In March 2021 Israel heads into its fourth general election in just two years and with its perennial Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu facing a number of criminal charges and accusations of impropriety, it’s pretty difficult to make north or south of the local ‘political map’ for both Israelis and non-Israelis alike.
A bit of background to those not familiar with Israel’s electoral system. Israel enjoys (or suffers) from the Proportional Representation System. This system in use by Israel is touted as one of the most equitable systems employed by democracies around the world. It is based on ‘proportionality’, a term which everyone just seems to love because it seems so fair.
Under this system, the success of participating political parties is determined by what percentage of the vote they receive. A minimum percentage or lower threshold is predefined by the Israeli Parliament or Knesset (currently 3.25 %) but it is not set in concrete and can be changed from election to election by a simple majority of the ruling party in the Knesset.
A party that achieves the minimum threshold is apportioned seats in Parliament according to what percentage of the vote they received in correlation to the overall vote. No electorates, no MPs representing your vital interests, just faceless list ‘Politicians’ with their loyalty to the Party and doing the bidding for their leaders’ interests, but always with a sneaky eye on their way up their own personal political ladder.
While PR is far from perfect, some say it’s more fair than the first past the post or winner takes all systems currently employed in Great Britain and the United States of America, where the losing party or candidate gets zero representation even if it lost by only one vote. The NZ electoral system sits on the fence with skin in both games having both electorate and PR.
No one ever wins a clear Parliamentary majority under Israeli PR. The make up of the Government is instead achieved through ‘horse trading’ carried out with taxpayers’ money.
Each minor party makes excessive demands (usually budgetary) on the party tasked by the President to form a government. Their demands represent the narrow interests of their constituents or rather the needs of the politicians who wish to be reelected by those constituents. They hope to literally leverage themselves into powerful positions using the public’s money and become entrenched there, something that the quantitive value of their vote often doesn’t justify. This, in a nutshell, is Israeli democracy or in other words ‘the shuk/Sook’!!
Israel’s political playing field, while appearing cluttered with political rivals, is in reality divided up into several major identifiable blocks. The left, the right, the Ultra Orthodox Jews, the Arab parties and what they call the centre which no one really knows what their agenda is least of all themselves.
Individual ego and desire for power by impatient political players has resulted in an overcrowded playing field as a result of constant fracturing and splitting of political parties. For example Likud, Bibi’s party has spawned three or four smaller parties that will be players in the coming election, all with indiscernible political ideologies and potential voter pools.
Ex Likud stalwarts and past personal confidants of Bibi such as Saar, Bennet and Lieberman, the leaders of these splinter parties believe that their rightful turn has come to knock Bibi off his perch and take the keys to Balfour Street, the Prime Ministers Residence. The mutual slogan they share in common is ‘just not Bibi’.
The Left fares much worse than the Right. The Labor Party, the party of Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Rabin, Peres and Barak that were all instrumental in founding, building and protecting the state of Israel has split so many times that there is nothing left except disaffected voters and archival cellulose. It is almost certain that it will cease to exist after this coming election.
Meretz, the far-left party, itself a distant offspring of the Labor Party, is now a post-zionist socialist party still pretending to be mainstream, and their percentage of the vote never seems to grow. Perhaps they paint such a bleak picture here that their voters are constantly bleeding out overseas (emigrating) or the other possibility is that all those ageing Marxists and Trotskyites from yesteryear are simply meeting their maker.
The cry from the left ‘Just not Bibi’ doesn’t wash, says Gideon Levy, well known Haaretz writer ‘anti occupation’ and Palestinian champion. It’s a diversion because they have no message left to offer, he claims; their cupboard is bare.
The Ultra Orthodox have two main political parties, one Ashkenazi and the other Sephardi (from time to time there are competing splinter parties). They play the long game, with their birthrate twice that of anyone else. Their slice of the political pie will always be guaranteed along with a warm place in the sun, but we all know that too much sun isn’t good for the complexion. All the while major ruling parties bear their birth rate in mind, grit their teeth and thus the Ultra Orthodox parties always somehow find themselves with a seat at the Government table right next to the trough.
The Arab List, the great attempt to consolidate the Arab vote around one united list, succeeded once but will it again? This consolidation meant there was no loss of votes by parties not achieving the minimum threshold and it also enabled the disparate Arab bloc to create a false sense of unity, a cry to rally around and thus managed to achieve 15 seats in the last Parliamentary election.
Today the Arab street appears disaffected as the Joint Arab list didn’t really produce any direct benefits for the Israeli Arab voter but seems instead to concern itself with the wider Palestine Israel conflict. It appears more interested in the needs and slogans of Fatah, Hamas and the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine. The joint list is currently polling around 10 seats for the next election, down 33 % on the last, and Arab splinter parties are already starting to form.
Further, Bibi and others have noted this dissatisfaction and are strategically placing Israeli Arab candidates on their party lists to try and pick up the not insignificant disaffected Israeli Arab vote. This should be interesting to watch, as younger Israeli Arabs in greater numbers integrate into and identify with the wider Israeli society.
The centre bloc here in Israel on a good day only attracts about 25 % of the vote. That’s about 30 seats in the Knesset, enough to be coalition partners, but never enough to ever take the reins of Government. The problem with the battle cry of the centre is the total dearth of emotion in their message. Israel is a very emotional place and most here think with their kishka (stomach) and not with their head. The centre parties’ (there are plenty in the race) only discernible battle cry for the up and coming election appears to be the same as everyone else: ‘Just not Bibi’. A cry I might add that has lost any real emotion and seems to be a fading noise bouncing off the walls of the national political echo chamber.
The ‘Just not Bibi’ crew makes up most of the political spectrum. The exception, of course, are the Ultra Orthodox parties who by virtue of their growing numbers and past and current loyalty to Bibi have had unfettered access to the coffers of the treasury for the past decade. Through this, they have become a very significant and ‘sustainable’ feature of Israeli politics.
The big question is: Will ‘Just not Bibi’ be enough for the alternate right or centre parties to win over the Likud voters and enable a viable new coalition without Bibi?
Or will the ‘just not Bibi’ mantra become lost in the white noise being generated across the broad spectrum of the political playing field? Is Bibi here to stay for another round of political musical chairs or maybe for ever? Is he destined to be re-elected again because no one else could be ballsy enough to move beyond ‘just not Bibi’ and offer us all something more substantive to believe in and vote for?
The only certain thing with Israeli elections is the uncertain outcome.
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