Blue and White leader Benny Gantz: In a democracy, the will of the voters must be honored. Meanwhile, the Knesset management is taking steps to ensure that coronavirus will not pose a threat to parliamentary work in the 23rd Knesset.
The votes are all counted, and the right-wing bloc has won a total of 58 seats, compared to 40 for the left-wing bloc, without the Joint Arab List, the Central Elections Committee reported Thursday night.
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The Joint Arab List is the third-biggest party in the 23rd Knesset, with a record 15 seats, while Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party remains at seven. Labor-Gesher-Meretz also won a total of seven seats, as did the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism.
Yamina, under Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, won only six seats. The Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas wound up with nine seats.
Earlier Thursday, the Likud Party asked the Central Elections Committee to postpone announcing the final tally, claiming irregularities, but the announcement went out as scheduled.
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz sent out a Twitter message when the results were announced: "In a democratic state, the election results and the will of the voters must be honored, no less than the work of the national committee, which is responsible for [counting] them."
On Thursday afternoon, Knesset Director-General Albert Sakharovich met with a team of Knesset experts to discuss how Health Ministry instructions on coronavirus will affect as the swearing-in ceremony for the 23rd Knesset, which is scheduled for March 16, as well as the ongoing work of the legislature.
Sakharovich noted that "The goal is clear - to take all possible steps to reduce any threat to the Knesset's core parliamentary work. Therefore, the room to maneuver is simple … anything that endangers the process of the core parliamentary work and is not considered vital to its success will be prohibited."
The team made the following decisions about the swearing-in ceremony:
- The ceremony will, for the first time, take place without an audience, with the exception of MKs' spouses and partners of state leaders.
- Parliamentary advisors and advisors to ministers will have limited access.
- MKs will be contacted and asked to reconsider bringing the one family member they are allowed.
- Entrance to the Knesset plenum will be by invitation only.
- The celebration for MKs and their family members has been canceled.
- The protocol for the traditional toast in the Chagall Auditorium has been modified, and the hundreds of invitees slated to participate will not be attending. In addition, speeches and singing have been canceled.
