“Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan is ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, according to official election results released on Wednesday after 91 percent of the vote was counted. The results show that neither of the parties have a clear path to securing a majority in Knesset.”

“With about 63 percent of the ballots counted, Blue and White had 25.7 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of Likud, with 25 percent. The murky outcome itself was a humiliating blow to Mr. Netanyahu, 69, the nation’s longest-serving prime minister, who forced the do-over election when he failed to assemble a coalition in May, rather than let Mr. Gantz have a try. For the second time in a row, his onetime deputy, Avigdor Liberman, denied Mr. Netanyahu a majority, this time urging the formation of a unity government.”

Haaretz quotes pollster Yousef Makladeh who says Netanyahu’s ‘gevalt’ campaign against the Arab public brought a 20% boost in voters. He says the camera bill also worked as a ‘double edged sword’ that further inspired the targeted minority to head to the polls.”

“According to the official results on Wednersday afternoon, counting some 90 percent of the votes, the next Knesset will look like this: The Blue and White centrist alliance has 32 seats, just ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud with 31. Next is the Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties with 13 seats. Then come the ultra-Orthodox Shas and secular right-wing Yisrael Beytenu with nine seats each, followed by United Torah Judaism with eight. Bringing up the rear are Yamina with seven, Labor-Gesher with six and the Democratic Camp with five”

The leader of the Joint List, a primarily Arab Israeli political alliance, said Wednesday he could give his backing to Blue and White leader MK Benny Gantz to form a coalition and become prime minister. While MK Ayman Odeh told Army Radio he is considering recommending that President Reuven Rivlin give Gantz the first crack at forming a coalition, he emphasized that ‘we have basic demands and we will decide based on them’.”

“Gantz said he had managed to speak with Labor leader Amir Peretz and Meretz head Nitzan Horowitz, and that he intended to talk to everyone. Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, whose party appears to have emerged as the kingmaker of the elections Tuesday, said he sees a unity government with Blue and White and Likud as ‘the only option.’ Gantz, however, has said he will not join a government with Netanyahu due to the latter’s criminal investigations/”

“Rejecting the idea of any coalition that counts the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-led parties, as a partner, Netanyahu said there cannot be a government that relies on ‘anti-Zionist Arab parties that oppose the very existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state — parties that praise and glorify blood-thirsty terrorists who kill our soldiers, our citizens, our children’.”

“The right-wing Yamina alliance announced it would break into three factions Tuesday night, minutes after exit polls showed the party comfortably sliding into the Knesset. Faction leader Ayelet Shaked informed Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein in a letter that the right-wing party was splitting back into New Right and Jewish Home as originally planned before the joint Knesset run.”

“We do not count on the outcomes of Israeli elections taking place today, because the competition is between two candidates who do not have any agenda to end the occupation,” Shtayyeh said at the conference.

“Behind the broad sense of fatigue, deterioration on some fronts and stagnation on others, however, +972 writers have pointed to bigger stories that haven’t received the attention they deserved. For Sheizaf, it’s precisely ‘the elephant in the room’ of the occupation that should be on people’s minds — and more specifically, the people who are not allowed to vote. ‘Israel is the sole sovereign in the entire land between the river and the sea (as we call it), yet millions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (not to mention Gaza) can’t vote or participate in its political system,”’ he says. This, he adds, is not an anomaly but the status quo as far as Israeli history is concerned.”

“Dozens of private citizens have volunteered to drive Bedouin residents of remote, so-called unrecognized Bedouin villages to the polling stations to vote during Tuesday’s election. The grassroots initiative sprang up in response to a ruling handed down on Sunday by the Central Elections Committee, which ordered Zazim, an Israeli grassroots organizing group akin to MoveOn, to halt its plan to bus Bedouin voters to polling stations. Likud party lawyers objected to the plan, arguing to the Committee that it was a partisan attempt to sway the election results.”

“Like the some 250,000 Bedouins in the Negev desert, he belongs to the country’s Arab minority, descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land after the creation of the country in 1948. Together, they represent around 20 percent of Israel’s nearly nine million citizens and denounce what they say is discrimination by the Jewish majority”

“’Security personnel who saw that she was approaching them performed the proper arrest procedures and called for her to stop. She did not respond to their calls and took out a knife. As a result of this, a shot was fired at her leg and she was injured,’ police said in a statement. The woman was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus for treatment, where she was pronounced dead, the medical center said. Video from the scene, which was later shared on social media, showed the moment that one of the security officers shot her.”

“Ahead of the rematch, the Rafah club submitted exit applications for its 22 players, and 13 members of the coaching team and executives. Three days before the scheduled match, the club’s spokesperson was told that 31 of the 35 applications had been denied on security grounds. Only four applications were approved, of which just one of them was of a player. Two of the individuals denied exit were told they would receive a final response after a security interview at Erez Crossing.”

Sam Bahour writes, “But I refuse to despair. I refuse to be defined by this conflict. I do not want to mold my existence into days of commemorations of exile, massacres, death, and destruction. I refuse to live in the past, but I also refuse to forget the past. I remember to respect, to learn, to understand my present, and to define how I will chart my future. For those looking in from the outside it will be hard to comprehend; how a person can live a schizophrenic life and not be infected with the disorder itself. How, in the same day, a conscious mind and beating heart can make the case that a policy of slow ethnic cleansing is being undertaken against them, while the same mind and heart, the normal one, live a life of hope that is convinced that tomorrow will witness better times. This is our predicament as Palestinians, we have no alternative but to struggle with our internal turmoil as we attempt to maintain our sanity and raise the next generation to understand that both of their hearts will compete for their chest space too, regrettably.”

“The massacre at Sabra and Shatila was a direct consequence of Israel’s violation of the American-brokered ceasefire and the impunity bestowed on Israel by the US and the international community. This tragic anniversary is a reminder that the international community continues to fail to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and to defend the basic human rights of the Palestinian people.”