Israeli Elections

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"Israel has shown restraint for years,
for eight years. Eight years in which our
citizens, children, were under threat
and attacks," she said. "We tried to avoid
this operation. We showed restraint. We
entered this truce, but nothing happened.
But there is a huge difference and I would
like the international community to make
this distinction:
"According to any international law and
the values of the international community,
there's a difference between somebody
who kills deliberately, a murderer, and
between somebody who kills by mistake."
Livni is not always so politic, and she
does not forgive easily. Her relationship
with Rice soured in the last days of the
Bush administration after Rice abstained
from a U.N. Security Council vote calling
for a cease-fire that Israel believed was
premature. Israel had expected her to use
the U.S. prerogative to veto the call.
Livni reportedly tore into Rice, accus-
ing her of "betraying" Israel. At a meeting
in Washington several days later, Livni
thanked Rice for her "leadership, support
and friendship," but could not bring her-
self to look Rice in the eye.
Disarming in person, Livni candidly
asks journalists how she performed in
news conferences. She sometimes answers
a question by arguing multiple points of
view before settling on one. ❑

Detroiter Loses

Jerusalem – Despite predictions
that Detroit-born Uri Bank, fifth on
the National Union's candidates list,
would win a Knesset seat in Israel's
election, no Anglos made the cut.
During the campaign, the Likud
made a push for Anglo support. It
launched a Web site and held events
geared to native English speakers.
Despite a quartet of Anglo candi-
dates on the party's list, none got in.
Bank still believes
that his chances of gain-
ing a seat in the legis-
lature are good, thanks
to a deal reached within
the National Union. If it
won four seats (it did),
Uri Bank
and Likud Chairman
Benjamin Netanyahu
names party head Yaakov Katz to
his cabinet, Katz will resign from the
Knesset and Bank will take his seat.
Bank told the Jerusalem Post
he plans to be "at the forefront of
aliyah issues," especially the pro-
cess of absorption that comes after
aliyah.

Al2

February 19 • 2009

Vote Breakdown

Israel's right won the election, even if Livni won the day.

Uriel Heilman

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

30

Israeli Election Results

28

Jerusalem

Share of seats in 120-member Knesset

25

I

n the chaos after Israel's election, the
possibilities for who will lead Israel's
next government, and with what
sort of coalition, seem endless.
However, if the parties are categorized
by ideology, the noteworthy consequences
of this election immediately become
clear:

Right Wing

First and foremost, this election was a tri-
umph for the right wing. Right-wing par-
ties (not including the religious parties),
picked up 18 seats in the 120-member
Knesset. Left-wing parties lost eight seats.
This analysis considers Labor, Kadima
and Meretz left-wing parties, and Yisrael
Beiteinu, Likud, Jewish Home and
National Union right-wing parties.
Things look even worse for the left if
the religious parties are counted as right
wing — they are, though their major
concerns are religious in nature — and
if Kadima is counted as a centrist rather
than a leftist party.
Kadima is placed in the left-wing cat-
egory because Tzipi Livni's approach to
Arab-Israeli affairs is indistinguishable
from that of Labor's. In a party without
any clear ideology, the Kadima primary
race last September essentially was a
contest between a Kadima Laborite, Livni,
and a Kadima Likudnik, Shaul Mofaz. The
Laborite won.
Of course, the old distinctions between
right and left no longer apply in Israel.
All major parties, including Avigdor
Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, favor a
two-state solution with the Palestinians.
Where they differ is how to achieve that
solution, how fast to accomplish it and in
slight variations over the contours of the
Palestinian state.
The primary difference between left
and right in this election was that the
left believes a two-state solution can be
achieved now, whereas the right believes
it's not possible now, given the radicalism
and divisions among the Palestinians.

Netanyahu Comeback
While Benjamin Netanyahu did not do
as well as some polls two months ago
projected, his party still registered the

20

15

1 0

5

0

change

+15

Likud

-1

11

-5

Kadima Labor

+4

1111

-1

Yisraet Shas
Beiteinu

biggest gains overall, and by a lot. Likud
picked up 15 seats, rising to 27 from
the 12 it won in a lackluster showing in
2006.
Kadima actually lost ground. In the
last election, in 2006, incumbent Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert won 29 seats for
his party. He had been prime minister
for just under three months, having
taken over when Ariel Sharon suffered a
massive stroke.
With Livni at the helm, Kadima cap-
tured 28 seats, one less than Olmert. To
be fair, even this amount is remarkable
given that her party's prime minis-
ter (Olmert) launched a failed war in
Lebanon and, after two years of dilly-
dallying, a war of indeterminate success
in Gaza — to say nothing of the political
corruption scandal that resulted in his
resignation.
It appears that voters associated
those failures with Olmert rather than
Kadima or Livni herself, who served as
Olmert's foreign minister throughout.
It's also likely that traditional left-wing
supporters of Labor, knowing that Labor
had no chance of winning the election,
threw their support behind Livni as the
left-wing candidate of choice for prime
minister.

-2

Meretz

-1

-2

4

+1

same

United Jewish Hadash Raam
Home
Torah
Judaism

11

same

Balad

+2

National
Union

Israeli President Shimon Peres will
invite one of the party heads, Livni or
Netanyahu, to form a new government.
Peres is required to assign the task to
the candidate most likely to successfully
form a coalition.

Arab Parties

Israel's Arab parties picked up two seats,
increasing their Knesset representation
by 20 percent.
Balad, whose erstwhile leader, Azmi
Bishara, fled Israel while under investi-
gation for treason for passing on infor-
mation about Israeli army positions to
Hezbollah during the 2006 war, picked
up one seat.
Hadash, a mixed Jewish-Arab party,
picked up another. The Knesset's third
Arab party, Ra'am, held its own.
The gains, which came despite calls
by some Arab Israeli community lead-
ers to boycott Israel's elections, can be
explained by the strong Arab opposition
to Lieberman, whose positions threaten
Israel's Arab citizens. Also, a simple
demographic fact: The Arab population
of Israel is growing at a much faster rate
than Israel's Jewish population. El

