Ok, I guess it's time for my traditional pre-Israeli-elections diary. I posted one in 2009 and two in 2012/3 (one and two). The Israeli election system is so different from the US's, that it seems some basic things need to be explained anew each time. I'll do that too.
The past week or so, there have been tons of rec-list diaries celebrating polls that seem to predict Israeli Prime Minister "Bibi" Netanyahu's defeat in tomorrow's parliamentary elections. Things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
In a nutshell, during Bibi's 6 consecutive years in power, his Likud party was not nearly as dominant in Israel's "Knesset" parliament, as foreign journalists would have you believe (e.g., the idiotic 2012 "King Bibi" Time magazine feature). Since the 2013 elections, Bibi's hold onto power has been particularly tenuous; this election called more than 2 years ahead of schedule, being Exhibit A. In the same vein, following tomorrow's elections, it is still very likely that the new Knesset will have substantially more hard-right members, than left-of-center members (see an illustration below the fold). So tomorrow is unlikely to bring a "night-and-day" change.
But I don't want to piss all over the parade: there are clearly signs of change in the air. For the first time in the 21st Century, there's a viable chance that the next government will be led by the Labor party.
Bibi in detention, writing "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time..." (Amir Schiby via Facebook)
Unfortunately,
en route to this position, Labor leaders have decided to adopt an overt center-right campaign strategy. This goes well beyond "New Labor" territory; Israel's Labor had been "New-Labor-like" even before Tony Blair coined the term in the mid-1990s. Here are some things the Labor party (which is running this time jointly with the tiny centrist party of Tzipi Livni, who served as Justice Minister in Bibi's outgoing government) did in order to compete in Israel's right-brainwashed national discourse:
- Reversing their 2013 stance, Labor joined the right wing and voted to disqualify their Arab colleague MK Haneed Zoabi from running. This shameful 27-6 rightward-pandering decision was, just like in previous elections, easily overturned by Israel's High Court in a 8-1 vote.
- They ran a campaign ad touting Labor leader Isaac Herzog's military credentials. He was a desk-job intelligence officer, so the ad talks about how "He knows the Arabs, he's seen them both behind the crosshairs, and through the crosshairs", suggesting that he'd played a crucial role in identifying assassination targets. No word in the ad (or elsewhere in the campaign) about "Knowing the Arabs" as, well, just people you might need to learn to live with in peace, esp. when leading the nation (following some backlash, they cut out the 'crosshairs' bit, but still aired the ad in prime time; the original is embedded in this Hebrew blog post).
- On Gaza, they chose to criticize Bibi from the right (here's Herzog in a February interview (translation mine): "...why did you wait? You should have hit Hamas on the head in time"), or the center (vague mention of "responsibility to the citizens" etc.), but (almost?) never from the left, even an obvious line like "why not attempt 'Live and Let Live' with Gaza instead of repeated wars?", which was voiced by many civil-society organizations but - again - not by Labor.
- Even on purely domestic matters, Labor abandoned their fiery social-justice rhetoric of 2013, in favor of a mostly personal campaign against Bibi and his government's general corruption and lack of accountability.
The list can be longer but you get the idea. The not-so-secret hope among left-leaning voters and the wide world, is that if Herzog-Livni get an electoral mandate, they will govern as left-center, or at least not as right-center as their campaign has been. The hope is, that underneath the monotonic "the-right-wing-was-proven-right! End of Story!" in which Israeli discourse has been stuck since fall 2000, there is finally a general fatigue and a yet-unexpressed wish for something completely different. That this will reveal itself in the polls with a decisive mandate, and that Labor will then know how to leverage the mandate to a good end, rather than squander it, or worse - betray it with right-wing policies.
It's possible to get the best results tomorrow and subsequently, and it'll be great if it happens - but I wouldn't bet my money on it.
Below the fold, a longer description of election basics, and what to look for Tuesday afternoon (US time) when the results come out.
Bottom Line: Things to Watch for
This being a longish diary, I'm putting the bottom line up front. If you want the details they're down below.
- Will Bibi's native 'hard right bloc' still muster 61+ seats? Despite the Ultra-Orthodox' newfound centrism, they might still end up endorsing Bibi if his bloc (including them) retains its current strength at 61. It's currently polling at 57 and generally trending downward. This is still the single strongest determinant as to whether Bibi can hold onto power.
- Who will win the "last-moment floating jackpot"? In nearly all Israeli elections, the polls miss a "jackpot" of 5-7 seats that come out of nowhere and land in 1-2 parties' lap, usually a centrist "Bubble Party". Will there be such a jackpot this time, and if so, will Labor-Livni get a piece of it, all but ensuring a Labor-led government?
- Will any "Marginal" Lists miss the new 3.25% threshold? See below for details. If only one side bloc suffers such an "accident", it will weaken its hand as well as slightly increase the size of the largest Lists.
- Will the post-election scenario be "Kingmakers Galore", or "Pick the Partners"? A decisive 61+ right-bloc outcome on one hand, or a decisive defeat to Likud with 25+ seats for Labor-Livni on the other hand, will set up a scenario in which the winner is essentially determined. The winner can then pick and choose from among potential partners. Conversely, weakness in both blocs and a windfall to medium-sized centrist parties, will mean the latter might be able to pick the new prime minister - or force a Labor-Likud deal (happened before, too many times).
- Will the Joint List be among the Kingmakers? And will they win a seat's worth of Jewish votes? The new Joint List (see below) is refreshing news on the left. There's excitement for them both in the Palestinian-Israeli public which supplies nearly all their votes, and among anti-Occupation Jewish-Israelis like me (indeed I would have voted for them if I could). The question remains whether they will be a (perhaps informal) part of a Labor-led coalition. Both sides of this equation have been evasive and noncommittal on the possibility, for obvious reasons. But election results might (hopefully!) draw them closer.
The Basics
Israel follows a parliamentary single-chamber, national proportional representation (PR) system. The contenders in the election are known as Lists rather than parties: they can be single parties, but often are ad-hoc amalgams of parties that think they'll gain from running jointly. In 2013 Likud ran jointly with Lieberman's party, but not this year; rather, as written above it's their Labor rivals who chose to run on a joint list with Livni, called "The Zionist Camp" (translated for some reason to "The Zionist Union" in English).
There are no districts. Rather, the entire 120-seat Knesset will be divided roughly according to the proportion of votes won by the Lists (and Lists, as their name suggests, have a pre-declared order which determines who will sit in Knesset and who will remain outside). Then, the new Knesset composition will also determine the next government which will be constructed via coalition, built by the person recommended by the seat majority of the Lists. By the way, expatriates cannot vote unless (they can define themselves as) emissaries of state.
PR is often criticized for the fractious and unstable nature of its coalitions. This is a huge misunderstanding: in a system where the same vote determines both the Executive and the Legislative, breaking up the coalition is the most effective check-and-balance. As, e.g., the German example shows, these systems can be rather stable. Israel's chronic instability is not due to PR or any other quirk in its electoral system. Rather, it is the unresolved Occupation regime in its back yard. Israel's obsessive tinkering with electoral rules to "fix the system" is like someone building a volcano in his back yard, then using masking tape to "fix" all the resultant cracks in his house.
Projected 120-seat Knesset composition, based on the average of the last 3 pre-election polls. Lists marked with blue are genuinely left-of-center; those with red belong to the hard right (2 Ultra-Orthodox parties usually belonging to this bloc were left unmarked). The Labor-Livni List is called "Zionist Union".
Blocs and Coalitions: Brief History and Outlook
So... Israel's next PM is not necessarily the leader of the largest List. Rather, it's the one who gets the endorsement of at least 61 won seats. For example, in 2009 Tzipi Livni (then leading Kadima) won 28 seats for her List, to Likud's 27. Yet, the Knesset was so right-wing - arguably the most right-wing in Israeli history - that she really had to choose between being in opposition and trying to negotiate the best power-sharing terms she could get from Bibi (eventually Bibi undercut her by cutting a deal with Labor - then still led by that scoundrel Barak - leaving Livni to serve a very inept 3 years as opposition leader).
In other words, as long as the hard-right bloc has 61+ seats, the only governments possible are a hard-right government, or a right-center government with the center playing junior partner. In 2013 the right won precisely 61 seats - much fewer than analysts and polls had predicted - and Bibi chose a right-center government. That has turned out to be a multiple strategic error.
Crisis with the centrist partners (not over Occupation or war, but over domestic and personality matters) was the straw that broke the coalition's back. Meanwhile, the Ultra-Orthodox parties, which for decades were safely aligned with the right, were left out of that government in a rather humiliating manner, and are now pledging to "bat both ways" rather than commit to Likud. Last but not least, there's fragmentation affecting the right, with one center-leaning List led by popular Likud renegade Moshe Kahlon (who sat out in 2013) polling around 6-9 seats many of them from Likud voters, and a breakaway faction of Ultra-Orthodox Shas joining with the furthest-right Kahanist, to a List that might be unpalatable for any coalition-building.
Because of this, as well as a general public malaise with Bibi and the right, the parties that can be reliably counted as hard-right are polling only around 40+ seats combined. This malaise has been around already in 2013, stemming from Bibi's personal unpopularity, multiple scandals, increasing signs for economic slowdown, and also - again, mostly unexpressed but definitely present - fatigue from repeated pointless and bloody wars with Gaza.
The Prime Minister sank, weak-kneed, into the nearest chair. The idea of invisible creatures swooping through the towns and country-side, spreading despair and hopelessness in his voters, made him feel quite faint. (J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince").
Outside the hard-right bloc there are (according to polls) 35-40 seats of centrist parties totally willing to "play ball" with Labor if needs be. So this year, it might be that the simplistic interpretation of "largest List wins" is actually an accurate description. Or perhaps another cliche associated with PR in general and Israel in particular: the parties in the middle might be the kingmakers.
The last polls (no public polls are allowed in the last 3 days pre-election) showed Labor-Livni at +3 over Likud. More importantly, they are in the mid-20s. If progressive Meretz wins the ~5 seats it's polling at, those are safe in Herzog's column, and he'll only need ~30 of center-party seats to build a government. Which is good for him, because the Ultra-Orthodox have already announced they'll never sit with Yair Lapid's party, the centrists who kicked them out of government.
Which brings me to the topic of "Bubble Parties".
But Where's Kadima? Or: Fads and Bubble Parties
"Bubble Parties" have been a constant feature of Israeli elections since the 1970s, but have become really dominant since the collapse of the left bloc in the early 2000s. The recipe is really simple:
- Identify a key target demographic that is beginning to hate its current "political home".
- Promise a newer cleaner form of politics; identify the target's key concerns and even more importantly - its main perceived enemies both domestic and external;
- Recruit attractive talent - or if you're the talent, play it to the max;
- Play the media, you'll always find them unwilling to ask difficult questions once you become an "item";
- Serve hot!
Since Israeli voting patterns are very tribal, steps 1-2 are extremely easy. After that, the only limits are the target's electoral potential and your own execution talent.
The "Bubble Party" system actually started with an earnest attempt: 1977's Dash party, which won 15 seats of mostly Labor voters, and was key to ending the hitherto-uninterrupted Labor rule. Dash's fate was also a harbinger of things to come: by the next elections it had disintegrated. This fate has defined the final key feature of "Bubble Parties": they never last even 10 years. Usually far less.
It's always amusing to see foreigners, even "knowledgable" analysts, completely failing to grasp this "Bubble Party" concept, and what it says about Israeli politics. In the mid-2000s there was a buzz in the US about the Shinui party, having stormed into 3rd place in 2003 with 15 seats. They were seen as a "new", "fresh" and "sane" element in Sharon's government, indicating a promising new direction in Israeli politics. By the next elections - 2006 - Shinui had imploded in a stinkbomb of scandals and internal strife, and failed to get into Knesset.
The Israeli political map of the 21st Century includes a huge "homeless" contingent - former left-of-center voters afraid of anything to do with "Left" and stopped voting for Labor and Meretz - who are willing to fall for any scam artist and help create the next election's successful "Bubble Party". What makes this deliciously ironic, is that this constituency is composed mostly of upper-middle-class, 40s-and-older voters who dominate many aspects Israeli society and economy, including the media. That's why the phenomenon and the scam artists squeezing it have received hardly any scrutiny thus far. Only in these elections, when Kahlon showed up targeting a poorer demographic, a derogatory term has been finally coined for it (the rather lame name "atmosphere party").
Kadima, established in late 2005 when Sharon split from Likud and announced a new election, was a somewhat unusual case. After all, the PM himself set it up, how can it be a bubble? As long as Sharon was around that might have been right, but a went comatose before the election, leaving behind him a "Bubble shell" that still managed to win. They then led one of the most disastrous governments in Israeli history (2 idiotic wars and the PM resigning for a corruption indictment; he was eventually found guilty). Yet, Kadima managed to win almost the same number of seats in 2009. By 2013 it barely got into Knesset with 2 seats, and this year it is completely gone. A bubble, as I have maintained from the start of its sordid history.
The largest current "Bubble Party" is led by Yair Lapid, son of the last leader of the above-mentioned Shinui. So you see, the schpiel doesn't even change much: if you play it even half-right, the suckers are literally falling over each other to vote for you. In 2013, Lapid won 19 seats, vs. 12-14 he was polling at pre-election. He then struck a close alliance with hard-right "Jewish Home" party leader Bennett (an alliance never hinted at during the campaign), lending his 19 centrist seats at the service of settler interests, and making the outgoing government far more right-wing on the Palestinian and foreign fronts than suggested by Knesset composition. On top of this, Lapid spent 2 years as a comically pitiful finance minister, and yet he is once again polling at 12-14 seats... why? Because Israelis, esp. upper-middle-class middle-aged ones, have a very hard time admitting mistakes. Instead, they will wait for the "Bubble" to implode on its own, pretend they never voted for it - and look for the next bubble to follow (see above, the "Kadima" example).
Or... until Labor finally manages to lure them back home. More than anything else, Labor-Livni's current campaign mimics that of a "Bubble Party": devoid of nearly all substance except a measured pandering to the right, and attempting to generate a "Hope and Change" hype. Will they succeed?
The United Arab List: The Law of Unintended Consequences
I mentioned Israeli politicians' incessant tinkering with election rules. The easiest tinkering has been to raise the Threshold Percentage: the minimum fraction of votes a party must win to get into Knesset. There used to be none, then in 1970s 1%, in the 1990s 1.5%, in the 2000s 2% (Germany, e.g., has 5% for the national vote, but one-half of Germany's parliament is elected by district, assuring some representation for regional and ethnic minorities).
Last year, led by foreign minister Lieberman, whose main campaign line is hating on the Arabs, and enabled by Lapid and Livni, the government passed a "Governability Law". Besides several measures designed to prevent that horror of coalition-breakup, thus allowing the Executive to enjoy 4 check-and-balance-free years in power, the law also jacked the threshold up to 3.25%.
By completely, absolutely unrelated coincidence, the constituency of Palestinian-Israelis (formerly known as "Israeli Arabs") has been represented for decades by 3 Lists, each of whose vote totals has hovered around 2%-4%. Most permanent "non-Bubble" Jewish parties get a higher share of the votes. The "Governability" law has forced those Arab parties - 4 parties in 3 Lists, representing anything from Communists working hand-in-hand with Jews (Hadash/Jab'ha, whose platform very much resembles the Greek Syriza), via liberal feminists like Zoabi, to an Islamist party - this law has forced them to either join together in a single List, risking ridicule and finger-pointing in the spirit of "We told you: All Arabs are the Same" - or face complete extinction from the Knesset.
Now, among Palestinian-Israelis, roughly analogous to Mexican-Americans in the US, voting turnout is already very low (for similar reasons to those of Mexican-Americans). The smart money was on the parties never reaching an agreement, and disgusted Arab voters not bothering to turn out, sealing their parties' fate, and also all-but-ensuring 61+ hard-right seats. But, after months of tedious negotiations, a deal was signed and the Joint List was born.
Most refreshingly, the Joint List's #1 is Hadash' newly elected leader Ayman Odeh, a 41-year-old who seems to be a political superstar in the making. Pragmatic, consensus-seeking, soft-spoken yet firm in his responses to hostile assaults from Jewish journalists and politicians (Lieberman tried his expected "I told you all Arabs are the same" spin on him, but it fell flat with a thud). In a way, he represents precisely what Israeli Jews keep looking for in their "Bubble Party" obsession: a new, younger, refreshing type of politics.
The Joint List and Odeh's leadership have invigorated the Palestinian-Israeli public. The Joint List currently polls at 12-13 seats, vs. the 11 seats currently held by its components, and might become the 3rd largest faction in the new Knesset, which would lend it key parliamentary roles. Here's a very personal and direct video clip from Palestinian-Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar of DAM. The lyrics start with "I've never voted before in my life", then go on to celebrate the new sense of unity and pride represented by the Joint List, and passionately call Palestinian-Israelis to turn out and bring the List to 15 seats.
Meanwhile, the new 3.25% threshold might still leave some casualties behind. This is a big concern for the war-of-blocs: a List that comes close to the threshold but misses it, ostensibly costs 4 seats. In reality, since these seats typically get redistributed to the largest Lists of each bloc, it is ~2 net seats lost to the bloc, which is still a lot.
The most at-risk List according to polls, is the new amalgam, called "Yahad", of ex-Shas leaders and far-right Kahanists. They are polling right at the threshold. In the past, the power of far-right parties was usually exaggerated at the polls, so here's hoping they'll indeed miss the threshold.
Unfortunately, the second-most-at-risk is Meretz, who won 6 seats last time but only 3 in 2009. In terms of positioning, this year looks frighteningly like 2009 for Meretz, sandwiched between attractive and aggressive campaigns on its immediate right (Labor-Livni) and left (the Joint List). And in 2015, if you only "win" 3 seats, you end up with 0. One can only hope their current polling average of 5 seats holds up or more.
Last and most deliciously, threshold-jacking Lieberman himself has been polling at 5-6 seats, and constantly dropping. Last time he ran alone (2009) he cornered the Russian vote and then some, winning 15 seats. But a few months ago a large money-for-contracts/jobs corruption scandal erupted involving a minister and deputy minister from his party. Seems like the Russians have tired of him, although I'm not sure where they're turning instead. If indeed Lieberman misses the thresholds, it will be one of the sweetest examples of poetic political justice.
Whew. Thanks to the 2.5 readers who have stayed for all this. Wait for Tuesday 1 PM Pacific, when the polls close and immediately at least 3 media outlets release their rather extensive and fairly accurate exit polls results. Will there be reason for hope and change in Israel? As I wrote, it doesn't depend only upon the election - but the election might help.
---- UPDATE MON 1:20 PM PDT ----
I wasn't really planning on adding an update, but FellowTraveler in a comment, alerted me to a very useful chart from the Economist, tracking the historical Knesset makeup and how parties evolved, merged, split, migrated (e.g., see the migration of the national-religious party (NRP) from center to far-right in the 1970s), etc.
There's a bloc-based color theme, which is always a challenge (what to do when Labor joins a Likud government and runs the wars for it, as happened in 2009-2013). For another example, I'd argue that Kadima should have a mix of 'Likud' and 'center' colors, because it was always dominated by Likud hacks, over a fairly small minority of hacks from other sources.
That aside, it's surprisingly accurate, and depicts the evolution from the Labor-dominated map of the 50s and 60s, to the bipolar Labor/Likud map from the 70s to the early 90s, to the recent rise of serial "Bubble Parties" mostly at the expense of the Labor bloc. Note how the "Bubble Party" names in the middle (maroon color) change, yet their magnitude remains similarly huge from 2003 onwards.
In other news, I lied. The very-last Haaretz poll average, actually has Labor-Livni leading Likud 25-21 not 24-21, and Bibi's 'native right bloc' at 56 (including ultra-Orthodox) rather than 57. Fluctuations, but in a positive direction. We'll be much wiser in 24 hours...