Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas will work with any Israeli government that accepts the principle of a two-state solution, his spokesman said after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a shock reelection victory.

"It doesn't matter to us who the next prime minister of Israel is, what we expect from this government is to recognize the two-state solution," Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement.

Western governments gave a muted reaction Wednesday to the re-election of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid fears that his increasingly hardline stance has fatally undermined the Middle East peace process.

The EU congratulated Netanyahu on his victory, but said it was committed to relaunching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians that he rejected in the last days of the campaign.

The Arab League chief dismissed Wednesday as electioneering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vow to rule out a Palestinian state if reelected, saying there would be global pressure for a peace deal.

Netanyahu, whose Likud party won 30 seats in the 120-member parliament in Tuesday's vote, had pledged to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and block creation of a Palestinian state if reelected.

Some love him, others loathe him but there is one thing they all agree on: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who won a shock victory in Tuesday's election, is a master of political brinkmanship.

Ahead of the vote, which was widely seen as a referendum on his six-year tenure as prime minister, the polls showed his rightwing Likud trailing the center-left Zionist Union by up to four seats.

Benjamin Netanyahu swept to a stunning election victory on Wednesday, securing a third straight term for an Israeli leader who has deepened tensions with the Palestinians and infuriated key ally Washington.

After a closely-fought campaign, Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party confounded the polls to win 30 of the 120 seats in parliament against 24 for the centre-left Zionist Union. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu beat the odds on Wednesday to win a resounding election victory that will likely deepen tensions with the Palestinians and the West.

With nearly all of the votes counted, his rightwing Likud party was seen taking 30 of the Knesset's 120 seats, with the center-left Zionist Union a distant second on 24. 

Figures published by public Channel 1 and private Channel 10 television both gave Netanyahu's Likud and Isaac Herzog's Zionist Union 27 seats each in the 120-member parliament.

A third poll by private Channel 2 gave Likud a one-seat lead on the Zionist Union, with the ruling party taking 28 seats in the Knesset. 

Arab Israelis formed long lines outside polling stations Tuesday as they turned out to cast their ballots hoping to end the six-year reign of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"This is the first time that I've seen so many people here to vote," said Ehab Hamam, 37, as he waited with some 50 people at a polling station in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city. 

EU foreign ministers named Fernando Gentilini on Monday as new special representative for the Middle East, filling a post vacant since early 2014 in the hope of getting the stalled peace process back on track, officials said.

Gentilini -- an Italian, as is EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini -- currently heads the EU's Western Balkans and Turkey division and his appointment will have to be confirmed by member states.

French experts have ruled out that the 2004 death of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was the result of poisoning, a prosecutor told Agence France-Presse Monday.

The prosecutor of the western Paris suburb of Nanterre said the experts found there was no foul play in Arafat's death, which sparked immediate and enduring conspiracy rumors.