Israel election: Benjamin Netanyahu told ‘maybe time has come to say goodbye’ after hard-right coalition fails to win majority

Israel's two main political parties were deadlocked on Wednesday after an unprecedented repeat election.

Benjamin Netanyahu was fighting to hold on to his job as prime minister after exit polls showed the race was too close to call.

Here is some analysis of the exit polls and the election so far from Bel Trew, our correspondent in Tel Aviv:

Mr Netanyahu's main challenger, centrist Benny Gantz, said it appeared from the exit polls Israel's longest-serving leader was defeated, but only official results would tell.

Mr Gantz, a former armed forces chief, beamed with confidence as he told a rally of his Blue and White Party it appeared "we fulfilled our mission", and he pledged to work towards formation of a unity government.

Mr Netanyahu, he said, apparently "did not succeed in his mission" to win a fifth term. "We will await the actual results," Mr Gantz, 60, said.

Mr Netanyahu's Likud party and Mr Gantz's Blue and White both had 32 seats each of the parliament's 120, with more than 90 per cent of votes counted, Israeli media is reporting.

As the results came in, the election's apparent kingmaker, Avigdor Lieberman, insisted the overall picture was unlikely to change.

He also demanded a secular "liberal" government shorn of the religious and ultra-Orthodox allies the prime minister has long relied upon.

"The conclusion is clear, everything we said throughout the campaign is coming true," he said outside his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim. "There is one and only option: a national unity government that is broad and liberal and we will not join any other option."

Mr Gantz, a former military chief, has ruled out sitting with a Likud party led by Mr Netanyahu at a time when the prime minister is expected to be indicted on corruption charges in the coming weeks. It raised the specter of an alternate Likud candidate rising to challenge Mr Netanyahu, though most of its senior officials have thus far pledged to stand solidly behind their leader.

Mr Liberman is now "the linchpin," wrote Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist in the Yediot Ahronot daily.

"I don't think that anyone is prepared to risk a third election, not even for Netanyahu," Mr Barnea added. "Maybe the time has come to say goodbye."

Many voters who spoke to The Independent in the run-up to the election blamed Mr Netanyahu for failing to form a ruling coalition:

The partial results released on Wednesday by the Central Election Commission were based on a tally of 56 per cent of the potential electorate. Overall turnout was 69.4 per cent.

According to the partial results, Likud with its natural allies of religious and ultra-nationalist parties mustered just 56 seats — or five short of the required majority.

Mr Gantz's Blue and White and its center-left allies garnered 55 seats, placing Mr Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu and its nine seats in the middle as the deciding factor.

Eliran Ben Iolo, 32, a taxi driver in Tel Aviv, said he was voting for the Blue and White party.

He told Bel Trew:

[I] want Gantz to replace Bibi [a nickname for Mr Netanyahu] and also to take care of our brothers in the south, near Gaza, who every 14 minutes have to run into the shelters.

We need to put an end to that, once and for all. To hit them hard, and not deliver them $30m in a suitcase. Whoever throws rockets needs to be hit. To kill them. The Shabak [Shin Bet, Israel's security agency] can do it.

There’s more optimism now. They need to bring down the taxes. Bring down everything, for the rich, the middle class and the poor.

The joint list of Arab parties, who have never sat in an Israeli government, also finished strong according to the partial results, which indicated they had earned 12 seats to become the third-largest party in parliament.

Should a unity government be formed, its leader Ayman Odeh would become the country's next opposition leader, an official state position that would grant him an audience with visiting dignitaries, a state-funded bodyguard, monthly consultations with the prime minister and a platform to rebut his speeches in parliament.