Likud rises one seat with the recount of the votes of military and reservists

The Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, has risen one seat, to 27, in the midst of counting the votes cast through the double envelope system, the way in which mainly military personnel, reservists and diplomats participate, but also some public workers or the sick, to vote early.

These votes, more than 430,000 in these elections, are counted once the rest of the votes have been counted and sometimes cause the final seats in Israel’s Knesset to change. Although the partial results give one more seat to Netanyahu’s party, the situation between the blocs does not change since it is subtracted from Shas, a representative of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardim who is part of their own ranks.

In this way, the bloc led by the Likud continues with 53 seats, while the coalition of parties headed by the former chief of the Israeli General Staff, Gadi Eisenkot, remains with 48. Both blocs are however far from the majority of 61 seats, so the role of the Arab formations Joint List and Raam will be key, whose seats total 19, a record number in Israeli democracy.

Hours earlier, the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, of the ruling Likud, celebrated that the double envelope result represents a boost to the security policy led by Netanyahu and himself.

“The results of the vote count of the regular and reserve soldiers in the double envelopes represent for me a great proof of confidence and support for the security policy,” he said, valuing the support received from “those who truly carry the security of Israel on their shoulders with courage, sacrifice and exceptional dedication.”

Thus he said that these voters are those who “know closely the powerful activity” of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon and “also in Judea and Samaria”, as he refers to the West Bank.

“They know what we did in Iran and also in Yemen, and they understand very well the great change that we led in the concept of security towards initiative, attack and resolution,” he stated.

The double envelope consists of a system by which the voter’s ballot is kept in an anonymous envelope that is then inserted into another envelope that identifies the voter, in this way the electoral authorities verify that the person has not voted at another center.