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What happened: The exit polls released immediately after the voting ended last night suggested the pro Netanyahu bloc will reach 61 or 62 Knesset seats.So far with 97% of the actual votes counted the results appear:

Likud: 31
Yesh Atid: 24
Religious Zionist Party: 14
National Unity Party: 12
Shas: 12
United Torah Judaism: 8
Yisrael Beitenu: 5
Labour Party: 4
Ra’am: 5
Hadash-Taal: 5

• Kan News has updated their predicted end results:

Likud: 30
Yesh Atid: 23
Religious Zionist Party: 15
National Unity Party: 12
Shas: 10
United Torah Judaism: 7
Labour Party: 5
Yisrael Beitenu: 5
Ra’am: 5
Meretz: 4
Hadash-Taal: 4

Reactions from the leaders last night:

• Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said “We have received a huge vote of confidence and we are on the verge of a very big victory.” He stressed the need to wait for the final results, but said that it was clear that the public wanted a different path and a different government, one that was stable and experienced.
• Netanyahu added that he would form a national government that would look out for all Israel’s citizens, and would adopt “judicious, balanced and responsible policies.” He also said that he would take steps to lower the flames in the public conversation and to heal the rifts.
• Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid cautioned that nothing was over until the final results were in and that his party had scored an unprecedented achievement. Lapid  highlighted that more than a million voters had said that they want politics that was not based on hatred and incitement, and a government that did not only represent one sector, but the democratic values of freedom and equality. It is the job  of the government to heal Israeli society’s wounds and not worsen them. Adding, “We will continue to fight for an Israel that is Jewish and democratic.”
• One of the leaders of the third largest party, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Religious Zionist Party said that his party’s success stemmed from the fact that it represented everyone—secular, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. He said, “The time has come for us to return to being the masters in our country and to be able to walk safely in the streets. The time has come for IDF soldiers and police to be given support.”
• Leader of the National Unity Party Benny Gantz said that regardless of the final results, a broad camp needs to be formed that is based on the centre of the political map that tries to bring together all parts of society.

Context: Voter turnout was 71 per cent, a four per cent increase from last time.

• The exit polls are based on polling data from 70 polling stations across the country, but do not represent actual votes.
• There were just under 12,000 polling stations nationwide.  The vast majority of people vote where they are registered.  However several thousand Israelis used special booths including designated access for disabled people and Covid stations for people in quarantine.  In addition, the votes of soldiers on base, patients in hospital and prisoners are all counted later, referred to as double envelopes, so it can be verified these people did not vote twice.
• The exit polls did not capture the final two hours of voting, when there was understood to be a late surge of voting in Arab communities.
• According to the incoming results, both left-wing Meretz and Balad, the hard line pan-Arabist party, have just over 3 per cent of the vote each, placing them tantalisingly close to the threshold.  If either of them reach the requisite 3.25 per cent, it could redistribute the overall balance of power.
• However, as things stand it appears that the Likud and the pro- Netanyahu camp consisting of the Religious Zionist Party and the two ultra-Orthodox parties have enough seats to form a government.
• Relating to this scenario last week Netanyahu said that he would first look to lock in his natural allies and guarantee himself the role of prime minister and only then look to broaden his coalition with centrist parties.
• Historically, Netanyahu has always preferred positioning Likud in the centre of his governing coalition.  In the past he has partnered with the Labour Party led by Ehud Barak, Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid and the Hatnua led by Tzipi Livni.
• Since last night, it appears Benny Gantz the leader of the National Unity Party has not ruled out sitting with Netanyahu. He repeated his party’s mantra that they will put the country’s need above everything else.
• Gantz could be persuaded to join a Netanyahu government if doing so would dilute the influence of the hardline Religious Zionist Party.

Looking ahead: The counting should be complete in the next day or so.  Once all the double envelopes and overseas diplomatic votes are counted.  The final tally is usually decided according to the voter surplus agreements by the two parties with highest combined tallies of remaining votes left over that do not make up a full seat on their own.

• The Central Elections Committee will only formally present President Isaac Herzog with the official results next week.
• Herzog will then invite all the party leaders to a consultation to hear their recommendations to whom should be given the mandate to form a governing coalition. If results remain as above Netanyahu will likely be given this task and then have four weeks to negotiate and agree on government guidelines and cabinet portfolios.

What are comentators saying?

Matti Tuchfield in Israel Hayom writes about ‘Netanyahu’s Dream Government’. The assessment is that if Netanyahu has 61 MKs from four right-wing parties, he will have no motivation to form a unity government. Tuchfield also discusses the Religious Zionist party. “They will not demand an alternating premiership arrangement or make demands beyond their power but will insist on the matters that are close to their hearts, such as major portfolios (perhaps even public security for Ben Gvir), changes in the justice system, the development of settlements in Judea and Samaria and more. Netanyahu will find some of their demands awkward and will make it hard for him with the international community, the opposition and most of the media in Israel. But he won’t have much choice. They will give him the premiership in full, without an alternating premiership, without parity and all the other constitutional dirty tricks, but he will have to reward them significantly. He will feel their hand on the steering wheel very well, most likely soon as coalition negotiations begin.

In Maariv, Ben Caspit discusses the establishment of such a ‘fully right wing government’ which he admits a part of him wants to see. “Netanyahu has never formed that kind of government. That wasn’t Netanyahu’s way… Who knows, maybe we’ll all see that Ben Gvir was right? Maybe Otzma Yehudit will deliver peace and quiet. The Israeli right wing deserves a chance to test its ideology, in full, one time. Pure right. Without tricks and shticks. With Dudi Amsalem as justice minister. Bezalel Smotrich as defense minister. Aryeh Deri as finance minister. Itamar Ben Gvir as public security minister. We’ll see if their superficial, or childish solutions to Arab terrorism work. Are there any limits to the use of force? Let’s see what doing that does to the Israeli economy. Let’s see what it does to our peace agreements. What it does to our international status. How it affects our quality of life, what it does to our democracy. Perhaps the time has come to try that experiment. Is Israeli democracy strong enough to withstand it? I don’t know. But maybe it has no choice. Because this is the democratic decision.”

An editorial in Haaretz writes that Religious Zionism, the Knesset list that distorted the Zionist project and transformed it from the national home of the Jewish people into a project of conservative, right-wing, racist, religious Jewish supremacism in the spirit of Ben Gvir’s teacher and rabbi, Meir Kahane, is now the third largest political force in Israel. That is the true, chilling significance of the election held on Tuesday. It adds that were Netanyahu to form a right wing government, his apparent coalition will allow him to carry out his plot against Israeli democracy, including a fatal blow against the justice system. Moreover, that coalition might demand this of him. In such a revolution, a number of destructive steps might be taken. Here are some examples: Fire the attorney general; split the role of attorney general; legislate an override clause that will allow the Knesset to legislate whatever it wants to – even laws that are unconstitutional; allow the Knesset to select Supreme Court justices; restrict freedom of expression; and persecute journalists, Arabs, leftists and members of the LGBTQ community.

Channel 12’s Amit Segal refers to the Bennett-Lapid government, saying that “It isn’t merely that the experiment failed; the lab exploded. The next coalition will not include even a single member of the current coalition, with the exception of Idit Silman. More than half of the ministers and MKs from the government of change have now been sent packing never to return, including an entire faction or two that have been wiped out.” He adds that “The outgoing prime minister and his partners are going to have to do some real soul-searching about those moments back in January when they scuttled a plea bargain agreement that was negotiated between Netanyahu and the State Attorney’s Office by forming a state commission of inquiry into the submarines affair and by mounting a media campaign. Instead, they are now getting Netanyahu as prime minister once again. As of next week, it is once again going to be the prime minister’s trial that we’re talking about. The anyone-but-Bibi camp reached the end of its historic road yesterday. If it wants to return to power, it is going to have to offer the public a different set of wares. That will be in the next election—an election that won’t be dubbed the “sixth.”

In Yediot Ahronot, Nadav Eyal writes that “Much will yet be said about the larger election stories, from Itamar Ben Gvir to Shas’s mysterious success, but in the end, we need to say that the split of the Arab parties was the most important strategic moment in this election. If Balad fails to make it into Knesset, three seats will have been thrown away. If that happens, Netanyahu can chalk up much of his victory to the hatred within Arab politics. In the words of Mansour Abbas—Balad will have put Netanyahu back in power.”

Ben Dror Yemini and Nahum Barnea in Yediot Ahronot argue for a unity government. Barnea writes: “If the Israeli political establishment hopes to survive, if it wants to retain the public’s support and confidence, it has to end the deadlock either with Netanyahu or, preferably, without him. Either with the ultra-Orthodox or, preferably, without them. The choice that was made by Begin and Eshkol in the 1960s, and by Shamir and Peres in the 1980s, can now be made by Netanyahu and Lapid. It is unavoidable.” Yemini believes that “the mending we need can only be achieved by means of unity. A unity government. It’s time to end the boycotts. It’s time to stop insisting on “anyone-but-Bibi.” It’s time to stop insisting on “only Bibi.” We’ve had far too much of that trash. And the fact that the short-lived unity government between Netanyahu and Gantz was brought down by the former doesn’t make the option of forming a narrow government, which will be doomed to fail, any better.