Election Day in the United States is Tuesday, Nov. 8, but Israelis will go to the polls a week before, on Tuesday, Nov. 1 — the fifth general election in three-and-a-half years.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose conservative Likud Party remains larger than any of its rivals, is trying to mount a political comeback after he was pushed out of office by a coalition of smaller parties last year, and as flimsy corruption allegations against him have begun to fall apart amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
On the surface, this election seems like all the rest since April 2019. Polls suggest that Netanyahu’s party has enough potential seats in the 120-member Knesset to form a 60-vote bloc, just shy of the 61 needed to form a governing majority.
He has been denied that elusive majority because Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of a small, secular nationalist party whose values largely align with those of Likud, has refused to join any government led by Netanyahu, or which offers concessions to religious parties, as Likud often does.
So Israel could be headed for another deadlock, in which Likud is the largest party on Election Day but struggles to form a governing majority amid the wrangling that follows.
The country is currently led by interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid, a journalist-turned left-of-center-politician. He cobbled together the coalition that was once led by Naftali Bennett, a tech entrepreneur who once worked for Netanyahu but, like so many others, had a falling-out. Bennett’s party is tiny; he was the right-wing fig leaf on a left-wing coalition.
Bennett seized power from his former boss at the price of his political soul: having promised not to join a government with Israel’s Arab parties, some of which are opposed to the existence of the state itself, he then did so as soon as the chance presented itself.
The coalition was the first in which Arab parties played so prominent a role; it was the ultimate answer to the defamatory charge that Israel is an “apartheid” state. But defections, infighting, and disunity within the coalition partners themselves triggered a collapse.
Meanwhile, the case against Netanyahu — which is largely responsible for the ongoing political crisis, as it destabilized Netanyahu’s own government and tarnished his public image — has begun to fall apart.
It was never strong to begin with, and critics have called it a creation of Israel’s own “Deep State” — the legal fraternity and military brass that resented Netanyahu’s disruptive, populist style. Now the public has learned that police may have hacked phones to pressure potential witnesses, making the case look like a coup.
In recent days, Lapid’s government also reached a controversial natural gas deal with Lebanon. Netanyahu argues — correctly — that Israel gave Lebanon, which is controlled by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group, everything it wanted. But Lapid and others point out that Hezbollah now has a financial interest in a stable border with Israel, since war would disrupt offshore gas operations.
Whether good or bad, the deal evaded public approval, adding to anger that the country’s elites are running things for themselves.
Netanyahu wants his job back, and to tame the Israeli “Deep State,” whose machinations recall the corrupt effort by authorities in the U.S. to target Trump while protecting the Clintons and Bidens. But he faces two problems.
One is that the current government, while fractious, did a somewhat decent job. It steered Israel through a conflict with Islamic Jihad in Gaza; it kept the Biden administration from undoing the U.S. commitment to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; and it has convinced Biden not to accept a weak new Iran deal.
The second problem is that Netanyahu’s coalition would depend on the support of far-right politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. They have surged in popularity in the wake of anti-Jewish rioting by Arab citizens during the last Gaza war. Some of their views — on Arabs, and on social issues — are regarded as extreme. The United Arab Emirates, which has enjoyed warm relations with Israel since the signing of the Abraham Accords two years ago, has warned Netanyahu not to govern with the far-right parties.
Meanwhile, Lapid seems to have borrowed a page from U.S. President Joe Biden’s book, warning that a Netanyahu coalition with the far-right parties would mean the “end of democracy.”
It is an odd claim for an interim prime minister to make, especially one who is making major national security decisions, on Lebanon and other matters, without a clear mandate from voters. Israeli voters, like American voters, may look past such hysterics, and focus instead on bread-and-butter issues such as inflation and the cost of living.
Or perhaps the Israeli electorate may simply decide that it needs the strong leadership, however controversial and however flawed, that Netanyahu provides. He remains, even today, the face of Israel throughout the Middle East and the world.
The Israeli election might therefore offer useful lessons to American voters as they look beyond the midterms and consider the possibility that Trump — despite all his flaws, and despite the January 6 riot — could be the strongest alternative to Biden — or his replacement — in 2024.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.