Reflections on the Latest Israeli Elections

 

Israel went to the polls again on September 17, and voted a near identical result to the April elections leading to a better than average chance that no government will be able to be formed. So many of the reviews we have come across have interpreted this completely wrong. Most are claiming that the Israeli democracy is illogical and defective. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who got it correct realized that the problem is that the population is relatively evenly divided. We already covered here the real reason why forming a coalition is so difficult, explaining that because of one group of parties which are outliers backing neither major party forces, any government needs to realize well over the fifty percent plus one usually required in any normative election in a parliamentary government. This is not a detractor of the Israeli parliamentary democracy and the vibrancy of our democracy. The elections were simply a realistic representation of a country divided almost evenly in their view of what the future of Israel should steer towards.

 

 

We agree that part of the problem is fatigue over Bibi Netanyahu leading to some simply supporting anybody who appears to have a better than even chance of replacing him. But the claims that the divide is between right-wing and left-wing is not a completely honest means of defining what is occurring. The first thing which needs to be addressed is what exactly is meant by right-wing and left-wing in Israeli politics. Yes, part of it is over economic outlooks and the separation between preferences for Capitalism against Socialism, but this is actually far from the central dividing issue. The real divides come from two separate but interdependent divides in the Israeli populace. The main divide is between religious and secular with the other main divide being nationalists and Zionists who are opposed by internationalists and those still holding onto the idea of a Palestinian Arab state and the two-state-solution. Then we have the political allies often referred to as the Joint Arab List which also includes Communists, Arab nationalists, secularism, Pan-Arabism, Eco-socialists, Islamists and other traditional left-wing causes. The mandates garnered by this list traditionally have not supported any candidate for Prime Minister or named one of the leaders from the group of parties making up this faction. This, more than anything else, is the exact reason that there has been no definitive result. This is also one of the most obvious reasons that the Israeli democracy is functioning in a representative fashion and is providing the exact result that represents her people, a deeply divided people.

 

There is the possibility that the Blue White Party and Likud could form a unity government completely free of requiring the support of any other party. This is the main reason why Avigdor Lieberman’s claim that he would join a unity government and be commanding one of the principle centers of power. He has claimed that without him there could not be a unity government. Apparently Avigdor Lieberman is incapable of doing simple mathematics such as adding together thirty-three and thirty-one and realizing that is more than sixty-one. Since those are the results for Blue-White and Likud, it should be obvious that those two together could form a government. So, what is the hang up preventing such, is it political, personal or simply ego?

 

Part of the reason is political as should Bibi actually agree to such an arrangement, the Likud Party would bleed voters in significant numbers to vote for parties which are either more religious, nationalist or Zionist than the Likud such as the parties which made up Yamina; Jewish Home, National Union–Tkuma and New Right. Such a change could prove to be seismic should Bibi ally with Gantz. This would represent a similar situation as when Ariel Sharon bolted Likud forming Kadima in order to allow him to agree to President Bush’s and Condoleezza Rice’s plan for the Gaza withdrawal. This caused a split in the Likud Party which Bibi has been able to reverse over the last two elections. Furthermore, Blue White leader, ‎Benny Gantz‎, has already declared that he would only agree to a unity government only if he was made Prime Minister as his party received the most mandates. This would be ignoring that the so-called right-wing parties received more mandates than the left-wing parties. Further, there is no way Bibi will join any coalition which he does not lead. Once more, egos are getting in the way of any feasible solution.

 

President Rivlin, who has the undesirable task of deciding who will be given the first opportunity to form a coalition, has intimated that he would fall just short of knocking heads together to force a government being formed and avoiding yet a third election in under one year. He is facing the problem that the right-wing parties are unable to form a government without Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu Party. The problem is if Bibi were to agree to Lieberman’s demands, he would lose the Haredi Parties and still be unable to form a coalition. Were Gantz given the nod, the only way he could form a coalition would be if the Joint Arab List were to agree to sit in with him. The problem is that Avigdor Lieberman has expressly stated he would not sit in a coalition with the Arab parties which would again prevent a coalition. Were Lieberman to change his mind and agree to sit in a government with the Arab parties, his Yisrael Beiteinu Party would splinter as it has a large number of nationalists who would not take well to joining a government with the Arab parties included. This would lead to either the end of Yisrael Beiteinu or their replacing Avigdor Lieberman as their leader. Either choice would be political suicide for Lieberman who is too crafty a politician to make such a blunder. So, without hammering Bibi and Benny into submission, it appears that there is not much that President Rivlin can do to force a government.

 

So, the vibrant Israeli democracy will very probably be heading for new elections once again. This will again be a reason to claim that the Israeli democracy has failed and could be considered dead. The reality is that the Israeli democracy is working exactly as it should and is representing the fractured Israeli populace quite accurately. Just because a ruling coalition appears to be escaping reality and becoming near an impossibility is no reason to claim that the democracy has failed, perhaps it is just very accurate in representing and displaying the point at which we find Israel today. If anything is broken, it is not our democracy or any of the other claims which you may have read elsewhere. What is actually broken are the complaints that democracy has failed Israel. Perhaps it is simply jealousy over the fact that the Israelis are being served well by their democracy as it represents the splits between the numerous factions which make up the various parties. One last note, nobody we have had conversations with has complained that their lives are being impacted by not having an actual government and are instead being ruled by a Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and a number of Likud Ministers who are in the cabinet plus Rafi Peretz from Jewish Home as Education Minister and Bezalel Smotrich from National Union–Tkuma as Transportation Minister, who are making any choices and will protect Israel should she be attacked. It may even be this combination making the decisions over any response to an attack upon Israel which will prevent such an eventuality from coming to fruition. Maybe not having a ruling coalition and a normal government by the world’s standards will prove to be the best thing which could happen to Israel in these turbulent times.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Election Day is Almost Here

 

Well, we are going to try and elect a government one more time tomorrow. We attempted to do so back in April but that became a bad joke as nobody could reach the magic number of sixty-one mandates. There is a better than even chance that we will simply have a repeat performance by an evenly divided country. Now, we know the question on so many minds, how can there be an election without one side reaching a majority. The answer is easy to understand once one realizes that a large segment of the populace refuses to join with either the left or right, the Arab sector parties. When Ra’am–Balad and Hadash–Ta’al, both a combination of far-left party and an Arab party plus another Arab party with a Communist party, take on average around ten to a twelve mandates, this means the major parties need to gather sixty-one or more mandates out of merely one-hundred-eight to one-hundred-ten available mandates. This means that instead of being required to form a government with fifty-percent of the vote plus one mandate, to form a government they require between fifty-five-percent to fifty-seven-percent plus one to form a government, a far more difficult task. These outlier parties have as part of their platforms anti-Zionism, support for two-state-solution, socialism/communism and a general disregard, if not outright hatred, of the right and simple disdain for the left and support for Israeli Arabs plus the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority and those in Gaza. Israelis will await the results as it is unsure which side, right-wing or left-wing, will be able of forming a coalition. So, what should the world expect come Wednesday morning and the results are finalized?

 

 

We can all expect another close election with the balance being determined by which side gets their supporters to the polls to vote. Initial indications from those permitted to take advantage of early voting have presented a disturbing realization, they are voting at a rate measurably below their percentage in April. Should this hold valid for the turnout for the elections tomorrow, it means that whichever side loses the least in turnout will likely come out as the leader. But just because one side receives a larger percentage of the vote does not mean that they will realize sufficient support to form a government. Things have gotten to the point of absurd as Bibi Netanyahu came out making a similar announcement so as not to be outdone by the Blue White Party, where Ganz stated he would accept Arab parties in his coalition if needed to form a government and that negotiations were proceeding in that direction; Bibi stated he would not refuse to work with Arab Ministers who might join his coalition. The reality is almost every Arab Minister from the Arab parties would never join a Bibi led coalition, but Ganz could be a wholly different and definitive possibility. Even should either side make a coalition with Arab Party Ministers, such a coalition would be excessively shaky and unlikely to be sufficiently stable to survive even one year.

 

So, what has accurately changed since April? One thing is that Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, has entered into a vote sharing where should one part be close to attaining an additional seat, the other party can gift them any votes which would not cost their party a position. This is performed in order to attempt and provide one of the parties, and thus their combined number of mandates, an additional position. Lieberman had been seen as potentially leading his party along with the rest of the right-wing parties and this places Yisrael Beiteinu definitely allied with the left-wing and has removed any doubt as to their current loyalty. This is a definite change from history and was suspected when Lieberman refused to join any government led by Netanyahu, thus moving to the left of center. This could result in their receiving fewer votes and thus mandates with some of their more conservative members leaving and joining Likud or possibly even Yamina combined right party. This will be another of the variables which will be beyond the polls and prognosticators ability to accurately predict. Then there is the other difficulty which drives and makes Israeli elections different and more variable than other parliamentary governments, the fact that there are numerous, what are best described as, personality parties where they are centered around a person whose positions are often either narrow or even contradictory such as being largely a right-wing party as well as marijuana legalization, which often fail to reach the threshold in order to receive ministers in the government and thus their votes go wasted. This often leads to what becomes lost positions and mandates for either side depending on how many of such parties or alliances of such parties fail to make it into the government. On the other hand, should the majority of such parties on either side actually make it into the government, then that side will have a stronger position in forming a government.

 

So, what have the polls been claiming? Here we must be honest; we have tended to disregard Israeli polling as it is often well off the mark. If President Trump is to be believed, then Prime Minister Netanyahu will waltz to victory with ease, another thing we doubt as nothing in Israeli politics is easy. What people have mentioned in conversations about the elections is that there are polls claiming the right will form the next government and claiming the left will form the next government. There you have it, polls made to order, and that is the unfortunate reality about Israeli polling. Israel has the same dividing political criteria as in the United States. The big cities, starting with Tel Aviv, vote largely for the left-wing while the religious, Zionist and smaller cities tend to vote more right-wing. Similarly to the United States, the population is relatively evenly split with one exception, right-wing voters in Israel are often the ones more determined to make it out and vote. This may prove to be the defining difference when the dust settles and Israel will once more set out to form a government. The bigger question is which person, Bibi or Ganz and company, does the Israeli populace trust to lead the country sustaining the economy and keeping the nation safer. This is where the left very well could hit their largest problem, they are too defined by the memory of the Oslo Accords and the well over a thousand Israelis murdered in the following flood of terrorist attacks. Netanyahu has allowed for terrorism to be greatly decreased with the terror wall, technological miracles such as Iron Dome, and other mitigating factors. Netanyahu has also had the advantage of a strong economic picture. But he does have one looming fault which he has attempted to cajole and coax a picture of his turning over a new leaf and suddenly has reached a point where he claims he will extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, all of the Israeli towns beyond the Green Line and numerous other offerings to the Zionists and stronger right-wing voters. Part of this rhetoric has been his weapon attempting to drive voters from the further right Yamina into the fold of Likud. Netanyahu has gone what some may see as overboard with claims that Yamina will not pass threshold and thus voting for them is wasting your vote and only the Likud is the safe vote. This has been the main difficulty with Bibi as he desires having a coalition made up of Likud without any other parties. By attempting to reach such, he often attacks the other right-wing parties which in the end makes forming a right-wing government that much more difficult as he could cost some of the smaller parties to fail to reach threshold thanks to his attacks. His attack on Yamina would be completely unfounded as it is a coalition of parties which Bibi pushed and pressured Jewish Home, National Union and The New Right to combine so they would easily pass threshold and now he is attacking them for not being able to make threshold. Netanyahu has also been seen to be attacking largely Zionist parties such as Yamina which makes his promises for extending sovereignty all the less believable. Only a strong showing by Yamina would be capable of holding Netanyahu to his word while others would allow him to forget these promises seeing them simply as politicking for these elections.

 

Then there is always the question as to who other than Bibi can lead Israel from the right. That is a question which will have to be seen after the era of Netanyahu as the Likud is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. But this will change over time and within the next thirty years, and conceivably less, the leading party will likely be a coalition of religious-Zionist parties which will have taken control of Israeli politics. This prediction is based on simple mathematics. The religious sector in Israel, as in the United States and Europe, are reproducing at a far higher rate than the left-leaning populace. This population will be split between the Haredi Parties and the religious-Zionist parties and somewhat less for Likud. There will be, for some time, the ability for Likud to continue to lead as long as they can find some means of retaining the support of the Haredi Parties. Eventually, their allegiance will be swayed to support of the religious-Zionist groupings as they take the lead ahead of the Likud. But all of this will take a few decades and, in the meantime, Israel is a very divided nation with a fine enough balance that we might not form a government with these elections either making new elections in another three months necessary.

 

So, what happens if we have another election which does not produce a government? Well, as we have mentioned to friends and observed, Israel is doing just fine without any functioning elected government and the main difference is there is less news. We have always felt that less news is good and no news is great despite it making blogging more difficult. Eventually Israeli populous will figure out what is what and a government will be voted into power and then we will have more news than we probably desire. We have often found the old Ronald Reagan quote of, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Perhaps this is partly why we have no problem having Israel continue without a government. Further, as long as we do not have a government, we will not have Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” something we have had a great deal of trepidation concerning what it may present. We are aware that the State Department likely had a fair amount of influence, and that is one area of the United States government which has proven to be very much anti-Israel and definitively anti-Zionist. Their influence is the central figure in our consternation. Perhaps Israel being unable to form a government is Hashem’s way of protecting her from potential disasters where Israel is once again forced to make concessions without a single guarantee that such concessions will bring us any peace. The greatest three concessions Israel has made have been some of the most destructive and now constitute the greatest threats to Israel’s future. The first was the Oslo Accords which brought us the two-state-solution paradigm which promises to produce even more terror wars were it ever to be fulfilled, the pulling of the IDF out of Lebanon without any promise for safety on the northern border leading to Hezballah on the northern border representing the Iranian desires and whims and finally the Gaza withdrawal which produced Hamas and Islamic Jihad who both are also enforcers of the will of Iran. We have our doubts that Israel could survive too many more peace plans as each brings us a new disaster and the renewed threat of devastating wars in the future. The only secure resolution of the Arab threats to Israel is the world finally actually fulfilling the promises we were given and are still the only solution which meets with International Laws, treaties, conferences, Mandates and all enforceable by the United Nations. We are not fools and realize that much of the world desires an end to the state of Israel even if it costs, or especially if it costs, the lives of seven-million Jews. Perhaps the reality is Israel is safest and best off as long as she does not have a government upon which such future demands would be pressed. Yes, perhaps no government is the best government, something Thomas Jefferson would have understood and likely supported.

 

Beyond the Cusp