Israeli election: PM loses a significant number of seats since 2022 election

Same with the story next, and we can bring in our international affairs editor, Angela Diffley. Angela, good to see you. I know it's a confused picture still at this hour, but what is clear from these results so far? What is clear is that Netanyahu's coalition has lost seats since the last election in 2022, maybe as much as a quarter of the seats compared to what it had in 2022. That is very significant. And looking at the polls, talking to Israelis, if you look at what's out there, It does seem clear that, you know, two of the big reasons are that those who chose not to vote for him this time blame him for the fact that October the 7th happened on his watch. They do not accept any explanations around that. The other big issue, we were talking about it yesterday as well, is this issue of conscription and particularly the status of the ultra-Orthodox community. community that has annoyed a lot uh on the right uh who feel that too much government money is spent subsidizing their lifestyle just a reminder these ultra orthodox people who spend their not all of them but a section of them whose job is to study the torah they're subsidized by the government for doing so and very importantly they are exempt from national service which most israelis have to do and so there was a strong feeling that they were neither contributing to the economy or to the military effort to secure Israel you know when Israel was established they were a very small number of people they tend to have large families and this is now a significant minority and very many of those on the right who dumped the Netanyahu coalition it looks if you listen to what's being said that that is one of the reasons the other big conclusion to draw from this, as Clovis was pointing to, there is that really strong turnout from Arab Israelis and a big jump in the number of seats likely for Arab parties could be as much as 19 seats. About 20% of Israelis are Arab Israelis. That was largely, it is thought, due to the fact that under Netanyahu's coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir as the national security minister, has been openly antagonistic to Arab Israelis. And that really seems to have galvanized them. You know, there are specific groups among the Arab Israelis. There are two very important blocks, if you like. Ram is much more interested. They're expected to get about seven seats. They are much more interested in bettering the lives of arab israelis within israel uh the joint list expected to get around maybe 12 seats are much more interested they're much more palestinian nationalist driven if you like more interested in uh the west bank also gaza palestinian issues play a much bigger role uh in their manifesto than in the ram the ram party a lot of them are uh originally bedouin Arabs from southern Israel. And so what happens now? What are the possible scenarios? Well, the possible scenarios, Isaac Herzog, the president, next week, once the results are finalised, because tomorrow or today we will get the results from military and diplomat voters, once the results are finalised, he will then ask the parties who they endorse as prime minister and then choose one of those to see if they can get a coalition. The problem for Eisenkot in this is that on that change block, which really all pulled itself together saying anything but Netanyahu, they haven't decided which of them should be prime minister. We talk about Gadi Eisenkot, but it was never agreed that Eisenkot should be prime minister. That's a problem for him. The major problem he has is that only one of his coalition is prepared to work with any Arab parties, and they would need those to get over the line in forming a coalition. That is a major stumbling block. Netanyahu, it's widely thought, might be quite happy if there's a government of national unity forced upon him by the Herzog president. Then he could jettison the far-right religious things. But there's such a lot of distrust. we'll see what happens uh it's going to play out over the next uh few hours and days for sure and weeks and weeks uh thank you very much for that angela angela definitely there