With 97% of the vote counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-of-center Likud party has sustained a razor-thin win, defeating Benny Gantz’s left-leaning Blue and White party, receiving 37 seats to Gantz’s 36, but the victory is actually much greater than it appears.
The new right-wing party coalition has a total of 65 seats. The Leftist coalition has 55, giving Rightists a clear majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament). The remaining votes, still to be counted, are from the military, which tends to lean right and could conceivably add an additional 4-5 seats to the new Right coalition, firming up a solidly conservative coalition under Netanyahu’s leadership.