'Israeli president trying to form unity govt: They will not need Arab parties nor Orthodox parties'

And for more on these Israeli elections, I can welcome Tamar Sebok, France correspondent with the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonot. Good morning, Tamar, and thank you very much for joining us. Both sides are claiming victory in this election, but neither has a clear advantage as of yet. Which one ought to be the happier? Good morning. For the morning, we don't know who should be the happier, because the system in Israel is made in a way that you don't know until the coalition is formed who really won. It's not a question of having the most mandates. It's the question of what kind of acceptance you get from the other parties, who supports you when they go and speak to the president of Israel, which afterwards gives the mandate to the party who has the most support. Now, if Benjamin Netanyahu does get to form another government, is there a chance that its composition might be different from the present one that he leads? Absolutely. The president is trying to form a unity government, which means they are trying to get Eisenkot and Bennett and the Likud together in a way that they will not need neither the Arab parties nor the Orthodox parties. Because the problem in Israel is that the small parties who are the balance have a lot more power than the big ones. It's a contradiction. Now, Israel is used to protracted periods of negotiations to form governments, but is such an interregnum risky given the current geopolitical circumstances the country finds itself in? It is a big risk, but what people don't know is that there's a difference between swearing the Knesset and forming the government, because swearing the Knesset is in about two weeks. Even if there isn't a majority, which is firm, if the Arab parties join in support for changing the president of the Knesset, they can already swear a minority government, the opposition, and then try and make a coalition. Otherwise, there is a big difficulty because what Netanyahu pronounces as a problem is the continuing of the war and the West Bank occupation. Now, the Arab parties did get an unprecedented haul in this election. It's projected to be 17 or 18. Both Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot have said they will not join with either party in government. But does that mean the end of the story? Certainly not, because we have already seen in 2021 the party of Mahmoud Abbas joining the unity coalition with Bennett and Lapid. The fact that they don't say before the election that they will join them doesn't mean that they will not. Because even Netanyahu in 2021 negotiated with them. It's unprecedented because the Arab parties have never been that strong. And there was never such a big percentage of the Israeli-Palestinian Arabs that went to vote. So everything is open. Now, there was the largest turnout in 27 years in this election. And that was driven largely by an unprecedented rise in Arab voters, but also by a lot of Israeli emigrants who returned to cast their vote. How do you think this might have influenced the election? One must know that this year was the first year when there was a negative immigration from Israel, meaning more people left than people who came. It's been a process since October 7 So a lot of those people who came back Are not government supporters The most important thing is that In Israel you need 3.25% To have a mandate To have a first mandate And it's automatically four mandates or nothing So the people who came made it more difficult for small parties, especially extreme right small parties, to get in. Thank you very much for that, Tamara Sebok, who's the French correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.