There has been much discussion on this site and in the media in the last couple weeks over the uber-schmuck Benyamin Netanyahu’s war-mongering 50-minute campaign ad using Congress-critters as props and his Likud party’s flagging electoral fortunes in the polls leading up to today’s Israeli Knesset (parliamentary) elections. Many on the left are gleeful that the far-right Likud looks set to win at least a few seats fewer than the center-left Zionist Union. But due to the nature of Israel’s electoral system, once the counting is done, Bibi could lose and still end up with another term as prime minister, potentially with an even more right-wing government.
And in the chortling over Bibi’s predicament, the most important question of all is rarely asked: which will help the prospects for a peaceful and just settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, Bibi’s loss or his win? Counterintuitively, another few years of far-right wing rule may be needed before there can be any realistic hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Follow me below the fold to find out why…
Part 1: Stop Bibi
First, while we wait for the results to start coming in, is it possible that Bibi has lost badly enough to be unable to form a governing coalition? He needs the support of a minimum of 61 of the Knesset's 120 members. 11 polls were released in the last 2 days of polling allowed before Election Day (ending last Friday). The average (with rounding) results in the following figures:
Zionist Union (Labor + Hatnuah): 25 (center/left)
Likud: 21 (far-right)
Joint List (Arab parties + Hadash): 13 (left, but non-Zionist)
Yesh Atid: 12 (center)
Jewish Home: 12 (neo-fascist)
Kulanu: 9 (center/center-right??)
Shas: 7 (right but heredi)
UTJ: 6 (right but heredi)
Meretz: 5 (left)
Yisrael Beiteinu: 5 (neo-fascist)
Yachad: 4 (neo-fascist but heredi)
The most obvious way to create a coalition would be along ideological lines, led by either a center/left bloc or a far-right/neo-fascist bloc. Of course, in any parliamentary system things are rarely that simple, but let's try this exercise first: the Zionist Union, Yesh Atid, and Meretz have 42 votes between them, not nearly enough to govern.
Let's look at Kulanu, a party led by Moshe Kahlon, a somewhat pragmatic man who fled from Likud. His party is the newest entry in the long-standing Israeli pattern of centrist third-parties emerging around a single personality with only vague policy positions. Let's assume that either out of a pragmatic centrist ideology or out of spite at the direction Bibi has taken Kahlon's old party Likud, Kahlon decides to join with the center-left bloc: that gets it up to 51 seats, still 10 short (though as a potential kingmaker, Kahlon would likely be one of the last to join any coalition and would demand a steep price).
The Joint List Quandary:
Now things get hairy. The Joint List could join the center-left bloc, but this raises issues on both sides. First, a strong majority of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens who plan on voting for the Joint List say they want the Joint List to join the government under Labor's Isaac Herzog in order to kick Bibi out and improve the dire economic and social prospects of the Arab population. However, several of the list's MKs (Members of the Knesset) have stated that they will not join any governing coalition with the Zionist parties. Until at least the next election, the majority of Joint List voters who want the faction to join a Herzog-led government would have no way to hold accountable any Joint List MKs who refused to (which would be difficult even then, since Israelis vote for party lists, not candidates).
Second, even if the Joint List in its entirety were willing to devote its 13 votes to a Zionist Union-led coalition, this move would be politically toxic for the members of the leftist and centrist parties. Both because of the worrying recent increase in anti-Arab bigotry in mainstream Jewish Israeli society and because most Jewish Israelis of all political stripes see Zionism as an existential "red-line" concern, allowing MKs who are adamantly opposed to Zionism (at least as they understand the term) into the government is a non-starter. Herzog could gain the support of the Joint List only by losing the support of most, if not all, members of Kulanu and Yesh Atid, and also almost certainly at least a few MKs would defect from the Zionist Union itself over this. This is especially true as even the Zionist Union joined the latest disgraceful and undemocratic attempt to ban Haneen Zoabi from the Knesset.
Even if the Joint List was willing to throw Zoabi under the bus, she only expresses in a more strident way the Arab community's widespread hostility to being marginalized and discriminated against by the Jewish establishment. There are clearly reasons not a single government in Israel's entire 67 year history has EVER invited Israel's Arab Palestinian citizens to join in a governing coalition: they form a politically untouchable caste in Israeli society, with the exception of Druze who have served in the IDF or other examples of "good Arabs," who are allowed to run on the ticket of mainstream parties, so long as they pledge allegiance to Zionism and out-hawk Jewish hawks on the occupation and national security.
So the most likely favorable outcome here would be the Joint List supporting Herzog's government from the outside, much as Arab parties did for Yitzak Rabin's government before his assassination. Their 13 MKs would not help Herzog get closer to power, but they could theoretically prevent Bibi from forming a government by preventing him from getting to 61 seats (much as Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett blocked the heredi parties Shas and UTJ from joining the government).
The Ultra-Orthodox Parties:
So after all that, Herzog would still be 10 seats short. How could he get them without the Joint List? Shas and UTJ combined are projected to have 13 seats. Bringing them on-board would bring Herzog up to 64 seats and secure the premiership. Would these two heredi (ultra-orthodox) parties join him? Previous Labor governments, including Rabin's and Barak's, depended on such parties for their majorities. These parties support the settlements and, thus, tend to look dimly on the two-state solution. However, they've historically cared far more about protecting the social safety net and special benefits the heredi depend on. They might be willing to support a center-left government as long as the heredi benefit cuts of the outgoing government were reduced and as long as Herzog didn't make any major diplomatic concessions (such as freezing settlement construction or being willing to divide Jerusalem).
Unfortunately, resentment among more secular Israelis at the special treatment the heredim receive was the main driving force behind Yesh Atid in the last election and it's unlikely Yesh Atid and the heredi parties would agree to sit in the same government. In fact, keeping the heredi parties out of the government was Yair Lapid's and Naftali Bennett's joint demand in 2013 and resulted in Bibi having to form a government with those two parties rather than with his preferred heredi allies.
So, Herzog could gain Shas' and UTJ's 13 seats only by losing at least the 12 seats of Yesh Atid and the 5 seats of Meretz (which as a left-wing and secular party is also hostile to the increasing influence of the heredi in Israeli politics), for a net loss of 4 seats. Much as with approaching the speed of light barrier, the closer Herzog gets to 61 seats, the harder picking up each additional seat becomes, until the prospect of ever reaching a parliamentary majority recedes into infinity.
Bibi gives it a try:
So let's see if Bibi can do any better. His Likud party starts off with 21 votes and he can add the 12 votes of Bennett's Jewish Home party rather easily. The two men despise each other, but they share the same exclusionary vision of a Israel as, well, a "Jewish Home" (Arabs and others need not apply). They share the same far-right wing politics and "the world is united against us" worldview. Just as they have sat in the same government for the last two years, their personal animosity is unlikely to prevent them from doing the same going forward. So, that brings Bibi to 33 seats.
Yisrael Beiteinu's leader, the perpetually scandal-tarred Russian-descended xenophobe Avigdor Lieberman, precipitated the union of the Arab parties and Hadash into the Joint List by pushing through a law that raised the threshold of admittance to the Knesset to 3.25% of the popular vote. Individually, a couple of the Arab parties would have had trouble clearing this threshold and would have been eliminated from the Knesset altogether (Lieberman's goal) had they not united. Much of the expected increase in Arab turnout this time is due to the widespread perception among Palestinian citizens of Israel that the Israeli government is trying to silence them by suppressing their vote, and much as among minority voters in Florida in 2012, this suppression campaign has backfired spectacularly. So much so that the Arab-led parties could be the third-largest faction in the Knesset. Due to chronic scandals, Lieberman's own party has flirted with the 3.25% threshold in a few polls, meaning that in theory his party could be eliminated by the trap he set for the Arab parties. But the most recent polling indicates that Yisrael Beiteinu will be in the next Knesset with about 5 seats. They'd bring Bibi to 38 seats.
Next, Bibi could turn to the heredi parties. Shas and UTJ have beef with Bibi for excluding them from his last government and allowing Lapid's and Bennett's "burden-sharing" legislation to go forth. These parties would demand at least a partial reversal of these reforms, a price Bibi (and most likely Bennett) would be willing to pay to stay in power. Ideologically, Shas and UTJ have far more in common with the right than the left, so only personal animosity towards Bibi could prevent them from joining his coalition. Add their 13 votes to Bibi's coalition, bringing it up to 51 seats. Add in as well the Shas splinter group, the Yahad party, and its 5 votes (assuming the polls are correct that it clears the threshold). Bibi is now at 56 seats, within striking distance of a majority.
The easiest way for Bibi to get a majority at this point is to recruit Kahlon's Kulanu party on board. His former home was Likud, so it's not inconceivable he'd return. Again, given Kahlon's generally right-of-center views, personal animosity would be the main thing to motivate Kahlon not to join Bibi. But Bibi could also approach Yesh Atid. Either party would bring him above 61 and secure the premiership. And Yair Lapid has refused to say he would refuse to join a Bibi-led government again. Despite ideology, after the last election both Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah and Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid joined with Likud and far-right parties, and while this coalition was unwieldy and doomed to collapse, a second act seems far from implausible. In Israel, as in many countries with this type of parliamentary system, parties serve largely as vehicles for the ambitions of individual politicos. Ideology is distinctly secondary to the House of Cards-style scramble for power.
In any event, it's clear that if the polls are correct, Bibi's Likud party will come in second to Herzog's Zionist Union, but he will still be in the best position to form a coalition.
Are other outcomes possible? Sure. Any of the parties Likud needs to secure a majority could demand a price the resignation of Bibi from the premiership and his replacement by another member of Likud. Bibi would resist this blackmail with every weapon his arsenal, but if Likudnik's are presented with the choice of Bibi and opposition vs. someone else and power, one imagines Bibi would be kicked to the curb with rather unseemly haste. Nothing personal, just business.
Or Reuven Rivlin, Israel's president, could try to insist on a unity government between the top two parties, Zionist Union and Likud. Such an arrangement might see Bibi and Herzog work out a rotating premiership arrangement, similar to that between Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres in the 1980s or that in the possibly-still-valid agreement between Herzog and Livni: 2 years of one, then 2 years of the other. But other than Rivlin, polls show virtually no one else wants this kind of national unity government. The outgoing government was unwieldy enough and a national unity government would have an even harder time forging agreement on any matter of substance. Most Israelis want a government that can get things done, which means one of either the left/center or right/center, but not both.
Or, in theory, the process of coalition formation could go on for long enough that neither Bibi nor Herzog could form a government. If Lapid and Kahlon refuse to give their support to either faction leader, they could theoretically be jointly tasked with forming a government, though they would face the same obstacles that Bibi and Herzog would. The end result would still be that a right-wing government would be more likely than a left/center government, but it might be led by Lapid or Kahlon. This is pretty unlikely though.
Electoral Surprise?
The underlying assumption behind all of the speculation above is that the polling is correct. What if it's wrong? In 2013, polls in the last few days prior to the election severely underestimated the number of voters who would support Yesh Atid. It was polling around 13 seats and ended up with 19, second only to Bibi's Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu alliance. A similar shock result is possible. Yair Lapid is telling everyone who will listen that lightning will strike twice and Yesh Atid will outperform its polls once again. Moshe Kahlon's Kulanu party has seen the most variability in recent polling of any party, ranging between 8 and 11 seats. It might be the beneficiary of a late surge in much the same way Yesh Atid was in 2013. Or one of the smaller parties might shock us all: Meretz could end up with 8 seats. Or it could fail to clear the threshold. Ditto for any of the smaller parties.
The most likely surprise is the Zionist Union outperforming the polls. While it could certainly under-perform them, there appears to be a late surge of support for the ticket that could have intensified since Friday. The Zionist Union could get as high as 28 seats and Likud could get as few as 17-18. Obviously, the better the Zionist Union does, the easier Herzog will find forming a coalition. But unless the polls are drastically wrong, Bibi will still have an easier job forming a coalition. Adding 3-5 seats to Herzog's alliance would bring him closer to 61, but close doesn't cut it. Much as we all despise Bibi around here, he is still the most likely PM going forward. And even if he's jettisoned, Israel will be left with a coalition government that will not have a mandate for much of anything other than not being Bibi.
Part 2: Should We Want Bibi to Lose?
This might sound like a no-brainer. Yes. Yes, we obviously want him to lose. 1) After spitting in Obama's face as often as he has, and 2) after his assault on Gaza which killed over a thousand innocent women and children but failed to contribute in any way to a diplomatic agreement or increased security for Israelis, and 3) after he admitted just yesterday that he doesn't support a Palestinian state, will not allow one to be created while he is PM, and that he has always supported settlement construction because it makes a Palestinian state impossible, there are many reasons to want Bibi to go "bye-bye."
But would his replacement be much better? Perhaps when it comes to injecting more social justice into the government's economic policy and reducing income inequality, which polls show is the Israeli public's main concern. But on the crucial issue of the two-state solution?
We all know how this movie ends, at least those of us who support the two-state solution as the most just solution that is also remotely achievable, as opposed to those who support a one-state "solution" that would solve nothing and is a complete non-starter for virtually all Israeli Jews. Those of us in the land of the possible know how this ends: 2 states for 2 people, a democratic and secure Israel with a Jewish majority but with protections for minorities alongside a democratic and secure Palestine with an Arab Palestinian majority but protections for minorities. The borders will be based on the 1967 pre-Israeli occupation borders, with mutually agreed-upon land-swaps. Each side will have to make painful sacrifices: Israelis to give up Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem so the Palestinians can make it their capital and Palestinians to give up on achieving anything close to full "right of return" for the 750,000 Palestinians displaced from their homes in Israel in the Nakba of 1948 and their millions of descendants. This has been at the heart of every peace plan from the Clinton Parameters to the Geneva Initiative to the 2014 revisions to the Arab League Peace Plan.
But in my travels through the region in the last few years, I've come to realize that on neither side have leaders prepared their own people for the sacrifices that will be needed to establish lasting peace. Among Palestinians, emotional attachment to the idea of return for the refugees of 1948 (and 1967) is a core part of Palestinian identity. In a pinch, if that's the condition of getting a state, Mahmoud Abbas or another Palestinian leader might agree to give it up, but only if, unlike Arafat at Camp David, they're cool with being assassinated shortly thereafter. Likewise, fear that Yitzhak Rabin might be willing to pull settlers out of the West Bank and divide Jerusalem was enough to motivate his assassin, as well as to help foster a climate of fear where Israelis willingly voted for Bibi the first time just months later, effectively burying the Oslo Accords.
As this is a post on the Israeli elections, I'll focus just on the Israelis here. Bibi swears up and down he will never divide Jerusalem. But so does Isaac Herzog. Just a year ago, he was willing to talk about Jerusalem having "two capitals" but still being "united" as one open city. Now he downplays that and swears undying fealty to the lodestar of modern Israeli Jewish politics: "Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of Israel." And as Assaf points out, Herzog has criticized Bibi from the right, dismissing his claims to be "Mr. Security," and has played into negative tropes about Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens.
But let's assume all this is just campaign rhetoric and that, in office, Herzog would immediately try to negotiate with Abbas for a two-state solution along the lines laid out above. Who would support him in this? Obviously not Likud: Bibi was the only one in his party who even verbally supported a two-state solution, and that was only from 2009-2015, and was in any case obviously insincere the entire time anyway. Likud's own charter rejects the right of the Palestinians to a state, in less bloodthirsty terms than Hamas's charter rejects Israel's right to exist, but both parties are rejectionist in this sense.
Obviously not a party called Jewish Home. In fact the leader, Naftali Bennett, has stated his preference to annex Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control. Avigdor Lieberman nominally supports a Palestinian state, but under the condition that Israel annexes Jewish settlements and redraws the border so the towns that contain most of Israel's Palestinian citizens would fall within the new Palestinian state. This kind of de-facto ethnic cleansing, which openly seeks to further "Judaize" Israel, would not be welcomed by the international community or Israel's Arab minority or the Palestinian Authority. But Lieberman's preferences here are irrelevant: if he was unable to achieve his demographic "re-sorting" as part of a bloc with 31 seats, he certainly won't be able to impose his will with only 5 seats. Lieberman's conditions for supporting 2 states make him an impossible partner for Herzog.
The heredi parties? Mmmm, no. They have a deep attachment to isolated settlements at key sites from the Bible, like Beit El (the site of Jacob's ladder dream) or Kiryat Arba (the settlement in Hebron that includes the Tomb of the Patriarchs). These settlements would have to be either evacuated or turned into open neighborhoods in which Palestinians could purchase houses, and the heredi parties are not going to agree to this. So count Shas, UTJ, and Yachad out.
Kahlon's Kulanu party? Against dividing Jerusalem. Lapid's Yesh Atid party? Against dividing Jerusalem. And again, even the Zionist Union's leader, Herzog himself, is publicly against it.
But let's assume he's not and that he can bring his entire bloc (25 seats) with him on dividing Jerusalem. He'd have the support of Meretz (5 seats) and the Joint List (13 seats). That's a theoretical 43 MKs in support of the most wrenching sacrifice Israel will have to make for peace. How could you get to 61? Not that it matters, because this entire exercise assumes that there will be no defections from the Zionist Bloc on an issue where party members were not held to a litmus test on being willing to divide Jerusalem. In fact, the litmus test works the other way around: only Meretz and the Joint List are willing to publicly profess support for dividing Jerusalem and they will have no more than about 20 seats between them.
Thus, as much as it pains me to say this, Herzog in office would not likely be able to ink a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. And Bibi would continue to be unwilling to even entertain the idea. Two states has never been more necessary for Israel's own security, given that Israel cannot remain both democratic and majority-Jewish while continuing to occupy a population of Palestinians that, when combined with the 21% of Israelis who are Palestinian Arab, leaves Israel with control of a population that is roughly half-Jewish and half-Arab. Something has to give, either Israel's democracy or its majority-Jewish nature. Giving up the occupation is the only way to ensure both, but most Israelis do not feel the urgency.
There is an old saying in the region: "I am strong, why should I negotiate? I am weak, how can I afford to negotiate?" Support for a negotiated settlement increased after the First Intifada but nosedived after the Second. It The terror attacks of the late 90s and the Second Intifada delivered blows to both the left and the pro-peace camp in Israel from which they have not been able to recover. However, the relative peace and stability of late 2009-late 2012 did not witness any increase in support for negotiations or any serious attempts by the Israeli government to participate in them.
Most Israelis say they support a two-state solution. But they do not want to divide Jerusalem. And after the suicide bomber waves of 2001-2004 and Hamas rocket attacks from 2005 to the present, few Israelis have faith that any Palestinian leader can deliver security for Israelis, even if Israel made concessions. Most Jewish Israelis consider a final-status agreement with the Palestinians to be a very-long-term prospect, akin to the day the mashiah will come. The status quo does not seem unsustainable, at least as far the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem goes, and will not appear unsustainable until it begins to seriously negatively affect the Israeli economy. Until the broad center of the Israeli electorate believes that the costs of inaction are greater than the risks of bold action, there will not be a constituency in Israel for the major sacrifices Israelis will have to make to secure a lasting peace with its neighbors.
This shift in political consciousness will not occur absent some drastic change. This is why I believe things will have to get worse before they get better. Another few years of right-wing rule under Bibi or someone even further to the right, of deteriorating relations with the US, of increased international isolation, of increased support for the BDS movement and BDS-style actions, and of the increasing strain all of this will place on the Israeli economy.
This could help prompt the shift in consciousness necessary for there to be a large enough constituency in Israel for a credible prime ministerial candidate to say, "A Jewish and democratic Israel or an apartheid state or a Palestinian majority non-Zionist state. These are our only options. Choose. For the sake of Israel, choose."
I want to believe.
Update 4:30PM: After some initial erroneous reports, the first exit polls are out and point to a virtual tie between Likud and the Zionist Union. Yahad appears to have fallen short of the threshold and Meretz and Yisrael Beiteinu appear to have just cleared it, but we'll know more once the actual vote counts come in. The takeaway is that Likud appears to have gained at the expense of Jewish Home. As expected, 1) Likud will need the support of either Kulanu or Yesh Atid to form a right-wing government and 2) the Zionist Union will need the support of both centrist, plus either the heredi parties or the Joint List to form a center-left government (which makes it even more unlikely). The most likely scenario (which you can verify for yourself with this interactive coalition-builder): either a Bibi-led right-wing government or a Bibi-led Likud-Zionist Union national unity government. Bibi wins again.