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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