Israel Election Results: Full List of Parties, Lawmakers That Made It Into Knesset
Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan ahead of Netanyahu's Likud by two seats, election results show ■ Arab-majority Joint List third largest party, with Arab participation up ■ Kahanist party out
With 97 percent of the votes from Israel's election counted, Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan has pulled ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, with 33 and 31 seats respectively.
Netanyahu's bloc, comprised of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, currently stands at 55 out of 120 Knesset seats. The center-left bloc, excluding Arab parties, has 44 seats.
Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beiteinu party has gotten eight seats, emerges once more as the election's kingmaker. On Wednesday morning, he reiterated his support for a "broad liberal unity government," which would include Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud and Kahol Lavan.
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Significantly ahead of Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, the Joint List of four Arab-majority parties repeated its 2015 election result, becoming the third largest party in the Knesset again, with 13 seats.
Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas has nine seats, followed closely by its Ashkenazi counterpart United Torah Judaism with eight. Ayelet Shaked's Yamina gets seven seats, the results indicate, while left-wing outfits trail the rest, with Labor-Gesher getting six seats and Democratic Union five.
KAHOL LAVAN, HEADED BY BENNY GANTZ
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Former military chief Gantz emerged last election as a serious rival to Netanyahu. Gantz, a popular former Israeli army chief of staff and political newcomer, joined forces with the right-wing Moshe Ya'alon, a former defense minister, and center-left former Finance Minister Yair Lapid to form the centrist Kahol Lavan party. Many predicted that the three-way marriage wouldn’t last past the April election, but the parties are still together, surviving rumblings of dissatisfaction about the rotation arrangement in which Gantz and Lapid would each serve as prime minister for two years. Gantz has called for pursuing peace with the Palestinians while maintaining Israeli security interests. He has signaled he would make territorial concessions toward the Palestinians, but has also sidestepped the question of Palestinian statehood.
6 Meir Cohen
7 Miki Haimovich
8 Ofer Shelah
9 Yoaz Hendel
10 Orna Barbivai
11 Michael Biton
12 Chili Tropper
13 Yael German
14 Zvi Hauser
15 Orit Farkash-Hacohen
16 Karin Elharrar
17 Meirav Cohen
18 Yoel Razvozov
19 Asaf Zamir
20 Izhar Shay
21 Elazar Stern
22 Mickey Levy
23 Omer Yankelevich
24 Pnina Tamano-Shata
25 Gadeer Mreeh
26 Ram Ben Barak
27 Alon Shuster
28 Yoav Segalovitz
29 Ram Shefa
30 Boaz Toporovsky
31 Orly Fruman
32 Eitan Ginzburg
33 Gadi Yevarkan
LIKUD, HEADED BY PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
Likud champions tough security policies when it comes to Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of its members oppose the creation of a Palestinian state. Benjamin Netanyahu, in a last-minute election promise, said he would annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins another term. Likud has rallied around Netanyahu, who is facing possible indictment in three corruption cases in which he has denied any wrongdoing. The party absorbed Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon's socioeconomically-minded Kulanu party.
2 Yuli Edelstein
3 Yisrael Katz
4 Gilad Erdan
5 Moshe Kahlon
6 Gideon Sa'ar
7 Miri Regev
8 Yariv Levin
9 Yoav Gallant
10 Nir Barkat
11 Gila Gamliel
12 Avi Dichter
13 Zeev Elkin
14 Haim Katz
15 Eli Cohen
16 Tzachi Hanegbi
17 Ofir Akunis
18 Yuval Steinitz
19 Tzipi Hotovely
20 David Amsalem
21 Amir Ohana
22 Ofir Katz
23 Etty Atia
24 Yoav Kish
25 David Bitan
26 Keren Barak
27 Shlomo Karhi
28 Miki Zohar
29 Yifat Shasha-Biton
30 Sharren Haskel
31 Michal Shir
THE JOINT LIST, HEADED BY AYMAN ODEH
After a powerful debut showing in the 2015 election, in which it won an impressive 13 seats, the alliance of four predominantly Arab parties broke into two separate slates for the April race — and the results were bad. Now they're back, with the socialist Jewish-Arab Hadash-Ta'al party and Arab nationalist and Islamist United Arab List-Balad linking up once again. Disheartened and unhappy with the Joint List’s ugly breakup earlier this year, voter turnout in the Arab community dropped dramatically — from 63 percent down to just 50 percent. The slate’s leader, Ayman Odeh, has expressed hope that the move will help “overthrow the right-wing government,” as well as “preventing racism, annexation and the destruction of democracy.” Arab parties have never joined governing coalitions in Israel.
1 Ayman Odeh
4 Mansour Abbas
6 Walid Taha
8 Heba Yazbak
9 Osama Saadi
10 Yousef Jabareen
11 Said al-Harumi
12 Jaber Asakila
13 Sami Abu Shehadeh
SHAS, HEADED BY INTERIOR MINISTER ARYE DERY
Allied with UTJ, Shas (an acronym for Union of Sephardic Torah Observers) has like UTJ been an almost permanent fixture in successive governments and represents Haredi Jews of Middle Eastern origin. Its chairman Arye Deri, has previously served two years in prison for bribery.
1 Arye Dery
2 Yitzhak Cohen
3 Meshulam Nahari
4 Yaakov Margi
5 Yoav Ben Tzur
6 Michael Malkieli
7 Moshe Arbel
8 Yinon Azoulay
9 Moshe Abutbul
YISRAEL BEITEINU, HEADED BY AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN
Yisrael Beiteinu's leader, Moldovan-born Lieberman, played his political cards cleverly when he refused to join Netanyahu’s coalition after April’s election, thus triggering the September ballot. His refusal to budge on drafting the ultra-Orthodox to the IDF was a popular move with right-wing voters, pushing him ahead in the polls. The former defense minister's policies include trading Arab towns in Israel to any future Palestinian state for territory in the West Bank where Jewish settlements have been built. The right-wing party counts on the support of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
2 Oded Forer
3 Evgeny Sova
4 Eli Avidar
5 Yulia Malinovsky
6 Hamad Amar
7 Alex Kushnir
8 Mark Ifraimov
UNITED TORAH JUDAISM, HEADED BY DEPUTY HEALTH MINISTER YAAKOV LITZMAN
United Torah Judaism represents ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, of European origin. Successive coalition governments have had to rely on support from ultra-Orthodox parties, which traditionally put their sectoral demands above larger issues like security and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UTJ is primarily concerned with safeguarding state benefits for Haredi men who devote themselves to full-time religious study and do not serve in the conscript military or work.
1 Yaakov Litzman
2 Moshe Gafni
3 Meir Porush
4 Uri Maklev
5 Yaakov Tessler
6 Yakov Asher
7 Israel Eichler
8 Yitzhak Pindrus
YAMINA, HEADED BY AYELET SHAKED
The newly formed Yamina (formerly United Right) slate is essentially a restoration of the alliance Ayelet Shaked helped dismantle, with disastrous results, after she and Naftali Bennett broke away to form Hayamin Hehadash last December (their new party failed to cross the electoral threshold). After a weak showing in the election, the religious parties they left behind — Habayit Hayehudi and Bezalel Smotrich's National Union, realized that the whole of the “right of Netanyahu” camp is greater than the sum of its parts, and have fallen in line behind Shaked — to the astonishment of men who did not believe male Orthodox political leaders could ever bow to the leadership of a secular woman.
1 Ayelet Shaked
5 Moti Yogev
6 Ofir Sofer
7 Matan Kahana
LABOR-GESHER, HEADED BY AMIR PERETZ
After Labor's weak performance in the previous election, the historic social-democratic party ousted leader Avi Gabbay and reinstated former leader Amir Peretz. This has not significantly helped the party's downward slope in popularity, nor did its refusal to join in an alliance with Meretz or Ehud Barak's party. Peretz's link-up with Orli Levi-Abekasis' center-right Gesher party, which failed to cross the electoral threshold in April, also marred its chances, as did the exit of two of the party's most influential members: Stav Shaffir, who left for the new Democratic Union party, and Shelly Yacimovich, who is taking a break from politics.
1 Amir Peretz
4 Merav Michaeli
5 Omer Bar-Lev
6 Revital Swid
DEMOCRATIC UNION, HEADED BY NITZAN HOROWITZ
This new center-left joint slate is one of the election's surprise alliances. There had been talks of a Labor-Meretz merger, but these rumors were disrupted when former Prime Minister Ehud Barak thundered back onto the political scene in May. Barak was joined by the left-wing Zionist Meretz party and renegade Labor lawmaker Stav Shaffir, who expected other Labor members to jump ship alongside her (they didn't). Barak, marred by his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, forfeited a leadership role in the party, placing himself low on the party's slate - it looks like he will not be entering the Knesset at all.
3 Yair Golan
4 Tamar Zandberg
5 Ilan Gilon