Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led on Tuesday in Israel's third national election in less than a year but was short of a governing majority, nearly complete results showed.Netanyahu claimed victory in Monday's vote over his main challenger, former armed forces chief Benny Gantz of the centrist Blue and White party, after exit polls projected the right-wing leader's Likud party had come out on top.
"We turned lemons into lemonade," he told a cheering crowd at Likud's election headquarters as exit polls were released.
But Gantz stopped short of conceding defeat, saying the election could result in another deadlock and he understood and shared his supporters' "feeling of disappointment and pain".
