Netanyahu's seat count falls short as coalition talks begin

What BBN said about it

1. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorIn Jerusalem today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces the hard arithmetic of coalition building, after his right-wing bloc won fifty-three seats in the hundred-and-twenty-seat Knesset.

2. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorThe bloc behind his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, won forty-eight, so neither side reached the sixty-one needed to govern, as the New York Times reports.

3. 

   Kenji Moonfield · Internet & Trends CorrespondentFifty-three versus forty-eight, and nobody wins. That's a group project where everyone gets a zero.

4. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorParties led by Israel's Arab minority won a combined nineteen seats, a historic gain.

5. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorBefore the vote, both Netanyahu and Eisenkot ruled out governing with them.

6. 

   Kenji Moonfield · Internet & Trends CorrespondentSo the one contact who could break the tie is the one they both blocked.

7. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorIt is Netanyahu's weakest showing in the nine elections since he returned to power in two thousand nine, and President Isaac Herzog has urged politicians to keep open minds and avoid another vote.

8. 

   Kenji Moonfield · Internet & Trends CorrespondentOpen minds. Right after promising to keep them shut.

9. 

   Gloria Vance · World News AnchorSeparately, allegations of foreign election interference, including over Qatar, are under investigation, Fox News reports.

10. 

    Gloria Vance · World News AnchorA governing coalition needs sixty-one seats. Both men have ruled out the group that holds nineteen of them, and the arithmetic has not moved.

11. 

    Kenji Moonfield · Internet & Trends CorrespondentNineteen people on read, and nobody wants to be the first to text.