By Patrick Neer | Echo
The results are in: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nationalist Likud party won an overwhelming victory in Israel's parliamentary election Wednesday, guaranteeing a continuation of Netanyahu's hard-line stances on Palestine, Iran and the West, according to Al-Jazeera. Netanyahu and the Likud party earned 30 of the Knesset's 120 seats.
But the Likud party didn't win without a fight. The Zionist Union Party, led by Netanyahu's primary challenger, Isaac Herzog, led the polls by a projected 4 or 5 seats until the election.
Polling well behind Herzog's Union party, Netanyahu embarked on a last-minute campaign-abandoning any pretense of moderation by promising that no Palestinian state would ever be established while he was in office.
During his campaign, Netanyahu also insulted Arab citizens, saying they were a threat to the stability of the Israeli government, according to the New York Times. But Netanyahu's gambit worked and the Zionist Union came in second, winning only 24 seats.
Hope for cooperation between the victors is slim. Netanyahu plans on creating a majority coalition solely from far-right religious groups and other conservative factions in the Knesset, but Israeli President Reuven Rivlin pled with the candidates prior to the election to join forces.
"I am convinced that only a unity government can prevent the rapid disintegration of Israel's democracy and new elections in the near future," Rivlin said, according to the New York Times.
Both Netanyahu and Herzog have publicly rejected Rivlin's plea, citing irreconcilable differences in worldview. Herzog has already announced his intention to lead the opposition party in the Knesset.
Al-Jazeera America reported that Netanyahu's refusal to compromise on Palestinian statehood is continuing to strain relations with the Obama administration.
"The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians," a senior White House official said, according to the New York Times. "We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward."
