The Likud, the formation led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has added an additional seat and reaches 27 representatives after the partial count of the ballots cast using the double envelope system, the mechanism used mainly by military personnel, reservists and diplomats, in addition to some public employees and sick people who vote in advance.
These ballots, more than 430,000 in this electoral contest, are counted once the rest of the votes have been tallied, and, on occasion, they modify the final distribution of seats in the Israeli Knesset. Although this provisional count gives one more deputy to Netanyahu's party, the balance between blocs remains the same, since the seat comes from Shas, the party of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardim integrated into his same bloc.
Thus, the bloc headed by the Likud maintains 53 seats, while the alliance of parties led by the former Chief of the General Staff of Israel, Gadi Eisenkot, remains at 48. Both coalitions continue to be far from the absolute majority of 61 seats, so the role of the Arab formations Joint List and Raam will be decisive, with a total of 19 deputies, an unprecedented figure in the democratic history of Israel.
Hours earlier, the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, leader of the governing Likud, had highlighted that the result of the double envelope represents support for the security line promoted by Netanyahu and by himself.
"The results of the vote count of the regular and reserve soldiers in the double envelopes represent for me a great test of confidence and support for the security policy," he said, valuing the support received from "those who truly carry on their shoulders the security of Israel with courage, sacrifice and exceptional dedication".
According to Katz, these voters are the ones who "know up close the powerful activity" of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon and "also in Judea and Samaria", the designation he uses to refer to the West Bank.
"They know what we did in Iran and also in Yemen, and they understand very well the great change we are leading in the concept of security toward initiative, attack and resolution," he stated.
The double envelope system works as follows: the citizen's ballot is first placed in an envelope without identification and this, in turn, is placed inside another envelope that contains the voter's data. In this way, the electoral authorities can verify that the person has not voted at another polling station, while preserving the secrecy of the vote.