seats in the elections to gain an upper hand in building a coalition. The international...

Israel will be holding national elections on September 17 for the second time this year. This is the second part of a series that offers insight into perspectives beyond whether Bibi will be reelected.* Unlike a two-party system, Israel has a parliamentary democracy which means that as many as 40 parties have competed to win votes to be represented in the Knesset. People vote for a party and its list of candidates rather than for a specific candidate. In order to be represented in Knesset, any party must receive at least 3.25% of the vote which means that there might...

The last one, held in April, looked like a victory for Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party. But when Netanyahu failed to get enough support from smaller parties to form a government, he was forced to call new elections. So here we are. The polling for the new election is too close to call. Likud is locked in a tight race with the centrist Blue and White party, which is leading the opposition. The ultimate outcome depends on a lot of things that are really hard to predict, ranging from minor party vote share to post-election parliamentary haggling.

The New Right and Zehut parties have reached an agreement on basic principles for a joint run in this September’s election to the 22nd Knesset. According to a report by Yediot Ahronot Monday, former Likud MK and Zehut chairman Moshe Feiglin and ex-Education Minister and New Right chief Naftali Bennett have laid the foundations for a united ticket, reaching an understanding on key issues. The two reportedly carried out extensive negotiations over the past month, including a number of face-to-face meetings between the two leaders, along with talks between other senior Zehut and New Right party officials. One remaining point...

The Knesset voted Wednesday night to dissolve itself after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition, sending Israel to a new election mere seven weeks after the last one. At the heart of the impasse was the issue of drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students: Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman, without whom Netanyahu can't form a coalition, refused to back down on the bill's terms, while ultra-Orthodox parties claimed they have already yielded enough ground. MK Avigdor Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page that Likud holds responsibility for the repeat election because of its refusal to vote on bill to...

The New Right party said on Thursday night, "The results that were published are not final, and we continue to fight. We expect the media to show some more seriousness in its reports.” "Over the course of the day, a war room was established at party headquarters that gathered about 1,000 failures and flaws in the voting process. At the beginning of the week we will receive the protocols and our hundreds of volunteers will compare them to the computerized results.” "We will also address all the extreme irregularities discovered in the counting of the double envelopes. We will accept...

The Likud is projected to gain one mandate over the initial post-election vote count, pushing it from 35 to 36 seats, after the counting of special ballots was completed Thursday, Israeli media outlets reported Thursday afternoon. Special ballots, which make up some five percent of the nearly 4.3 million votes cast in Tuesday’s election, include the votes of Israeli soldiers stationed at bases across the country, prisoners in jails and detention facilities, voters in Israeli hospitals, and members of the Foreign Ministry overseas service. The preliminary results of the full county of all ballots cast in the election show the...

MSNBC host Chris Matthews blasted President Donald Trump for playing the “political sidekick” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. President Trump also welcomed Netanyahu to the White House in late March. Matthews accused the president of breaking tradition with his predecessors by staying out of Israeli politics, but as Newsbusters pointed out, he overlooked the Obama State Department’s financial contribution of taxpayer money to OneVoice, an Israeli political group and opponent of Netanyahu.

TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory here tonight as revised exit polls projected his clear path to forming a right-wing coalition and early official election results put Netanyahu’s Likud party ahead of his Blue and White rivals. “I am very moved on this night,” stated Netanyahu, addressing supporters at a victory rally in Tel Aviv. “This is a night of an incredible, incredible victory.” Netanyahu hailed a “fantastic achievement, an enormous achievement, which is almost unfathomable.” Even before most ballots have been counted, Netanyahu called his party’s purported victory “almost unprecedented,” asking, “When did we receive so...

Netanyahu urged everyone at home and at the beach to vote for the Likud using the slip that reads "Mahal," which represents Netanyahu's party. Warning of the rise of the Left, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a planned campaign event in Ashdod on Tuesday and returned to Jerusalem, where he said he was going to work to "save the Right" and ensure that a right-wing government comes to power following the elections. "I received a dramatic update that there is low turnout in Likud strongholds but that there is high turnout in left-wing strongholds," Netanyahu said. "We have to save...

Israelis cast their votes on Tuesday in a hotly-contested election, pitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud against Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan. With exit polls expected shortly, parties across the political spectrum called on their supporters to vote, some out of fear that they will fail to cross the electoral threshold, others merely seeking to instill a sense of emergency among supporters. Turnout has been historically lower in the Arab sector, and according to pollsters, Tuesday's election will see particularly low numbers. Netanyahu's Likud party provided activists with 1,200 hidden cameras "to monitor" Arab polling stations – a move that prompted...

President Donald J. Trump will host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week, displaying a significant shift in policy from President Obama.Netanyahu will join Trump for a working meeting on March 25 during which they will “discuss their countries’ shared interests and actions in the Middle East,” according to the White House press release Wednesday. The U.S. President will then host Netanyahu at a dinner on March 26. This will be Netanyahu’s third visit to the Trump White House.What a difference nine years makes.OBAMA HAD A DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT APPROACH TO ISRAEL AND NETANYAHU It was on March 23,...

Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel and Russia are to form a joint team to examine the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria. Israel is seeking the removal of Iranian forces and has vowed to keep its main enemy from entrenching itself militarily in the neighbouring country. Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Moscow to discuss Iran's presence in Syria. "I made it unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria, and I also made it unequivocally clear that we would continue to take military action...

The new Blue and White alliance of Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid faction would become the largest party in the Knesset if new elections were held today, a new poll shows – but the right-wing – religious bloc would retain a narrow majority. According to the poll, conducted by Maagar Mohot and published by i24NEWS and Israel Hayom Sunday evening, if new elections were held today, the Blue and White party of Gantz and Lapid would win 36 mandates. The Likud, by contrast, would gain a single mandate over its 2015 performance, winning a total...