Israel election result hands rising star Yair Lapid a pivotal role Yair Lapid celebrates at his party's headquarters in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Edi Israel/Israel Sun/Rex Feat Yair Lapid, the celebrity journalist-turned-politician who shook the Israeli political landscape with an unexpectedly strong showing in Tuesday's election is being intensively courted by parties on both the right and left who are desperate to snare him for their camp. Lapid, whose party came second, winning 19 of 120 parliamentary seats, was the target of competing appeals by Binyamin Netanyahu, who - although weakened - is expected to form another coalition government, and Shelly Yachimovich, who is likely to be leader of the opposition. Lapid's pivotal role followed a poor result for Netanyahu's rightwing alliance, which secured 31 seats, down from a previous total of 42. In a damaging blow to the incumbent prime minister, a sizeable proportion of former Netanyahu supporters are believed to have switched their political allegiance to Lapid, who entered politics only a year ago. Netanyahu is now considering complex options for the next coalition government - the inevitable outcome of Israel's electoral system of proportional representation. He telephoned Lapid shortly after exit polls accurately predicted the result of the election, telling him: "We have the opportunity to do great things together." Any further conversations between the pair took place in private, but one of the main issues for negotiation was thought to be an end to the exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory military service. The mantra of "sharing the burden" was central to Lapid's election campaign. A statement from Netanyahu on Wednesday signalled a shift in his priorities in order to tick the boxes of Lapid's political platform. "The Israeli public wants me to continue leading the country and it wants me to build a coalition that would create three major changes domestically: more equal distribution of the national burden [military service], affordable housing, and change in the system of government," he said. During his first term, Netanyahu focused on security issues, with the Iranian nuclear programme at the top of his list of priorities. Yachimovich, the leader of the Labour party, urged Lapid to join an alternative centre-left camp, which could try to form a coalition government or be a robust opposition to another rightwing-religious government. After congratulating Lapid on his "remarkable achievement," she told reporters: "I urge him not to join a Netanyahu-led government and not take part in the middle-class calamity, which will happen the day after he is sworn in. Should he choose the other way - I'll stand by him and assist. She said she intended to do all in her power to "take advantage of the political possibility opened yesterday to form a coalition of moderate, social, peace advocate and centrist forces without Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister." If this was not possible, she would remain in the opposition. This will be a strong, aggressive and biting opposition and we'll do all we can to prevent Netanyahu from imposing the socially unbearable hell he's planning if he manages to form a government. Support for Lapid accelerated in the final days of the election campaign, during which opinion polls are banned. The final surveys, published last Friday, forecast around 12 seats for Lapid's Yesh Atid party while cautioning that almost one in five voters was undecided. As well as attracting disillusioned former Netanyahu voters, Lapid appears to have capitalised on the wave of anger felt in Israel in the past two years over the high cost of living, especially for young families. Massive "social justice" protests swept the country 18 months ago, culminating in almost half a million people taking to the streets in September 2011. In the winter of 2013 the biggest protest of all was held. There were not half a million people there as there were in the summer of 2011; rather, it was millions of people," wrote Yael Paz-Melamed in Ma'ariv. The silent majority in Israel, the people who work, pay taxes, go to the army, serve in reserve duty, and especially those who chose to live here freely - they got off of the couch, filled the ballot boxes and took back the power they deserve. One of Israel's most respected commentators, Nahum Barnea, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth: "The lesson [of the election] must begin at the protest movement of the summer of 2011. By the time autumn arrived, the tents on the streets had been dismantled, the general sense was that the protest was dead and buried. That wasn't the case. The seeds had been sown. They were waiting for the rain in order to sprout, and the rain came ... The feeling of disgust with the political game rules did not die: it only increased further. It went beyond Facebook posts and influenced not only the younger generation in the big cities but other age groups and other sectors of the society.