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views

O

n April 9, Israel held Knesset 
elections. On Sept. 17, Israel is 
once again going to hold Knesset 
elections. Here is your one-stop explain-
er for why.

OK, why is Israel hav-
ing new elections?
On the face of it, Israel 
is going to elections again 
because Prime Minister 
Benjamin Netanyahu 
received a mandate from 
President Ruvi Rivlin to 
form a government but was not able to 
do so. Though parties representing 65 of 
the 120 seats in the Knesset recommend-
ed Netanyahu to Rivlin, Netanyahu was 
unable to form a governing coalition. 
The basic dispute was between Avigdor 
Liberman’
s Yisrael Beiteinu (five seats) 
and the Haredi UTJ (eight seats), with 
neither side willing to back down from 
its demands over a new military draft 
law. As a result, Netanyahu couldn’
t get 
to the magic number of 61 and Israel is 
going to new elections.

That seems straightforward. Why 
did you say, “on the face of it?”
Because a national unity government 
could have been formed in the space of 
two minutes between Likud with its 35 
seats and its competitor Kachol Lavan 

(Blue & White) with its 35 seats. 

If it’
s so easy, why didn’
t it happen?
It didn’
t happen because the one 
obstacle in its path was Netanyahu. 
Kachol Lavan essentially ran on a plat-
form of Netanyahu policies without the 
Netanyahu corruption and assault on 
state institutions, making it impossible to 
climb down from its anti-Netanyahu tree 
and retain a shred of credibility. 

So what were Netanyahu’
s options to 
stay in his post?
In 2009, Kadima’
s Tzipi Livni was 
tasked with forming a government. Her 
refusal to capitulate to Haredi demands 
ultimately left her unable to cobble 
together a coalition by the deadline. 
Netanyahu was then given the next shot 
and has been prime minister ever since. 
Netanyahu did not want to risk suffer-
ing Livni’
s fate if Rivlin had appointed 
Benny Gantz, or another rival, to try and 
form a coalition. Netanyahu wanted to 
avoid the appointment of another Likud 
member to put together a coalition that 
likely would have excluded him. After 
weeks of trying to get Liberman to cave, 
and then a few hours of pressure on the 
Haredim to cave, Netanyahu was out of 
options, and pushed through the bill to 
dissolve the Knesset and go to elections 
yet again as the only way of preserving 

his position and getting another bite at 
the coalition apple.

And he thinks that if there is another 
election, the math will change in his 
favor and make it easier to form a gov-
ernment?
He would definitely like things to shift 
by at least one seat, which would have 
given him the space to form a govern-
ment this time without being held hos-
tage by Liberman. But the true aim here 
is about forming a government and pass-
ing an immunity law and/or Supreme 
Court override before his indictment 
hearing on October 2. It is why he did 
not request another extension from 
Rivlin and risk having elections any later 
than mid-September, and also why he 
suddenly flipped on the Haredim at the 
last second and tried to get them to back 
down once he realized that Liberman 
wouldn’
t blink. Netanyahu thought that 
threatening new elections would scare 
one or both of the intransigent prospec-
tive coalition members, but they both 
called his bluff. He is now hoping for one 
of two outcomes; either the combination 
of Likud and Kulanu — which are now 
running together as a joint list — will 
do better than the 39 seats for which 
they combined this time and will push 
Liberman underneath the threshold, or 
the tens of thousands of wasted right 

wing votes that went to Naftali Bennett 
and Ayelet Shaked’
s Hayemin Hehadash 
and Moshe Feiglin’
s Zehut last time will 
this time get one or both of those parties 
over the threshold, giving Netanyahu 
more parties to work with and thus more 
leverage over all of them.

Is his gambit going to work?
There is simply no way of knowing. 
On the one hand, there is the scenario 
in which Bennett and Shaked make the 
Knesset, Likud and Kulanu are bigger 
the second time around and Netanyahu 
has an easier path to a coalition. On 
the other hand, Netanyahu bent over 
backwards to embrace Haredi demands 
that are broadly unpopular with Israelis 
writ large. He also embraced the Union 
of Right-Wing Parties and their plan of 
attack on the judiciary and secular and 
gay Israelis, and tacitly endorsed their 
extremism that is also broadly unpopular 
with Israelis writ large. 
The unprecedented new elections are 
a naked attempt by Netanyahu to save 
his own skin rather than protect the 
right-wing government for which most 
Israelis expressed a preference. And they 
come with added costs — hundreds of 
millions of shekels from state coffers and 
prolonging Israel’
s current political stasis.
There is a good chance all of this 
will backfire, to Kachol Lavan’
s ben-

commentary
Navigating Israel’s Election Landscape

Michael J. 

Koplow

continued on page 10

