Like most Israeli dailies, the Wednesday edition of Haaretz went to print too early to call Tuesday’s election results, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring victory. The 65-year-old is indeed heading to a fourth term as his Likud party defied final polls that had showed him trailing the centrist Zionist Union party led by Isaac Herzog.
With virtually all the votes counted Wednesday midday, Likud came out on top with 30 seats, followed by Zionist Union with 24 seats. The Joint List of Arab parties is the third-largest party at this point, though Likud is expected to ally with far-right and religious parties to form a new majority coalition.
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ABOUT THE SOURCE: Haaretz (“The Land”) was founded in 1919 and is Israel’s oldest daily newspaper. It is published in Hebrew and English, and owned by the Schocken family, M. DuMont Schauberg, and Leonid Nevzlin.
