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Election poll shows no bloc able to win Knesset majority

Netanyahu’s vow to form next government may not be possible if he refuses to sit with the Islamist Ra’am party. 

By World Israel News Staff

A poll released Tuesday predicts another deadlocked election in which both blocs would fail to secure the majority needed to form a government.

The poll published by Radio 103 FM shows that the bloc led by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu would secure 59 of the Knesset’s 120 seats if elections were held today. Altogether, the bloc of the current disbanded coalition would win 55 seats.

Netanyahu’s Likud party would receive 36 seats, while Yesh Atid, the party headed by Foreign Minister and soon-to-be interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid, would come in second with 20 seats.

Religious Zionism and the Blue and White party would receive 10 and 8 seats, respectively, while the leftwing Meretz party would fail to pass the election threshold.

The Arab majority Joint List party is predicted to hold onto its 6 Knesset seats.

Shas is predicted to drop 2 seats, bringing them to down to 7, and United Torah Judaism will lose one seat, leaving them with 6, according to the poll.

Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu is predicted to drop from 7 seats to 5.

Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party and the Arab Ra’am party, led by one-time kingmaker Mansour Abbas, will barely meet the threshold with four seats apiece.

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If both blocs fails to secure a majority, Israel could see itself governed by a minority coalition that relies on outside support.

Monday’s dramatic announcement to dissolve the Knesset and send Israel to elections for the fifth time in 40 months came after months of uncertainty.

The government sworn in a little over a year ago and led by Bennett was a coalition of ideologically disparate parties ranging from the right-wing Yamina, Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope, to the centrist Yesh Atid and Blue and White, the left-wing Labor and Meretz and the Arab Islamist Ra’am party.

They were united in their desire to block Netanyahu from continuing as prime minister.

Netanyahu on Monday vowed to “restore national pride” by forming “a wide, strong, and stable national government.”

He also promised that he would not join Abbas in a government.

Abbas, on the other hand, told Arabic-language radio that his only red line was not joining a government with Religious Zionism’s Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have a “fascist and racist view of the world.”