Final Knesset tally bumps female MKs up to 29

Newcomers include Oren Hazan, Nava Boker and Jackie Levy; Sole Ethiopian- Israeli MK will be Abraham Naguise.

By BEN HARTMAN
Knesset seats graph (photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
Knesset seats graph
(photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
The new Knesset will have more female MKs than any that came before it, as 29 women will vote in the new parliament, two more than in the 19th Knesset. There will also be 38 first-time MKs sworn in, from a wide variety of parties.
The new parliamentarians include Attorney Revital Swid (Zionist Union), known for a number of famous clients, including the Abutbul crime family, as well as Nava Boker (Likud), whose husband was killed in the 2010 Carmel Forest Fire. Jackie Levy (Likud) will also enter the Knesset, joining his sister Orly Levy-Abecassis, who won another term with Yisrael Beytenu.
Another newcomer is Rachel Azaria – from the alsonew Kulanu – who previously served as a Jerusalem councilwoman since 2008 with the Yerushalmim faction.
The Likud is also home to first-time MK Oren Hazan, at final spot No. 30. He is the son of Yehiel Hazan, famous for his role in the “double voting scandal” during which he denied stealing “the brain” from a digital voting machine.
There will be only one Ethiopian-Israeli in the 20th Knesset – the Likud’s Abraham Naguise.
The number of Arab MKs jumped from 12 to 16 – 13 from the Joint (Arab) List and one each from Likud, the Zionist Union and Yisrael Beytenu. The number of MKs who have immigrated from English-speaking countries remained steady at two, with Kulanu’s Michael Oren replacing Yesh Atid’s Dov Lipman and United Torah Judaism’s Ya’acov Litzman remaining.
The makeup of the 20th Knesset was finalized Thursday after some 200,000 ballots from IDF soldiers and absentee voters were counted overnight Wednesday. The votes helped Likud rise from 29 to 30 seats and Meretz from four to five – with the Joint (Arab) List and United Torah Judaism each dropping one.
The final tally had Likud at 30 seats, Zionist Union with 24, the Joint List 13, Yesh Atid 11, Kulanu 10, Bayit Yehudi 8, Shas 7, Yisrael Beytenu 6, UTJ 6 and Meretz 5.
The electoral threshold rose to 136,808 votes this election, with 33,482 votes equal to one mandate. There was a 72.3% turnout, with 4,253,336 out of 5,878,362 eligible voters turning up at the polls, a boost from 2013’s turnout of 67.7%.