Yesterday, in flagging early exit polls pointing to a narrow victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I noted that we’d have to wait for confirmation from actual results. Sure enough, as the results came in overnight, they now point to a narrow Netanyahu loss.
As things stand, the bloc of parties that would be expected to form a government with Netanyahu have 59 seats — just placing them in the minority in the 120-seat Knesset.
It is unclear exactly what the path to 61 seats is for opposition leader Yair Lapid, or whether Arab parties would join the government. Which is a way of saying that things are far from settled.