Israel: Netanyahu edges closer to a majority

Let's turn immediately now to our senior reporter, Clovis Gasali, who's covering these elections for us in Jerusalem. Clovis, what's the latest in terms of the vote count? We spoke to you about an hour ago, it was 70 percent counted, and that referendum on Netanyahu still appears inconclusive. Absolutely, and as hours go by here in Israel, we're getting a clearer picture of these final results that we could get tonight, if not tomorrow morning, and it's looking better and better for Benjamin Netanyahu, his Likud party still leading, and also his bloc. But it has to be said, there's no clear path for victory for the Israeli prime minister, because he's still short of that 61 seats, the magic number in order to get a parliamentary majority, in order for Netanyahu to stay in power. We were at the International Congress Center here in Jerusalem, where he appeared in front of his supporters around three o'clock in the morning to comment the results to say it was a great result for him his supporters were ecstatic of course it often happens on election nights and Benjamin Netanyahu saying that praising really his work as prime minister saying he had diminished the Iranian threat that more needed to be done to destroy the enemy but that the work was looking good and he needed more help from the United States he also talked about these safety buffer zones, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, all of those military operations that, according to him, help protect and defend more Israel. And then he also spoke of the danger, according to him, coming from Arab parties that do not serve the Israeli state. But according to him, Arab parties serve the interests of enemy nations. And these Arab-led parties had a strong showings and they really could be the kingmakers here. Tell us more. Clearly a historic day for Arab parties who really managed to mobilize their electorate with certainly historic record turnout among Arab Israelis here in the country. We followed during the campaign one of those parties, their candidates telling us there is racism, there is discrimination under this Netanyahu government with far-right ministers doing all they can to make our life as hard as possible and that's why our voters need to turn up in huge numbers and it does appear that they did during on election day bear in mind Benjamin Netanyahu kept taking to social media calling his supporters to turn up because he was saying there's an emergency Arab voters are queuing are going in large numbers you need to mobilize and go out to the polling stations. Arab parties now could be kingmakers. The problem is when you look at the opposition coalition led or the opposition coalition of potential partners led by center right figure Gadi Eisenkot. Well, many don't want to work hand in hand with Arab parties, don't even want to get the support from those parties. Apart from the left wing, the Democrats of Yair Golan, Yair Golan saying, we need to stop being afraid. We need to put an end to racism. We need to work hand in hand with Arab parties, because if we do so, we will have a strong coalition and it will be the end of Benjamin Netanyahu. Clovis Casale reporting there from Jerusalem, getting the latest on those election results in Israel.