By JODI RUDOREN
TEL AVIV — A weakened
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuemerged Wednesday from Israel’s national election likely to serve a third term, according
to preliminary results and political analysts, after voters on Tuesday gave a
surprising second place to a new centrist party founded by a television
celebrity who emphasized kitchen-table issues like class size and apartment
prices.
For
Mr. Netanyahu, who entered the race an overwhelming favorite with no obvious
challenger, the outcome was a humbling rebuke as his ticket lost seats in the
new Parliament. Over all, his conservative team came in first, but it was the
center, led by the political novice Yair Lapid, 49, that emerged newly
invigorated, suggesting that at the very least Israel’s rightward tilt may be
stalled.
Mr. Lapid, a telegenic celebrity whose father made a
splash with his own short-lived centrist party a decade ago, ran a campaign
that resonated with the middle class. His signature issue is a call to integrate
the ultra-Orthodox into the army and the work force.
Perhaps as important, he also avoided antagonizing the
right, having not emphasized traditional issues of the left, like the peace
process. Like a large majority of the Israeli public, he supports a two-state
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is skeptical of the Palestinianleadership’s willingness to negotiate seriously; he has called for a
return to peace talks but has not made it a priority.
Sensing his message of strength was not penetrating,
Mr. Netanyahu posted a panicky message on Facebook before the polls closed,
saying, “The Likud government is in danger, go vote for us for the sake of the
country’s future.” Tuesday ended with Mr. Netanyahu reaching out again — this
time to Mr. Lapid, Israel’s newest kingmaker, offering to work with him as part
of the “broadest coalition possible.”
Israel’s political hierarchy is only partly determined
during an election. The next stage, when factions try to build a majority
coalition, decides who will govern, how they will govern and for how long.
While Mr. Lapid has signaled a willingness to work with Mr. Netanyahu, the
ultimate coalition may bring together parties with such different ideologies
and agendas that the result is paralysis.
Still, for the center, it was a time of celebration.
“The citizens of Israel today said no to politics of
fear and hatred,” Mr. Lapid told an upscale crowd of supporters who had
welcomed him with drums, dancing and popping Champagne corks. “They said no to
the possibility that we might splinter off into sectors, and groups and tribes
and narrow interest groups. They said no to extremists, and they said no to
antidemocratic behavior.”
With 90 percent of the vote counted, Israel Radio
reported Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud-Beiteinu ticket was
poised to take 31 of Parliament’s 120 seats. Mr. Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid —
There Is a Future — garnered 19, many more than polls had predicted.
The right-wing and religious parties that make up Mr.
Netanyahu’s current coalition combined for 60 seats, according to Israel Radio,
equal to the total won by the center, left and Arab parties, pushing the prime
minister toward a partnership with Mr. Lapid and perhaps some of the groups
that had been in the opposition. The left-leaning Labor Party took 15 seats and
Jewish Home, a new religious-nationalist party, 11.
The prime minister called Mr. Lapid shortly after the
polls closed at 10 p.m. Tuesday and, according to Israeli television reports,
told him that they had great things to do together for the country. In his
speech to a rowdy crowd of supporters here Wednesday morning, he said, “I see
many partners.”
Mr. Lapid indicated he was open to working with Mr.
Netanyahu, saying the only way to face Israel’s challenges was “together.” But he
added: “What is good for Israel is not in the possession of the right, and nor
is it in the possession of the left. It lies in the possibility of creating
here a real and decent center.”
The results were a blow to the prime minister, whose
aggressive push to expand Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West
Bank has led to international condemnation and strained relations with
Washington. The support for Mr. Lapid and Labor showed voters responded
strongly to an emphasis on domestic, socioeconomic issues that brought 500,000
people to the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011.
“Israelis are asking for
a moderate coalition,” said Marcus Sheff, executive director of the Israel
Project, an advocacy group that conducts research on public opinion. “Israel’s
middle class wasn’t asleep as people assumed. The embers of the social protest
are still strong.”
Erel
Margalit, a venture capitalist and first-time candidate who was elected to
Parliament on Labor’s list, described the high turnout as a “protest vote” and
“a clear demonstration of how many Israelis feel like something needs to be
done and something needs to change.”
“It was not a fringe phenomenon; it was a mainstream
phenomenon,” he said of the 2011 movement.
After the center-left failed to field a credible
alternative to Mr. Netanyahu and much attention focused on the hawkish Jewish
Home, which wants Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank, the results
shocked many analysts and even candidates. Turnout was nearly 67 percent,
higher than the 65 percent in 2009 and the 63 percent in 2003.
Meretz, the left-wing pro-peace party, was set to
double its three Parliament seats, with six. It remained unclear whether
Kadima, the centrist party that won the most seats in 2009 — 28 — had enough
votes to send anyone to Parliament. The party collapsed last year after briefly
entering Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition only to fail in its promise to end draft
exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
Mr. Netanyahu, 63, is already Israel’s second-longest
serving prime minister, after the state’s founding leader, David Ben-Gurion,
having served from 1996 to 1999 and then again since 2009.
Analysts said he had virtually ensured his victory as
the campaign had begun by uniting his party with the nationalist Yisrael
Beiteinu, whose leader, Avigdor Lieberman, resigned as foreign minister last
month after being indicted on a charge of fraud. But it was mostly downhill
from there: the joint list fell far short of the 42 seats the two parties now
hold in Parliament. Experts cited both supporters’ confidence in Mr.
Netanyahu’s returning to the premiership — leaving them feeling freer to cast
ballots elsewhere — and tactical errors.
“While in the past he was given poor cards and played
them well, this time he had the best cards and played them badly,” Ari Shavit,
a columnist for the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, said Tuesday night on
Israel’s Channel One. “This was a lesson in how not to run a campaign.”
Now, Mr. Netanyahu is left to form a government among
factions with competing interests: Mr. Lapid’s vision challenges the
ultra-Orthodox parties that have long been part of Mr. Netanyahu’s team, and
Jewish Home’s platform contradicts that of Tzipi Livni, the former foreign
minister who based her campaign on returning to negotiations with the
Palestinians.
Several commentators saw Tuesday’s vote as an
“interim” election, predicting that the new coalition, whatever its makeup,
would not be able to withstand the pressing challenges ahead, including a $10
billion budget deficit and the question of whether to launch a military strike
against the Iranian nuclear program.
“This is a government
that will not be able to make decisions on anything — on the peace process, on
equal sharing of the burden or on budgetary matters,” Emmanuel Rosen, a
prominent television analyst, said early Wednesday on Channel 10. “The next elections are already on the horizon.”
Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem, Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Tel Aviv, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
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