By Kolsen Shunk
Israel will have its 25th election on November 1st, 2022, to elect its Knesset, also known as its parliament. The electoral system in Israel is “Proportional Representation”, which means that the number of seats each party gets in the Knesset is directly correlated to the percentage of votes they receive. Rather than having each party run a candidate in geographic districts as in Canada, parties in Israel submit a ranked list of 120 candidates, and they fill the seats they win with those candidates. To simplify, in Israel, getting 10% of the vote means you get 10% of the seats, which is 12; and you fill those 12 seats with the top 12 candidates on your party's list.
This electoral system attracts many different political parties because even small parties can still gain representation in the Knesset. There are 20 registered political parties to run in the upcoming election. However, to get any seats in parliament, a party has to win at least 3.25% of the vote, otherwise, it will receive no representation. This was introduced to prevent extremist and fringe parties from winning Knesset seats. Although this greatly reduces the number of parties that could potentially be in the Knesset, there is still a multitude of parties that could win seats. No Israeli election has produced fewer than 8 parties in the Knesset, and as many as 15 parties occupied seats at one point. There are 11 parties running for the Knesset that are currently polling above the threshold.
After an election, the President (which is a ceremonial role), nominates the leader of the largest political party to be Prime Minister and form a government. He then has one month to form coalitions and propose a cabinet before the Knesset votes to accept or reject the nomination. If the nominee is accepted, the government forms. If it fails, the President nominates the leader of the second largest party, who undergoes the same process. Should that too fail, the Knesset undergoes a free-for-all that allows anyone to be nominated Prime Minister. If all proposed motions fail, another general election is called.
In recent years Israel has had fragile and unstable governance, largely due to three factors. The first is long-time Prime Minister and Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu was first elected Prime Minister in 1996, and served one term until he was voted out of office in 1999, only to be re-elected a decade later in 2009, serving another 12 years until being voted out of office in 2021. He is still the leader of the Likud party and is running for another term as Prime Minister this election. In 2017, the Israeli police investigated Netanyahu over allegedly obtaining inappropriate favours from businessmen, and bribing Israeli newspapers to give him more favourable coverage about himself. Critics of Netanyahu say he should be tried and arrested, but Netanyahu's base of support is large and unwavering, and Netanyahu himself refuses to yield, as many Israelis see Netanyahu as the only man capable of leading Israel and ensuring security. Another reason for the political deadlock is the alienation of Arab and Muslim voters, who have traditionally voted for mainstream Israeli political parties. However, in recent years they have begun to shift their support to the Joint List, which is an alliance of mostly Arab-interest parties that refuse to join any government. The third reason for the political deadlock is the awkward position that Orthodox Jewish parties find themselves in, which do not have nearly enough seats to form a government on their own, but large enough to prevent secular governments from forming without severe difficulty, due to vast ideological diversity within the many secular parties.
This political deadlock is the reason Israel has had a chronically weak government in these past years. Should any of the three aforementioned factors be removed, the formation of a government wouldn’t be an issue. However, because these conflicts never cease, Israel has undergone massive political deadlock. Since 2019, Israel has had five elections, three of which spanned twelve months: April 2019, September 2019, and March 2020. Several ideologically opposed parties briefly united in 2020 to prevent the deadlock and deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. But after a highly successful vaccine rollout, the pandemic ceased to unify the government, and a snap election was called in 2021. From 2019 to 2020, Netanyahu had been acting as the interim Prime Minister, because nobody was able to replace him. However, in 2021 a coalition of centrists, leftists, rightists, and an Islamist party managed to end Netanyahu’s leadership, with a bare majority of 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
This government would not last. The only thing uniting the ideologically diverse parties was a desire to keep Netanyahu out of power, and nothing else. The opposition parties for their part were desperate to get back into power and to force an election as soon as possible. The opposition refused to vote in favour of anything the government proposed, even if they agreed with it. When a law that expanded Israeli citizenship to settlers in the West Bank was set to expire, the governing parties could not agree on whether to keep the law or not. The government then agreed to dissolve itself and call new elections, citing an inability to govern effectively. As such, Israel was flung into yet another election, and Israelis will be left with a choice. Eleven choices to be precise.
The largest party in the Knesset is Netanyahu's Likud party, which has 30 seats in the Knesset and is in opposition. The Likud is a center-right party in Israel, that is generally in favour of economic deregulation, opposes a two-state solution with Palestine, and is secular. However, some critics would say that in recent years, the Likud party has become less about any substantial policy agenda, and more about personal loyalty to Netanyahu and keeping him in power, including proposals to introduce laws that would protect him from criminal prosecution. Critics also say he is an opportunist, citing the fact that Netanyahu originally got into politics as a firebrand who sought to pull out of the Oslo accords, but once he entered power in 1996 he expanded on that deal instead; and since 2009, many would say that the politics of Netanyahu and the Likud vary heavily based on what parties are willing to keep him in power, and because the only parties willing to do that right now are the Orthodox Jewish parties, Netanyahu and the Likud are quite right-wing. However, supporters of Netanyahu say that he is the only one capable of leading Israel with a strong hand through difficult times, and many deny the allegations against him, which have been in the courts for several years.
The Orthodox parties supporting Netanyahu are United Torah Judaism, Shas, and Religious Zionism. United Torah Judaism represents the most fundamentalist interpretation of Judaism and is led by Rabbis (which are the Jewish equivalent of Priests and Pastors). Although they have participated in several Israeli governments before, UTJ technically doesn’t recognize the right of Israel to exist, believing that only the Messiah can establish a Jewish state, and a self-establishing secular Jewish state is blasphemous. However, on a more practical level, UTJ advocates for the continuation of privileges for Haredim (ultra-orthodox) Jews, such as exemption from mandatory military service, special welfare benefits, and attempts to keep businesses and public transit from operating on Saturdays. Shas was formed in the 1980s by Arab Jews expelled from their nations after the establishment of Israel due to a lack of representation in government. Shas believes in “returning the crown to its former glory”, which means stripping Israel of anything too European or Western and transforming it into a Jewish Theocracy. However, in practice it acts as another party for the Haredim Jews, seeking to continue the same privileges for them that UTJ wants to protect.
Religious Zionism is an alliance of three ultra-orthodox Jewish parties; Tkuma, Noam, and Otzma Yehudit. Otzma Yehudit (roughly translated to “Jewish Power”) is by far the largest of these parties, and it is also a Kahanist party. In 1968, the American Rabbi Meir Kahane formed the Jewish Defence League, which was a Jewish version of the Black Panther Party, intent on protecting Jews from anti-Semitism. Kahane would go to Israel and establish a political party, which had the goal of making Israel an ethnically cleansed, expansionist, and totalitarian theocracy. After his party won a seat in the 1984 election, the Israeli government rewrote the constitution to ensure that his party would never sit in the Knesset again. Otzma Yehudit is essentially a continuation of Kahanism and is recognized by both the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization. The leader of Religious Zionism lives in a West Bank settlement regarded as illegal even by the Israeli government. The party supports a full Israeli takeover of the Palestinian territories, with permanent segregation and second-class citizenship for the Arab and Muslim population.
Moving on, the parties in government are numerous and ideologically diverse. The largest of these parties is Yesh Atid (translating to “There is a future”) led by current Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Yesh Atid is an economically centrist, socially Liberal, secular party that supports a two-state solution with Palestine. They hold the second-greatest number of seats in the Knesset, behind Likud. Yair Lapid is the son of the journalist Tommy Lapid, who was the leader of an old centrist party called Shinui. Lapid was also a talk-show host and actor before forming Yesh Atid. Much of Yesh Atids’ meteoric rise in popularity in recent years can be attributed to the decline of the Labor party.
The predecessors of the Labor Party of Israel used to be a political juggernaut, which dominated Israeli politics for its first 30 years of existence. As recently as 2018, it was the second largest party in the Knesset, but it’s suffered a great collapse in recent years due to infighting and mismanagement of the party. Today, Labor is a standard Social Democratic party that supports a stronger social safety net, more economic regulation, secularism, and a two-state solution. Meretz is a Democratic Socialist party that supports basically the same policies as Labor. As such, the differences between the parties mainly come from the sort of people who vote for them. Labor voters are older, more urban, and more Jewish; whereas Meretz voters are younger, more rural, and more mixed between Jews and Arabs.
There are also a number of government parties that are on the political right as well. The first of these is Yisrael Beiteinu (meaning “Israel is our home”). Yisrael Beiteinu was founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resulted in a mass influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union into Israel, who formed the party. Generally speaking, Yisrael Beiteinu is very oppositional to Socialist and Social Democratic policies, favoring free-market Capitalist economics, although this has somewhat changed in recent years, as newer Russian Jewish immigrants have come to Israel in the shadow of Putin, and are more left-leaning. Yisrael Beiteinu is also an aggressively secular party, which opposes the military service exemption, welfare benefits, and forced shutdown of businesses and services that many Orthodox Jewish parties support. It was for this reason that Yisrael Beiteinu left Netanyahu’s coalition with the Orthodox parties, and it’s why Israel has been in a political deadlock for so long. Yisrael Beiteinu supports a two-state solution, although it is an idiosyncratic one that would take control of many Palestinian-populated regions while ceding parts of Israel proper.
National Unity is a merger of the Social Democratic party Blue and White, and the right-wing party New Hope. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is a former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) Chief of Staff, whose party was once the second largest party next to Likud during the 2019 and 2020 elections. However, Blue and White lost much of its initial popularity after forming a coalition with the Likud in 2020, in an attempt to stop the political deadlock and get Israel through the Covid-19 pandemic. Although some may argue this was a selfless move to keep the country united, it was undoubtedly political suicide that caused the party’s collapse after Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid split off from the party in response. New Hope was created by former Likud member Gideon Sa’ar, who broke away from the Likud in response to the corruption allegations against Netanyahu. New Hope’s platform is practically identical to the Likud's, favoring economic deregulation, secularism, and opposition to a two-state solution with Palestine. However, they differentiate themselves from the Likud through their support of a stronger Supreme Court, term limits on the Prime Minister, and electoral reform to a Mixed Member Proportional system, that would combine their current Proportional Representation system with Canada’s geographic-based electoral system, as they do in Germany. Another right-wing party still in government is the Jewish Home, which supports trickle-down economics and has a generally anti-union stance. However, their decision to leave the right-wing coalition with Netanyahu and the Orthodox parties and join the current coalition caused their support to plummet, and they are currently polling below the electoral threshold of 3.25%.
One thing exceptionally notable about the most recent Israeli administration is that for the first time in Israel's history, an Arab Islamist party was in government. This party, Ra’am, was previously part of the Joint List, which was a coalition of mainly Arab parties that refused to join any coalition, and contributed to political deadlock in Israel. Ra’am left the joint list in the 2021 election to become a part of the government. Of the former Joint List parties, Ra’am is the most religious and Conservative of them. Although Yisrael Beiteinu heavily objected to the inclusion of an Islamist party in government, they were eventually included, which allowed a coalition to be formed with a razor-thin 61-seat majority that ousted Netanyahu. However, as previously stated, that government quickly collapsed due to Ra’am’s opposition to the extension of Israeli citizenship to West Bank settlers.
The Joint List has broken up into its other parties since Ra’am left. The first of these parties is Hadash-Ta’al, which is a Communist party, and advocates for a one-state solution with Palestine by a merger between the countries. Although they have Jewish members, Hadash-Ta’al is mainly an Arab-interests protest vote party. Balad is the other party formerly in the Joint List, although it has consistently been polling below the electoral threshold of 3.25%. Balad is an anti-Zionist party that claims to represent the Palestinian people. Balad also refuses to join any government.
The Coalition between Netanyahu and the Orthodox Jewish parties is hovering around the 60-seat mark in most polling, and it is unclear whether or not their coalition will get a majority in the elections. However, no polling shows the current government polling near 60 seats. Thus, unless coalitions change, Israel will be left with the choice of returning Netanyahu and his coalition to power, or yet another election in a few months' time. The future of Israel remains uncertain, and given the constant gridlock in Israeli politics, it seems that few are even willing to change their minds at all.
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