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With most votes counted and the Likud victory all but confirmed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the first efforts toward cobbling together a coalition, placing calls to his most likely partners hours after the polls closed. The Likud party said in a statement on Wednesday morning that Netanyahu had phoned the Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett, Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman, Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon, Shas’s Aryeh Deri, and United Torah Judaism’s Yaakov Litzman. Based on the current count, a coalition between these parties would be 67 seats strong. Netanyahu said he hopes to form a coalition “within two to three weeks,” a...

Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. on Tuesday as Israeli citizens headed for the ballots to vote for Israel’s 20th Knesset, bringing a heated campaign season to a close. Polls from the end of last week left options open for a tight race. TV exit polls were published at 10 p.m., as polling stations closed, after which official results began to roll in. The official final results won’t be publicized until Thursday.

Voting in Israel's national election has ended, with exit polls showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a virtual tie with a center-left challenger. Exit polls conducted by the country's three major TV stations late Tuesday gave mixed results, showing an extremely tight race between Netanyahu's Likud Party and opposition leader Isaac Herzog's Zionist Union.

Thank the Lord for Bibi's success today. The prime minister of Israel is a magnificent leader--a statesman, diplomat, soldier, and honorable man who loves his country. Nothing like that could be said of Obama. When Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netenyahu says his most important task is to protect Israel from existential threats, everyone believes him. When Barack Hussein Obama says, "My first job is to protect the American people," it's a laugh line. Bibi served six years in the Israeli Defense Forces, where he displayed exceptional courage, determination, and strength. He fought in the Six-Day War (1967), War of Attrition...

Barack Obama might have hoped for a leadership change that would reboot his poisoned relationship with Israel’s government. But he didn’t get it on Tuesday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — thanks in part to a hard lurch right — appeared to make a dramatic comeback after trailing in pre-election polls. As votes were counted Tuesday night, Netanyahu claimed a dramatic comeback victory. “Against all odds: A great victory for the Likud. A major victory for the Israeli people,” he posted on Facebook. With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party had earned 30 seats...

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won re-election according to the latest vote counts, defeating not just his domestic leftist opposition, but the President of the United States in a public stand-off that had the President sending emissaries to Israel to try and oust Netanyahu. The victory represented a stunning turnaround for Netanyahu, whose Likud Party trailed significantly in the polls in the days leading up to the election.

Binyamin Netanyahu appears to be headed towards a greater victory than predicted by exit polls, with 30 seats. "Zionist Camp" has 24. As counting of votes continues in the elections for the 20th Knesset, the Likud party may be headed for an even bigger victory than exit polls originally predicted. As of 4:25 a.m. (Israel time), 99.5% of the ballots have been counted and the Likud is leading the pact with 30 seats. The “Zionist Union” of Labor and Hatnua has 24 seats. The Joint Arab List has 13 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 11 seats and Moshe Kahlon’s...

TEL AVIV — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process. With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.

Only hours after the surprise Likud victory, following weeks of polls showing the party would lose by as many as five mandates, the American media began its harsh critique of the Israeli election results, and especially of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The New York Times editorial titled "An Israeli Election Turns Ugly" criticized Netanyahu and questioned his legitimacy for the Israeli people, saying that "Mr. Netanyahu showed that he was desperate, and craven, enough to pull out all the stops." "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outright rejection of a Palestinian state and his racist rant against Israeli Arab voters on Tuesday...

Communist David Axelrod, one of Obama’s main campaign hack in 2008 and 2012. Now, he’s just a pathetic NBC hack whining about Bibi Netanyahu’s victory in the Israeli elections today. The most ironic part? Axelrod, a self hating Jew, whines about Netanyahu’s win as ‘shameful 11th hour demagoguery.’

Polls scheduled to close 10pm local time / 4pm EDT. Turnout as of 9am was 7.4%, at 10am was 13.7%, and at 12pm was 26.5%. Exit polls will be released when polls close in less than 8 hours. For live coverage in English, click on link below:

Rifts With Netanyahu Weigh on White House Israeli leader’s reversal on Palestinian statehood strains ties as Obama pushes key policy goals By CAROL E. LEE March 17, 2015 WASHINGTON—The White House has pointedly avoided weighing in on Israel’s elections, citing diplomatic neutrality. But there has hardly been a foreign election more consequential to President Barack Obama’s agenda since he took office six years ago. Privately, several administration officials have made clear there is no leader of an allied nation that they would like to see leave more than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu casts his ballot for the parliamentary election as his son Yair stands behind him at a polling station in Jerusalem March 17, 2015. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced a fight for his political survival on Tuesday as Israelis voted in an election that opinion polls predict the centre-left opposition could win. JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed victory in Israel's election on Tuesday after exit polls showed he had erased his centre-left rivals' lead with a hard rightward shift that saw him disavow a commitment to negotiate a Palestinian state.Difficult coalition talks still lie...

The returns on voting from ballot boxes indicate that the Likud has significantly extended its lead over Zionist Union. According to Israel Radio, officials have counted the votes of 25 percent of booths across the country. The results indicate that the Likud wins 32 Knesset seats while Zionist Union garners 25 seats. Yesh Atid is the third-largest party with 11 seats, Moshe Kahlon's Kulanu faction wins 10 seats, the Arab List nosedives to nine seats, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Shas movement wins eight seats, Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi dips further to seven seats, while Yisrael Beytenu, which has only mustered five...

A triumphant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Likud supporters in his victory speech early Wednesday that he would aim to form "a strong, stable government" that would tackle "security and socioeconomic challenges." Netanyahu told a jubilant crowd of Likud supporters early Wednesday morning that "against all odds, we have scored a major victory for the Likud." "Hail, hail, Bibi," Likud adherents chanted as Netanyahu took to the podium on Wednesday. "We have scored a major victory for the nationalist camp headed by Likud," Netanyahu said. "I'm proud of the Israeli people because at the moment of truth they knew to...

What would be the scene inside the White House if Bibi Netanyahu had lost tonight: President Obama popping the bubbly as Samantha Power and John Kerry danced an Irish jig? There's no denying that the Obama admin ardently davened [prayed] for Bibi to go down. Top Obama campaign aides had been dispatched to Israel for that very purpose. Indeed, there are even allegations that the Obama admin had underwritten the effort to defeat Netanyahu. But in a classic MSM bit of hypocritical hand-wringing, on this evening's With All Due Respect, John Heilemann lamented that it was "horrible" to hear that...

Though voting has ended, the true political game begins now, as Herzog and Netanyahu vie for the support of smaller parties to back them for the position of prime minister while sources close to Rivlin say he will vie for unity government. Sources close to President Reuven Rivlin said Tuesday that "the right choice in his eyes is a unity government that will be a strong government; however, if the sides are not interested in this he will not force it." Head of the Kulanu party, Moshe Kahlon received phone calls from both Netanyahu and Herzog who attempted to secure...

All day long CNN has been relentlessly beating the drum and practically celebrating the forgone conclusion that sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to lose today’s elections. Every move Netanyahu made over the past few weeks that outraged Obama and his media allies was framed by CNN today as a blunder — from the speech he made before Congress to sounding the alarm today about Israeli Leftists busing Arabs to the polls. CNN was quite obviously setting up a Narrative to explain and gloat over what polls said was almost certain to be a Netanyahu defeat. A funny...

The American nonprofit OneVoice Movement – under scrutiny by a U.S. Senate panel over possible links to a campaign to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – quietly filed paperwork that would allow it to engage in political activism after two leading Republican lawmakers questioned its use of government funds, FoxNews.com has learned. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., sent a letter Jan. 29 to Secretary of State John Kerry asking whether the group ­– as a recipient of almost $350,000 in recent grants from the Obama administration’s State Department – had violated its tax-exempt status when...

Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won an unexpected election victory, leaving him poised to form a new government and continue in office. What appeared to be an increasingly desperate and repugnant bid to hold on to power turned out to be a remarkably shrewd strategy. No one in Israel could have been surprised; if Netanyahu took off his mask, it was a mask made of cellophane that everyone could always see through. But by casting off even an insincere commitment to any kind of negotiated settlement with the Palestinians to proclaim that there will be no Palestinian state as...