National elections were held in Israel on March 23 to elect the 120 members of the Knesset, Israel’s unicameral parliament. Due to Israel’s proportional representation party list electoral system, there are no constituency seats and parties are simply allocated seats based on their percentage of the total nationwide vote.
This dysfunctional system has resulted in no party ever coming close to winning a majority of seats, and all governments have been coalitions since the founding of the state in 1948. This was the fourth election in two years, as election after election failed to break the country’s political deadlock.
With 13 parties winning mandates, as they are called, to the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud came first – but with just 30 seats, less than half needed for a majority of 61. While his is a long-established party, in recent years a bewildering number of other groups have emerged, gained popularity, and disappeared soon afterwards.
In fact the once mighty Labour Party, which governed the Jewish state for its first decades, won a mere seven seats, good for sixth place.
In order to dethrone Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, his opponents have created an eight-headed monster, a puzzling grouping ranging from the left to the far right, including an Arab party. They are united on little, other than taking power. Some are themselves former former protégés of Netanyahu’s Likud-led governments.
Coming second was Yesh Atid, a centrist party founded in 2012 by former journalist Yair Lapid. He created Yesh Atid as a “fusionist third-way” party between Israel’s traditional left and right.
Despite that, this self-described “change government” will be led until 2023 by Naftali Bennett, though his party, Yamina, won just seven seats. A far-right ideologue and former Netanyahu ally, he opposes a Palestinian state.
Bennett and centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid agreed to a rotation scheme, with Bennett becoming prime minister for the first two years, followed by Lapid. The latter will serve as foreign minister until the two swap roles.
Odd as this may seem, it is not without precedent. An indecisive election held in 1984, in which the Labour Party-led Alignment and the Likud won 44 and 41 seats, respectively, led to a national unity government.
Labour’s Shimon Peres held the post of prime Minister until September 1986, when Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir took over.
Also part of the alliance is the left-wing Meretz, led by Nitzan Horowitz, which holds six mandates; Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist Israel Beiteinu, with seven seats; Benny Gantz’s liberal Kahol Lavan with eight; and the new centre-right Tikva Hadasha, created last year by Gideon Sa’ar, with six.
Completely unprecedented, though, is the formal inclusion of an Arab party in a governing coalition – all the more so because the United Arab List, known as Ra’am, is an avowedly Islamist organization.
It is the political wing of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, considered more moderate than the Northern Branch, which was banned by the Israeli government in November 2015 due to close ties with Hamas and the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood.
Ra’am won four seats in this election. On June 2, after holding negotiations with Lapid and Bennett, its leader, Mansour Abbas, decided to back a non-Netanyahu government. He has reportedly secured major policy victories for Israel’s Arab sector in return.
The political struggles in Israel have reached this state because the actors are focused not on issues but on personal, sectorial, factional, and party-based considerations. The Israeli right and left are equally to blame for this process.
Opportunism reigns and national interests have been relegated to the margins of political discourse, at a time when Israel is under increased pressure from Iran and its proxies.
Is this a first step towards a bi-national state, where politics becomes sectarian? It becomes an even more pressing matter following last month’s violence between Arabs and Jews within the country.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu, as opposition leader, will be poised to pounce on this shaky new governing coalition. He accused Bennett of carrying out “the fraud of the century,” referring to the Yamina leader’s earlier promises not to join forces with Lapid.
This unlikely alliance still needs to be confirmed by parliament to take power. Is yet a fifth election on the horizon?
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