Ryan Chilcote:

It is a bit complicated.

Israel's president now will sit down with the leaders of the nine political parties that look poised to get into Parliament. I say poised because all we have at this point are the exit polls, though they generally are pretty accurate.

And he will ask the leaders of those political parties who they want to be prime minister. He will then go away, have a think, and come back and offer the — extend the opportunity to the leader of one of the political parties to try to form a coalition, to form a government.

I say try, because, of course, that's exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu tried to do back in April, and, for the first time in the history of Israel, failed. Now, the magic number is 61. That's the number of seats that you have to have in your coalition if you're going to form a government.

Neither of the main political — two biggest political parties right now have coalition partners that add up to 61 seats. So there's really several ways to get to 61. But the most — two most talked about are for the two political parties, the Blue and White Party and the Likud Party, to get together and form a national unity government.

If they were to do that, they would have the 61 seats. But then, of course, the question is, who gets to be prime minister? Now, back in 1984, Israel was in this very situation, and the two political parties agreed to rotate the job.

In other words, the leader of one political party gets to be prime minister for a couple years, then the leader of the other political party, the other coalition partner in that unity government.

Now, there is another path forward, which is that the leader of one of the two main parties gets together with the leader of another party called Israel Our Home, and that would give them the 61 seats, though I should point out — his name is Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of that party — that Netanyahu tried to do that with him in the last election.

He pledged his support, pledged his seats in the Parliament to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and at the last minute actually pulled out the rug from underneath Netanyahu. And that is how we got to where we are today, because Netanyahu couldn't form a government.

So anything really is possible in Israeli politics, and it's unlikely to happen very quickly — Judy.