A near-final tally of votes on Thursday showed former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on track to a re-election with a clear parliamentary majority.

The right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu, the head of the Likud Party which consists of the Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, and Religious Zionism parties, obtained 65 of the Knesset's 120 seats, according to a vote count due to conclude on Thursday.

"The time has come to impose order here. The time has come for there to be a landlord," tweeted Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Religious Zionism Party, Likud's likely senior partner in the next government.

Ben-Gvir was responding to the latest violence, in which police said a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli officer in Jerusalem's Old City and was shot dead. Earlier, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian during a confrontation in the occupied West Bank.

On Wednesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye warned that the results of the Israeli parliamentary elections would not produce a peace partner with the Palestinians.

In a statement from the prime minister's office, Ishtaye said that the rise of extremist religious right-wing parties in the Israeli elections "is a natural result of the growing manifestations of extremism and racism in Israeli society, from which the Palestinian people have been suffering for years."

(With input from Reuters and Xinhua)