Vote in Israel weakens Netanyahu

Prime minister’s ticket is projected to lose 11 seats

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Yossi Zamir | Flash 90
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets fans during a visit to the southern city of Ashdod. His faction will have to rely on smaller coalitions to get a majority in parliament.
By The Washington Post  • 

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged weakened and facing a redrawn political map yesterday after Israeli television projections showed a new centrist party, Yesh Atid, surging in Israel’s elections, making it a key element of a future coalition.

Netanyahu’s ticket combining his rightist Likud party with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction won 31 parliamentary seats, according to the projections, a sharp decline from the combined 42 seats held by the two parties in the outgoing 120-member legislature.

The faction remained the largest in parliament, but its decline meant that Netanyahu will be more dependent on smaller coalition partners to cobble together a parliamentary majority.

In a message on his Facebook page after the projections were announced, Netanyahu said he would begin “efforts to put together the widest government possible,” indicating that centrist parties would be invited into his coalition.

The surprise result, according to the projections, was the surge to 19 seats of Yesh Atid, or There is a Future. Its leader, Yair Lapid, a former television anchorman, based his campaign on a demand to end the exemption of tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory military service so they can pursue religious studies with government stipends.

Lapid’s campaign for equal service and easing the burden on Israel’s middle class resonated with many secular Israelis who pay high taxes and serve in the military. He also has called for a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians.

The opposition Labor Party, which polls had predicted would be the second-largest faction, slid to third place, with 17 to 18 seats, according to the projections. Its leader, Shelly Yachimovich, has vowed not to join a government with Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, 63, has been prime minister since March 2009. He previously held the position from June 1996 to July 1999.