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Final Election Results Push ‘Jewish Home’ Over Shas, Squeeze in Kadima

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As the final results of Israel’s latest national election were confirmed last Thursday, Naftali Bennett’s nationalist Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) party received a grand total of 12 seats in the new Knesset – one more than previously reported – thus pushing it over the Shas party and making it the fourth-largest faction in Israel’s parliament.

On the bottom end of Israel’s political spectrum, the centrist Kadima party – which was on the verge of “exile” from the 19th Knesset – managed to squeeze in with 2.09% of the final tally.

While it was the largest group in the previous Knesset, Kadima – represented by party head Shaul Mofaz and MK Israel Hasson – will now be the smallest one. Kadima’s gain is to the disadvantage of Ra’am Ta’al (the United Arab List), which appeared to be achieving five seats but will only get four.

The absolutely final election results were based on the votes of the Jewish state’s soldiers, hospital patients, prisoners, and diplomats abroad, whose votes the last to be counted.

The concluding numbers give the right-wing-Orthodox legislative bloc a total of 61 Knesset seats, which raises it above the center-left-Arab bloc’s final tally of 59 seats. At the same time, however, the completely unexpected – and very impressive – gain of 19 seats by the left-wing Yesh Atid party, with avowed secularist Yair Lapid at its helm, has blunted the right wing’s power. In particular, Lapid has negated any possibility of forming a blocking majority, thus rendering the balance of the blocs less influential.

Interestingly, these final results have had negative consequences for two parties with representatives who have diametrically opposed political philosophies. The ultra right-wing Otzma LeYisrael (Strength to Israel), which totally opposes any territorial concessions to the Palestinians, came up with approximately 10,000 votes less than legally required to be admitted into the Knesset. On the other hand, Kadima’s third-place representative, Yohanan Plesner, the MK who pushed a bill mandating universal enlistment in the IDF, will not have a seat in the Kneseet.

The January 22 elections saw the recently combined Likud-Beytenu party come out on top, with sufficient votes to obtain 31 seats in the nation’s parliamentary body. The veteran Labor party wound up in third place with 15 seats. Discussions to form a new coalition government were set to begin this week, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu virtually sure to be tasked with building a majority government.

The Central Elections Committee released the percentage details of the last votes to be counted and revealed that 24% of them were cast for Likud-Beytenu, 16% went to Yesh Atid, 15% to Jewish Home, 10% to Labor, 2.2% to Kadima and 3.9% to Ale Yarok, a liberal party

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