Israeli election: As votes are counted, no clear winner emerges

Noga Tarnopolski, our correspondent in Jerusalem, joins us now for the latest. Noga, thanks for being with us. Let us know, what's the latest on the count now? Good to see you, Charles. Thank you. The latest on the count has Prime Minister Netanyahu's entire block of parties holding steady right now at 54 seats out of 120 in the Knesset. But as you said, that's short of a majority, and that's significant because there are no defectors on the other side of the aisle who could vote to support him, for example, even in establishing a minority government, could he wish. So Netanyahu appears to have won in his battle principally to prevent any other bloc from being able to rise to power. And I say that with a caveat. His opponent right now seems to be heading a block of about 47 seats. This is unlikely to change significantly, but it could still change by the time the votes are all counted, including votes cast abroad in embassies, votes cast by soldiers on military bases. We still haven't begun the count, for example, of displaced Israelis voting in temporary voting places displaced by war. So all of that could still shift things slightly, but slightly in this case could mean that Gadi Eisenkot's 47 could rise possibly to 48, 49, maybe even 50. He does have the support of these two now fairly large Arab majority parties that really are those who won the election yesterday. The vote in the Arab community of Israel has been simply remarkable. It should be the story of this election, except that I think the real story is that Netanyahu seems once again to have been able, while losing, certainly losing in popularity, crashing his popularity in the Knesset from 68 seats down to, let's say, 54. Still, nevertheless, he has won by apparently being able to prevent his opposition from forming another government. Benjamin Netanyahu is a political athlete, almost. He's managed to survive really tough political situations in the past. Is there a path ahead now for him to actually maintain his position beyond what he is currently, which is interim caretaker prime minister of Israel? There doesn't seem to be a path for him to form a new government. But if we go by his speech last night, which was not the victory speech I expected, it was a campaign speech. What you saw was a prime minister already planning to run again. Prime Minister Netanyahu expects apparently that he will be given the first mandate to form a government or at least the second that he will be able to try. but he expects that both sides will fail. That became very clear from his speech yesterday in which he attacked the media, attacked Arab voters, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, for the first time, flat out said that he enjoys a Jewish majority in Israel. That's the line his government's taking, and I think he plans to run again with that. Noga Tarnopolski reporting there from Jerusalem. Thank you for those insights on that election in Israel.