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IsraelAM News Summary

Election Results

After meeting with all of the parties who won seats in the election, President Rivlin will make a decision on Wednesday as to whom he will give the chance to form a new government.

It seemed as though Blue and White would have more votes than Likud and get the chance to form the government, assuming that the Joint Arab list would support them, as they had indicated. But at their meeting with the President, the Arab list could only provide 10 votes, since one of its parties, Ba’lad – with 3 seats, refused to support Blue and White. That left Blue and White with only 54 votes (BW – 33, Arabs 10, Labor 6, Meretz 5).

On the other side, Yamina (7), Shas (9) and UTJ (7) all pledged to support Netanyahu (Likud – 31), giving him a total of 55 seats.

Rivlin has called Likud and Blue and White to a meeting tonight to urge them to form a unity government. But with his lead in the vote count, it looks like PM Netanyahu has managed to stay in power once again, one way or another, at least for the time being. Unless they agree to form a unity government, it looks like Lieberman and Yisrael Beytenu’s 8 votes hold the keys to the kingdom. Gantz is meeting with Lieberman before his meeting with the President.

Gymnastics Medals
Israeli rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram won a bronze medal in the all-around world championships and qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The bronze medal awarded on Friday in Baku, Azerbaijan was her sixth medal of the competition.

Ashram, 20 and a resident of Tel Aviv, also earned three silver medals in competition with hoop, clubs and ribbon and a bronze medal with a ball. She was part of the team competition in which team Israel won a silver medal behind Russia.

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Amazon Launches
Amazon launched its local delivery service in Israel yesterday. For the time being its Israel website is only in English but a Hebrew website should be available in the coming few weeks. Product prices on the new Israel site are in shekels and the website includes a feature enabling consumers to filter out products from abroad. Local delivery should mean that products are cheaper and shipped more quickly.

Amazon’s Israel operations have been launched after 30 months of preparations coordinated by representatives from Amazon’s Berlin office. Israel operations are headed by Rolf Kimmeyer.

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