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Netanyahu won election, but now faces challenge of Israel's reality (w/video)

 
Published March 19, 2015

TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, having secured a come-from-behind election victory for his conservative party, now faces an array of problems at home and abroad, some of them exacerbated by the ugly tone of the final days of the campaign.

Hours after the vote tally pointed to a comfortable victory for Netanyahu's Likud, the prime minister said he would try to form a ruling coalition as soon as possible, a narrow grouping built around partnerships with natural allies, including right-wing and religious parties.

His main opponent, Isaac Herzog, indicatd he would stay in the opposition rather than join a "unity government" with Netanyahu, saying his left-center Zionist Union would serve as "an alternative in every field" to the more hawkish prime minister.

Later, less diplomatically, his running mate Tzipi Livni called a prospective Netanyahu government a "coalition of horror."

To cobble together the requisite 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset, Netanyahu said, he is consulting with the pro-settlement Jewish Home, led by Naftali Bennett; the new center-right party Kulanu, led by former Likud Cabinet Minister Moshe Kahlon; and hard-line nationalist or ultra-Orthodox parties.

Bennett will be a holdover from the last government, which collapsed when Netanyahu fired Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Livni, who was justice minister.