Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed a premature victory following a shocking comeback in Israel’s third attempt within a year to elect a leader, even as early counts and exit polls showed he was still short of securing a historic fifth term, Eurasia Diary reports citing The Guardian.

By Tuesday morning, less than half of the results had been recorded but unofficial exit polls gave the prime minister’s Likud party 37 seats, and a total of 59 for his rightwing alliance.

He was just two seats shy of a 61-seat parliamentary majority and would only be able to form a government in the coming weeks by enticing rival politicians to join him.

Regardless, the result was a stunning turnaround for a man two weeks away from the start of a major criminal corruption trial. He is expected to appear in a Jerusalem court on 17 March on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three major cases.

His opponents, retired general Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party, took 33 seats, exit polls showed.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning at a rowdy election party in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu told cheering crowds waving blue flags that his “victory” was sweeter than the first time he became prime minister in 1996 because it was harder.

“We stood in front of strong forces. They told us we are going to lose, that it was the end of the Netanyahu era,” he said. “We turned lemons into lemonade.”