Israelis began voting in legislative Thursdays in less than four years on Tuesday, a vote that could mark the return to power of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Polling stations opened at 07:00 (05:00 in Lisbon) throughout the country and in the city of Jerusalem and are due to close at 22:00 (20:00).
Netanyahu, 73, the politician with the longest tenure in the country’s history -14 years (1996-1999 and 2009-2021)- will try to obtain in these elections a majority of 61 deputies over 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament Israeli), with the allies of the ultra-Orthodox parties and an openly racist and homophobic extreme right on the rise.
The latest polls give Netanyahu’s “right-wing bloc” 60 parliamentary seats and 56 for the outgoing prime minister, the centrist Yair Lapid, and his allies.
In June 2021, Lapid allied himself with a “Coalition for Change” that brought together parties from the right, left, center and an Arab formation, Mansur Abbas’ Raam, to remove Benjamin Netanyahu from power, accused by the Justice of corruption. in a number of cases.
Yaïr Lapid’s coalition lost its majority in parliament in the spring of this year, with the departure of right-wing deputies, prompting the government to call new legislative elections, the fifth since April 2019 in Israel.
In 2020, Israeli Arab parties won a record 15 parliamentary seats after running a dynamic campaign together. But this time, they are divided into three lists: Raam (moderate Islamist), Hadash-Taal (secular) and Balad (nationalist).
In the Israeli proportional system, an electoral list needs to obtain at least 3.25% of the vote to have a parliamentary seat, with a minimum of four seats. Below that threshold, parties have no representation in the Knesset.
After the vote, the parties have almost three months to negotiate a new coalition that ensures a parliamentary majority, that is, 61 seats. If they don’t, Israel will go back to the polls early next year and repeat the whole process one more time.
Source: TSF
