Fourth Elections in Israel: What’s Next?
Explaining Israel’s debacle, the lack of budget and why Netanyahu is Israel’s future.
Photo from Yonatan Sindel/Pool Photo via AP.
January 1, 2020
Joshua Tartakovsky
Israel is going for its fourth elections in two years.
The big question is, of course, why.
It should also be noted that Israel had no budget for 2020 and no budget for 2021.
At the moment, poverty level in Israel is at 29%, unemployment is at 20%, the defecit is at 14.5% of the GDP. Israel is entering its deepest recession since its founding in 1948.
The key issue here is that most recently, a vote to postpone reaching a consensus on a new budget was turned down, paving the way, inevitably, for new elections.
There are splinters all around, with various right-wing figures such as Gideon Saar, Zeev Elkin and of course Naftali Bennet, all challenging Netnayhau from the right.
The leader of the center-right Blue and White Party, Benny Ganz, who until recently was Netanyahu’s junior partner in an unity government, claimed that Netanyahu specifically does not want to issue a new budget, since this allows him to postpone or evade a trial. While Netanyahu is expected to show up in court frequently in this new year we have just entered, his team is pulling various legal tricks to postpone and evade a trial.
While Ganz was a former chief of staff of the Israeli military, Netanyahu enjoys immense support among the Likud Party, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Mizrahi Jews. He is not only a master in manuvering tough political situations and a smooth speaker, he also has the uncanny ability to present himself as a victim of the establishment, thereby garnering support from two historically repressed groups in Israel, the Mizrahi Jews and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews (whom the state saw as a far cry from the New Jew the Zionist movement sought to create from scratch).
In light of the fact that Ganz joined a coalition with Netanyahu, the latter’s hard-core supporters are not likely to believe Ganz’s harsh accusations. Ganz claimed, quite brazenly, that Netanyahu does not care about the county or the budget, in fact, he has been avoiding a budget. He only cares about evading justice. But a simple-minded Netanyahu supporter may wonder that if Netanyahu is as crooked as Ganz presented him, how come Ganz agreed to be his junior coalition partner and join forces with him for months, and this after challenging Netanyahu as a head of a center-left opposition bloc known as Blue and White?
At a time when coronavirus is going wild, causing many senseless deaths, Israelis need a budget that will provide health and education. Alas, they are not getting one.
What Netanyahu is successfully doing, however, is fast-tracking a vaccination effort that is moving at an impressive speed. The current rate is roughly 150,000 a day. Within several weeks, and most certainly by March – when elections are scheduled for – at least half of the population, roughly 4.5 million people, are likely to be vaccinated. This will allow Netanyahu to take credit for the fact that millions of Israelis no longer need to live in fear of catching Covid-19.
Netanyahu is also likely to present himself as the only one who could stand up to US President-elect Joe Biden and resist international pressure regarding the lack of progress on the two-state solution front and the ongoing brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli state apparatus. Saar, Elkin and Bennet, while militant right-wing hawks in their own right, are unlikely to win the confidence that Netanyahu is capable of garnering from Israel’s nationalist camp.
Moreover, right-wing Yamina head Bennet agreed in principle to serve as a minister in a future Netanyahu government. None of Netanyahu’s opponents on the right are likely to have a majority to govern without the Likud, unless they join with the Arab parties or Israel’s Zionist-Left party Meretz, both highly unlikely scenarios.
There are several groups of victims of Israel’s addiction to elections.
The first is, clearly, Israel’s needy and poor, who are likely to be neglected even more. Similarly, middle class Israelis who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are unlikely to see an improvement in their lifestyles. That a new elections at the cost of $400 million are unlikely to help the economy is obvious.
The second group of victims, however, is that of supporters of the Israeli state who believe, or were indoctrinated to believe, that Israel is a western, democratic, Zionist, enlightened state. However, at the head of the pyramid stands a man who is willing to do everything to stay in power and is willing to subvert the entire state for his own selfish political goals. Israeli nationalists are proud of Netanyahu’s ability and talent in manuvering when faced with pressure from President Obama. However, Netanyahu is also equally capable of manuvering and subverting the Israeli system for his own particular personal and political goals. It would be interesting to see what Middle Class Israelis who support the Israeli state and have faith in its institutions will do when they gradually realize that the state is being subverted by Netanyahu for his own personal and selfish goals. For now, liberal Israelis are hoping that what they see as a nightmare if his rein will be over soon. For them, it is obvious he is a conman. Alas, Netanyahu refuses to disappear quietly from the scene and is incredibly effective in surviving various pressures and maintaining his innocence even while being accused by the Israeli court system itself.
Israel is becoming divided between pro-Netanyahu fanatics who believe he is the best leader Israel ever has, and are right-wing extreemists, ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Mizrahi Jews if to generalize, and anti-Netanyahu people from the right, center-left, educated camp or Palestinians, who claim to have become aware of his uncanny ability to deceive and to con an entire population.
Netanyahu has managed to hold the support of a sizeable proportion of the population in a way no other leader, left or right, is doing. This means that for now, there is no significant person who can replace him. It also means that if he continues to evade justice, he may continue to remain in his position for quite some time. But it is also clear that he has no qualms about sacrificing the Zionist state to stay in power.
