Israel election vote count completed, Netanyahu’s Likud leads

The vote count settling without a clear majority is the key fact here: the arithmetic, not the campaign, now decides the outcome, and neither bloc can govern alone. That shifts leverage to whichever smaller parties can be brought into a coalition, making their demands the real price of a government. For markets watching Israeli political risk, the open question is how long coalition bargaining drags on and whether it produces a stable enough majority to function — a prolonged deadlock would matter more than the identity of the largest party.