Word: beitenu
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...reverse order, the leaders of Israel's top three political parties appeared on television the night of the Feb. 10 elections and declared victory. This was clever, since none of them had really won. Avigdor Lieberman, whose extreme anti-Arab Yisrael Beitenu party finished third, went on first. His party had surged in the final weeks and would now, he boasted, be "the key" to forming a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party finished second, appeared next. He had won, he said, because Likud was the leading right-wing party and conservatives...
...Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister, insists that he should be Israel's next Premier, not Livni. He may be right. Political analysts say the Likud leader stands a far better chance of stitching together a right-wing coalition with small religious groups and Yisrael Beitenu, a nationalist, anti-Arab party that was the surprise in this election. At the last poll, in 2006, Yisrael Beitenu won just 11 seats. Yesterday it won 15, knocking the venerable Labor Party, which picked up 13 seats, into fourth place...
...With Kadima and Likud both far short of a majority in the Knesset, Yisrael Beitenu's controversial leader, Avigdor Lieberman, has emerged as a key power broker. Speaking to his party supporters at midnight as votes were being tallied, Lieberman indicated that his natural inclination is to side with Netanyahu. "We want a right-wing government," he said flatly. Lieberman also took a swing at the outgoing Kadima-led government for entering into Egyptian-brokered cease-fire talks with Gaza's Islamic militants, Hamas. "We will not have direct or indirect negotiations with Hamas nor a cease-fire," he said...
...Yisrael Beitenu has risen swiftly since Lieberman created it in 1999 as a breakaway from the right-wing Likud Party, which he thought was making too many concessions to Palestinians. In the 2003 elections, the party took seven seats, with backing mainly in Israel's large Russian-speaking immigrant community. By the 2006 elections, he had broadened its base, winning 11 seats. Now, according to polls, he could gather up to 20 seats, bumping Labor, one of Israel's classic founding parties, into fourth place. Netanyahu's Likud Party is expected to win 25 to 27 seats, and Livni...
...could only manage a distant fourth place with only 12 Knesset seats, according to the exit polls. And while Livni's strength was a function of Labor voters moving to the right to back Kadima, Netanyahu lost support not to the center, but to the far-right nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman, whose third-place finish with 16 seats, according to exit polls, made it the story of the election. The surge in support for his hostile views to Israeli Arabs and for even more hawkish policies towards the Palestinians has made Lieberman the kingmaker, and conventional wisdom...