The New York Times. Tepid vote for Netanyahu in Israel is seen as rebuke

A weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged Wednesday from Israel’s national election likely to serve a third term, according to preliminary results and political analysts, after voters on Tuesday gave a surprising second place to a new centrist party founded by a television celebrity who emphasized kitchen-table issues like class size and apartment prices.

For Mr. Netanyahu, who entered the race an overwhelming favorite with no obvious challenger, the outcome was a humbling rebuke as his ticket lost seats in the new Parliament. Over all, his conservative team came in first, but it was the center, led by the political novice Yair Lapid, 49, that emerged newly invigorated, suggesting that at the very least Israel’s rightward tilt may be stalled.

With 90 percent of the vote counted, Israel Radio reported Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud-Beiteinu ticket was poised to take 31 of Parliament’s 120 seats. Mr. Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid — There Is a Future — garnered 19, many more than polls had predicted.
The right-wing and religious parties that make up Mr. Netanyahu’s current coalition combined for 60 seats, according to Israel Radio, equal to the total won by the center, left and Arab parties, pushing the prime minister toward a partnership with Mr. Lapid and perhaps some of the groups that had been in the opposition. The left-leaning Labor Party took 15 seats and Jewish Home, a new religious-nationalist party, 11.
The prime minister called Mr. Lapid shortly after the polls closed at 10 p.m. Tuesday and, according to Israeli television reports, told him that they had great things to do together for the country. In his speech to a rowdy crowd of supporters here Wednesday morning, he said, “I see many partners.”
Mr. Lapid indicated he was open to working with Mr. Netanyahu, saying the only way to face Israel’s challenges was “together.” But he added: “What is good for Israel is not in the possession of the right, and nor is it in the possession of the left. It lies in the possibility of creating here a real and decent center.”
The results were a blow to the prime minister, whose aggressive push to expand Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has led to international condemnation and strained relations with Washington. The support for Mr. Lapid and Labor showed voters responded strongly to an emphasis on domestic, socioeconomic issues that brought 500,000 people to the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011.

“Israelis are asking for a moderate coalition,” said Marcus Sheff, executive director of the Israel Project, an advocacy group that conducts research on public opinion. “Israel’s middle class wasn’t asleep as people assumed. The embers of the social protest are still strong.”

“Israelis are asking for a moderate coalition,” said Marcus Sheff, executive director of the Israel Project, an advocacy group that conducts research on public opinion. “Israel’s middle class wasn’t asleep as people assumed. The embers of the social protest are still strong.”

Erel Margalit, a venture capitalist and first-time candidate who was elected to Parliament on Labor’s list, described the high turnout as a “protest vote” and “a clear demonstration of how many Israelis feel like something needs to be done and something needs to change.”
“It was not a fringe phenomenon; it was a mainstream phenomenon,” he said of the 2011 movement.

After the center-left failed to field a credible alternative to Mr. Netanyahu and much attention focused on the hawkish Jewish Home, which wants Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank, the results shocked many analysts and even candidates. Turnout was nearly 67 percent, higher than the 65 percent in 2009 and the 63 percent in 2003.

Meretz, the left-wing pro-peace party, was set to double its three Parliament seats, with six. It remained unclear whether Kadima, the centrist party that won the most seats in 2009 — 28 — had enough votes to send anyone to Parliament. The party collapsed last year after briefly entering Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition only to fail in its promise to end draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Mr. Netanyahu, 63, is already Israel’s second-longest serving prime minister, after the state’s founding leader, David Ben-Gurion, having served from 1996 to 1999 and then again since 2009.

Several commentators saw Tuesday’s vote as an “interim” election, predicting that the new coalition, whatever its makeup, would not be able to withstand the pressing challenges ahead, including a $10 billion budget deficit and the question of whether to launch a military strike against the Iranian nuclear program.