Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday accepted as legally binding the certified results from last week’s parliamentary elections and said he would begin consultations with party representatives on the formation of a new government.
\n\nHerzog’s acceptance of the results as valid dealt a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to discredit the vote in which his religious-nationalist bloc lost its majority in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, while Arab-led parties made historic gains.
\n\nNetanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that the Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, possibly with foreign assistance.
\n\nThe Israeli president is required now to sit down with various party leaders to determine who to name as prime minister-designate — a process that could potentially bring Netanyahu’s opponents to power.
\n\nIsrael’s election commission said earlier on Wednesday that after a thorough investigation of all parties’ claims of fraud it had found “no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results.”
\n\nNetanyahu’s Likud party did not respond to a request for comment.
\n\nA separate investigation by the Shin Bet intelligence service, which is headed by David Zini, a Netanyahu appointee and loyalist, into allegations of foreign interference in…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/