Israel's Netanyahu expresses gratitude to citizens following reelection

Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he's "exhilarated" to be elected for another term in office, following results crowning him the winner of Tuesday's elections.

Netanyahu visited the Jewish site of the Western Wall here on Wednesday, after 99.7 percent of the votes showed the Likud party gained a five-seat lead (out of 120) in the next parliament on the center-left Zionist Union list, which received 24 seats.

"Here, in this place, I'm astounded by the historic significance and I'm excited by the weight of the responsibility the people of Israel have placed on my shoulders," Netanyahu told reporters.

"I appreciate the decision of the citizens of Israel to elect me and my peers against all odds," Netanyahu added, referring to what he recently said was an organized campaign by the left wing and the media, supposedly organized by foreign bodies, to replace his rule.

The dramatic results contradicted the three exit polls published by Israeli media outlets Tuesday evening, with Channel 1 and 10 giving both parties 27 seats, and another conducted by the Channel 2 showed the Likud having a slight margin over the Zionist Union with 28-27.

Results also contradicted polls from last week, which predicted the Zionist Camp would gain a four-seat lead on the Likud.

Those polls sent Netanyahu on a media blitz urging right-wingers to vote for the Likud and triggered the incumbent prime minister to make hardline statements.

Netanyahu urged his voters to vote on Election Day by charging that "droves of Arabs" are heading to the polls to vote for the left wing. He had also stated recently that, if reelected, there would not be a Palestinian state.

In total, the right wing and ultra-orthodox parties easily form a 57-member coalition, compared to the 53-member center left.

The kingmaker is Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud member who won 10 seats, and had already implied on Wednesday that gaps were not big between him and Netanyahu, paving his way to the new government.

Netanyahu's success had mostly to do with his ability to pull votes from his smaller right-wing parties, namely the Jewish Home, which got 8 seats (four less than the previous elections), as well as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beytenu, which got six seats in the elections (compared to the 11 seats it got in 2013 when it ran in a joint list with Netanyahu's Likud party).

On Tuesday night, when results were less than clear, Netanyahu had already announced his victory "against all odds" and said he would work quickly to establish a nationalist right-wing government.

Head of the center-left Zionist Union Isaac Herzog admitted his defeat on Wednesday morning and called to congratulate Netanyahu for his victory, after exhibiting cautious optimism at the exit polls' results Tuesday night.

Though he did not say whether the party would automatically go to serve in the opposition or bargain for a seat in the coalition, members of his party wrote on their Facebook accounts that the list would serve its voters from the parliament's opposition bloc. Endit