Binyamin Netanyahu has been elected the next prime minister of Israel and will head a coalition comprising two right-wing and two ultra-Orthodox religious parties.
The victory represents a remarkable comeback for Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who had failed to clinch a parliamentary majority in the last four elections, plunging Israel into almost four years of political instability.
The pro-Netanyahu bloc secured a majority of 65 in the 120-seat Knesset parliament after all the regular votes were counted on Wednesday.
However, about half a million votes of soldiers, diplomats, prisoners and those who voted in polling booths for the physically challenged – dubbed the double envelope votes – still need to be counted and the final results will only be known on Thursday afternoon.
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Mr Netanyahu’s victory is guaranteed but the size of his majority is still unclear.
Under the Israeli system a party needs to secure a minimum of 3.25 per cent of the overall vote to gain a minimum of four Knesset seats. The left-wing Meretz is a few thousand votes short of the threshold and the party hopes the double envelope tally will push them over. Under such a scenario the Netanyahu block majority will likely be reduced by a couple of seats.
Mr Netanyahu promised to form a stable, right-wing government that will last for four years and put an end to Israel’s endless cycles of inconclusive elections, but he will need all his considerable political skills to keep the incoming coalition together.
Mr Netanyahu’s Likud is the largest party with 32 seats.
The far-right Religious Zionist party, with 14 seats, will be Likud’s senior coalition partner. The anti-Arab racist and homophobic party will demand senior portfolios and radical policies.
The two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas (11 seats) and United Torah Judaism (8) will demand closing down the country on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and have already received promises from Mr Netanyahu for funding for religious schools which don’t teach English and maths.
The incoming coalition is also bad news for women’s rights activists. Not only do the far-right and religious parties have a clear anti-feminist agenda, but the number of women in the government will shrink to nine, compared to 24 in the current coalition.
The inclusion of the extremist Religious Zionist party in the coalition is likely to strain Israel’s relations with its most important ally, the US and with European allies. Axios reported that the Biden administration is unlikely to engage with the controversial Religious Zionism Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is set to become a senior minister.
Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said the rise of Israel’s far-right was “a natural result of the growing manifestations of extremism and racism in Israeli society”.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said that US guarantees would protect a maritime border deal with Israel should Mr Netanyahu form the next government.
Mr Netanyahu had threatened to “neutralise” the agreement, which came into force last week, after years of US mediation, setting a maritime border between the two enemy states.
