LFI Focus: Fourth time lucky? Israel’s March election

Introduction

In May 2019, the Israeli Knesset dissolved itself barely one month after voters had been to the polls. That political stalemate marked the first time in the state’s seven-decade history that an election has not resulted in the formation of a government.

Few then, however, could have predicted that, after another three elections, Israel would still be mired in political deadlock. Although the polls had long predicted that the March 2021 election – the fourth in two years – would, once again, see the pro- and anti-Netanyahu forces fight themselves to a virtual draw, the political landscape which ultimately emerged nonetheless looked rather different than it had done when the campaign was triggered by the Knesset’s failure to pass a budget in December.

Blue and White – the centrist opposition which had come close to toppling Benjamin Netanyahu in the September 2019 and March 2020 general elections – had appeared on course for political oblivion. It had seemed fatally damaged last summer by leader Benny Gantz’s decision to break his oft-repeated campaign pledge and join the prime minister in forming a “unity government”. So, too, the Labor party which had followed its Blue and White allies into the ill-fated coalition with Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox partners.

By contrast, former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar’s decision in December to break away from Netanyahu and form New Hope was swiftly rewarded with polls showing the new party leaping into second place.

And, divided and losing ground in the polls, the mainly Israeli-Arab Joint List – the third biggest parliamentary group after last March’s general election – appeared on the verge of a debilitating split, with the Islamist Ra’am bolting from the alliance of left-wing, religious and nationalist parties.

But the Israeli voters delivered some surprises: Blue and White proved surprisingly resilient with

Gantz’s willingness to grimly fight on and ignore the calls for his party to drop out to avoid wasting anti-Netanyahu voters justified by a haul of eight Knesset seats.

Similarly, after electing Merav Michaeli – the only one of its MKs to oppose the party entering the unity government – Labor defied expectations and won seven seats; the total number it won when it ran in alliance with Meretz last March. In all, the two left-wing parties netted 13 seats, nearly doubling their previous total.

Sa’ar’s bubble had burst long before polling day, but his party’s total of six seats was nonetheless a huge disappointment given the 20-seats it had looked on course to win just three months before. However, if he keeps to his pledge not to partner with Netanyahu, the former Likudnik may yet play a crucial role in preventing the prime minister forming a new government.

Finally, while the Joint List and Ra’am won five fewer seats running separately than they secured together last March, the Islamist party has emerged as the kingmaker, without whose support Netanyahu’s chances of remaining in office appear thin.

These changes do not, however, alter the fundamental contours of Israeli politics: that the principal issue dividing the country and determining voters’ loyalties is whether Netanyahu – despite standing trial for multiple corruption allegations – should continue his long stint at the helm. Moreover, while a majority of voters want to see the prime minister gone – 57 percent voted for parties which didn’t support him remaining in office – Netanyahu’s greatest asset is the divisions within their ranks. Indeed, in the last three elections, the opposition to Netanyahu has actually held a majority in the Knesset, but its disparate nature, ranging from Jewish nationalists to Arab communists, has enabled the prime minister to cling – however tenuously – to power. But while those divisions continue to run deep, the prime minister’s efforts to form a government appear to be foundering and the sense that his days in power may finally be coming to an end is mounting.

So, how was the election determined and what might happen next?

Likud weakened

As it has done in every general election since 2009 bar September 2019, Likud emerged as the strongest party. However, in a critical blow to Netanyahu’s chances of assembling a majority coalition, Likud dropped six seats from 36 to 30 as its vote fell from 1.35 million in March 2020 to 1.06

million last month. In major strongholds such as the cities of Ashkelon and Sderot, Likud’s share of the vote reduced while it also lost support in small towns across the country.

Israel’s sharp political divisions were encapsulated by the results from its two biggest cities. In secular, liberal Tel Aviv, the left swept the board, with 22 percent for Yesh Atid, 15 percent for Labor, 14 percent for Meretz, and 11 percent for Blue and White. Despite Likud’s second-place 17 percent, the total centre-left vote was 62 percent. In more religious, conservative Jerusalem, the pro-Netanyahu bloc – with United Torah Judaism on 23 percent, 21 percent for Likud, 16 percent for Shas, and nine percent for Religious Zionism – won 69 percent.

Netanyahu’s hope and expectation of winning – albeit at the fourth time of asking – a clear majority

rested principally on his belief that he would be rewarded at the ballot box for Israel’s world-leading vaccination programme. This, however, appears to have been a miscalculation on his part. As a post-election poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute revealed  56 percent of Israelis said their government’s management of the covid crisis either played no part in influencing who they voted for or mattered only to a small extent. By contrast, a mere 14 percent said it influenced their decision a great deal. These findings underline the remarkable continuity in the overall strength of the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs despite the seismic events of the past year.

Netanyahu’s allies stay the course

Netanyahu has remained in contention, however, thanks to the strong showing by his religious and far-right allies.

The prime minister’s two traditional ultra-Orthodox partners – Shas and UTJ – had gone into the elections with some trepidation, fearing that Haredi anger over their handling of the covid crisis might dent their support. Moreover, under leader Bezalel Smotrich, the newly established Religious Zionism party – an alliance of national-religious, far-right and anti-gay parties – ruthlessly targeted ultra-Orthodox voters. However, Shas and UTJ emerged largely unscathed holding on to their combined 16 Knesset seats. That result, even as Smotrich successfully peeled away some of their support, resulted from a strong turnout among Haredi voters.

Although Religious Zionism’s six seats was widely reported as a surge in support for the far-right, the picture is more complex. In the April 2019 election, the Union of Right-wing Parties, a similar alliance of the far-right Otzma Yehudit, national-religious Jewish Home and Smotrich’s National Union, managed to win five seats in the Knesset. As in 2019, Netanyahu’s fear that any right-wing votes could be wasted on smaller parties which might fail to cross the 3.25 percent share needed to win seats in the Knesset led him to help broker an unholy alliance of religious-right, racist and homophobic parties. Thus the prime minister played a key behind-the-scenes role in bringing Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit together.

Although it smoothed the way for Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir, a former activist in assassinated rabbi Meir Kahane’s extremist Kach movement, to enter the Knesset, Netanyahu’s disreputable wheeler-dealing with the far-right proved electorally smart. Religious Zionism won six seats – a figure that would not have been achieved without Otzma Yehudit, which, running alone in September 2019, won 83,000 votes. That vote, while falling far short of the threshold, is the equivalent of more than two Knesset seats.

The Israeli-Arab Vote

Benjamin Netanyahu’s relationship with Israel’s one in five Arab citizens, has long been strained, especially at election time. In 2015, he infamously sought to drive-up Likud turnout on election day by warning that Israeli-Arabs were voting “in droves”; over the 2019-20 elections, he’s peddled fears about voter fraud in Arab areas while also seeking to delegitimise the mainly Israeli-Arab Joint List alliance.

• The prime minister adopted a markedly different approach in the run-up to March’s poll, assiduously attempting to woo Israeli-Arab voters and suggesting that his 2015 comments had been “twisted”.
• These tactics appear to have assisted Netanyahu on election day with Likud’s share of the Arab vote rising sharply in some areas. However, given the low base from which it was starting, the raw numbers involved were relatively small.
• More importantly and paradoxically, Netanyahu’s outreach also appears to have dampened Israeli-Arab turnout from the 65 percent high it hit last March at a time when the prime minister was seen as playing the race card. Indeed, his tactics then backfired to the extent that the Joint List won a record 15 seats.
• Finally, the new stance adopted by Netanyahu played a key role in splitting the Joint List. Ra’am broke away from the Joint List in the run-up to the election principally because of leader Mansour Abbas’ willingness to contemplate cooperating with Likud, including helping the prime minister escape his legal difficulties, if it would help advance the interests of Israeli-Arabs. That potential cooperation only became a possibility because of Netanyahu’s less confrontational approach.

The net effect – lower Israeli-Arab turnout and a split in the Joint List – saw the number of seats won by the Arab parties fall from 15 last March to 10, with one of those parties – Ra’am – not tied into the anti-Netanyahu bloc. Overall, these developments played out in Netanyahu’s favour, even if having his political fate in the hands of a small Islamist party most certainly is not.

Labor bounces back

Far less beneficial to Netanyahu is the tentative and unexpected revival in the fortunes of the Israeli left.

The launch of Blue and White in early 2019 – which swiftly became the principal repository for the anti-Netanyahu vote – led to historically poor performances by Labor in the three elections held between April 2019 and March 2020.

Former leader Amir Peretz’s decision to follow Blue and White into a “unity government” last spring proved hugely contentious within the party and further weakened Labor’s political standing. Michaeli strongly opposed joining the government from the outset and – pledging  that “the Labor party is restarting” – she made a clear break with the past on winning the leadership in January.

Her dynamic leadership during the campaign was rewarded at the ballot box. Labor’s vote – close to 270,000 – is more than the 267,000 it polled when it ran in alliance with Meretz and the small Gesher party last March. Indeed, Labor and Meretz’s combined total of 471,000 votes is close to double what the two parties’ joint slate won a year ago.

Michaeli’s strength rests in part on her ideological self-confidence. She refuses to accept the notion that the Israeli public has moved to the right, damning the Labor party to extinction. “In terms of ideology, the ideals of the centre-left have triumphed, even in Israel. If you look at the research by places like the Israel Democracy Institute, as opposed to political representation, the public believes in pluralism, supports equality, religious freedoms. There’s even a majority, a small one, that’s for a two-state solution. And there’s nothing in politics that represents all this,” she told the Times of Israel during the campaign.

What happens now: The post-election endgame

During the traditional post-election consultations between the president and the parties, Netanyahu secured a narrow edge over opposition leader Yair Lapid and was awarded the mandate and 28 days to form a government.

But the prime minister has struggled to assemble a coalition in the face of daunting parliamentary arithmetic (see graphic). Once all the votes were counted, the pro-Netanyahu parties held 52 seats and the prime minister’s opponents 57. Two parties, Ra’am and Naftali Bennett’s Yamina, were formally uncommitted to either side.

Netanyahu’s dilemma is that, even if he secures Yamina’s backing, he remains two seats short of a 61-seat majority, thus requiring him to rely on the support, albeit from outside of the government, of Ra’am. But Ra’am and Religious Zionism are adamantly opposed to participating in any kind of power-sharing arrangement with one another, with Smotrich even suggesting that the right would be better off going into opposition for a short spell than relying on the backing of the Islamist party. While Netanyahu’s far-right allies dub Ra’am “terror supporters”, Abbas’ party says it “won’t sit with racists who threaten us”. The prime minister now appears to have abandoned any hope of stitching together a deal involving the two sides.

Netanyahu’s tenuous grip on power was demonstrated this week when his supporters lost a key vote which effectively cost them control of the Knesset until a new government is formed. The defeat over the membership of the Knesset’s Arrangements Committee, which decides on legislative priorities, was delivered by Ra’am’s decision to back an alternative proposal drawn up by Lapid. Underlining the significance of the Knesset vote, close Netanyahu ally and Likud parliamentary chair Miki Zohar, said afterwards: “We’re starting to understand and internalise that the right-wing parties are headed to the opposition. Netanyahu will be opposition leader.”

In a sign of their desperation, Netanyahu and his allies are attempting a futile push for a bill which would introduce a one-off direct election for prime minister. The vote, which would be held within 30 days, would resurrect Israel’s brief and quickly abandoned experiment with direct elections some two decades ago. Under the plan, there would be no new Knesset election; instead, the winner of the proposed prime ministerial vote would automatically determine who forms a government. However, the victor would still need to assemble a coalition to back them in parliament, albeit from the strengthened position of having a national personal mandate.

In the meantime, Lapid appears to be attempting to put together an alternative, unity government. Such a government would be ideologically heterogenous and bring together right-wing parties, including Yamina, Yisrael Beitenu and New Hope; the centrist Yesh Atid and Blue and White; and Labor and Meretz on the left. At its heart would likely be a rotation agreement by which Lapid and Bennett would agree to share the premiership. Although such a coalition would still be three seats short of a majority, Lapid is working – apparently with the support of New Hope and Yamina – to secure a form of “confidence and supply” with the Israeli-Arab parties by which they will back the government from outside its ranks. Labor operated a similar arrangement with the Israeli-Arab parties under Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s. Bennett’s declaration that, if Netanyahu is unable to form a government, he is willing to join negotiations to form a unity government underline the depths of the prime minister’s difficulties.

Netanyahu’s mandate runs out on 4 May and the president, Reuven Rivlin, has strongly hinted he will not grant him any extension. At that point, the president may give Lapid or Bennett 28 days to form a government or he may throw the decision straight to the Knesset which could pick any of its 120 members able to secure the support of 61 of his or her colleagues to serve as prime minister. If the Israeli parliament can’t fulfil that task in 21 days – it will also have this brief opportunity if Lapid or Bennett tries and fails to form a government – new elections will be triggered. But few among the politics-weary Israeli electorate will be relishing their fifth trek to the ballot box in just over two years.