By World Israel News Staff
Three weeks before the national elections, Israel’s left-wing Meretz party, for the first time, will not pass the electoral threshold, according to a new Channel 12 poll conducted Tuesday evening.
Prime Minister Benjamin Likud’s party is in the lead, the poll indicates, with 28 seats. To form a coalition, a minimum of 61 seats is required in the 120-seat Knesset.
The smaller parties would decide, therefore, who heads the government. The success of those determined to oust Netanyahu will depend on whether the prime minister manages to cobble together a coalition. His failure to do so since April 2019 is the reason for the country’s fourth election in almost two years.
A previous Channel 12 poll also showed Likud with 28 seats.
The center-left Yesh Atid party, led by Yair Lapid, has 19 seats, the new poll shows – up one from the previous poll.
Right-wing parties New Hope, led by Gideon Sa’ar, and Naftali Bennett’s Yamina, gained as well, according to the poll, with 14 and 12 seats respectively.
The poll shows the (Arab) Joint List as having nine seats; eight seats for the ultra-Orthodox Shas party; seven each for Yisrael Beiteinu and Labor; United Torah Judaism, six seats; and five seats each for Blue and White and Religious Zionism.
A Channel 13 poll, however, has slightly different results, showing Meretz as barely making it, with four seats. The United Arab List, which recently broke away from the Joint List, had the same results as Meretz
The Channel 13 poll has Likud at 27 seats: Yesh Atid, 19; New Hope and Yemina, 11 each; Joint List, 8: Shas, United Torah Judaism and Yisrael Beiteinu, 7 each; Labor, 6; Religious Zionism, 5; and Blue and White, Meretz and United Arab List at 4 each.
Image: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, CC BY-SA 2.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons
