Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid has congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu on his election win as final results confirmed the former premier's triumphant comeback at the head of a solidly right-wing alliance.
Mr Netanyahu's victory is set to end an unprecedented stalemate in Israel after five elections in less than four years.
This time around Mr Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of his generation, won a clear parliamentary majority, boosted by ultranationalist and religious parties.
Tuesday's ballot saw out the centrist Mr Lapid, and his rare alliance of conservatives, liberals and Arab politicians which, over 18 months in power, made diplomatic inroads with Turkey and Lebanon and kept the economy humming.
But with the conflict with the Palestinians surging anew and touching off Jewish-Arab tensions within Israel, Mr Netanyahu and his ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox allies captured 64 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, or Knesset.
His opponents in the current coalition, led by Mr Lapid, won 51 seats, with the remainder held by a small unaffiliated Arab party.
Mr Netanyahu still has to be officially tasked by the president with forming a government, a process that could take weeks.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid congratulated Mr Netanyahu and instructed his staff to prepare an organised transition of power, his office said.
"The state of Israel comes before any political consideration," Mr Lapid said.
"I wish Netanyahu success, for the sake of the people of Israel and the state of Israel."
Far right wants control of police, military
In the West Bank, soldiers killed an Islamic Jihad militant and a 45-year-old man in a separate incident, medics said.
Queried on the latter death, the army said it opened fire when Palestinians attacked them with rocks and petrol bombs.
"The time has come to impose order here. The time has come for there to be a landlord," tweeted Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Likud's likely senior partner.
He was responding to a stabbing reported by Jerusalem police.
A West Bank settler and former member of Kach, a Jewish militant group on Israeli and US terrorist watchlists, Mr Ben-Gvir, is a disciple of a racist anti-Arab rabbi.
Mr Ben-Gvir said he wanted to end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the West Bank and until recently hung a photo in his home of Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli who killed 29 Palestinians in a West Bank shooting attack in 1994.
Mr Ben-Gvir, who seeks to deport Arab politicians, said he wants to be put in charge of the national police force.
His party, Religious Zionism, has promised to enact changes to Israeli law that could make Mr Netanyahu's legal woes disappear and, along with other nationalist allies, they want to weaken the independence of the judiciary and concentrate more power in the hands of politicians.
The party's leader, Bezalel Smotrich, a West Bank settler who has made anti-Arab remarks, has his sights set on the Defence Ministry.
That would make him the overseer of the military and Israel's West Bank military occupation.
With coalition-building talks yet to officially begin, it was still unclear what position Mr Ben-Gvir might hold in a future government.
Since the election, both he and Mr Netanyahu have pledged to serve all citizens.
But Mr Ben-Gvir's ascendancy has stirred alarm among the 21 per cent Arab minority and centre-left Jews — and especially among Palestinians whose US-sponsored statehood talks with Israel broke down in 2014.
Anti-occupation party fails to make the cut
The surging power of Israel's right wing came at the expense of its left flank.
The Labor party, once a mainstream fixture of Israeli politics and which supports Palestinian statehood, was teetering just above the electoral threshold.
The anti-occupation Meretz party appeared headed for political exile for the first time since it was founded in the 1990s.
Meretz's leader, Zehava Galon, conceded the party would not be in the next parliament.
"This is a disaster for Meretz, a disaster for the country and yes, a disaster for me," she said.
After the results are formally announced, Israel's ceremonial president taps one candidate, who will be Mr Netanyahu, to form a government.
He will then have four weeks to do so.
Mr Netanyahu is likely to wrap up talks within that time, but Religious Zionism is expected to drive a hard bargain for its support.
The polarising Mr Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, was ousted in 2021 after 12 consecutive years in power by an ideologically diverse coalition that included for the first time in Israel's history a small Arab party.
The coalition collapsed in the spring over infighting.
Mr Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals involving wealthy associates and media moguls.
He denies wrongdoing, seeing his trial as a witch hunt against him orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased judicial system.
Reuters/AP/ABC
