5:12 p.m. ET, March 2, 2020
"The wound is painful": Parties outside Netanyahu "bloc" reflect on exit polls
From CNN's Andrew Carey in Jerusalem
Senior Blue & White member Ofer Shelah admitted the exit poll projections were disappointing. “The wound is painful. We need to do the utmost to prevent a Netanyahu government,” he said on Israeli TV.
Retired General Yair Golan, of the center-left Labour-Gesher-Meretz alliance, also admitted the exit poll projections looked poor. “We need to rebuild the left-wing camp,” he said on Israeli TV.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Joint List of Arab parties, Ayman Odeh, hailed his party’s own success and slammed Blue & White. He called the projected result for the Joint List “the greatest parliamentary achievement [for Arab parties] since the first Knesset. The problem is Blue and White’s racist approach in seeking a Jewish majority. We succeeded. [Blue and White] failed.”
And Avigdor Liberman -- who has sought to carve out a kingmaker role since the first election in April -- struck a defiant tone. “The thing to do is to wait for the true results before we reach conclusions. We won’t budge an inch from what we promised,” he said.
Avigdor Liberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, during a press conference.
AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov