The results of legislative elections held in Israel on November 1 saw the right-wing parties loyal to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu winning 64 out of the 120 seats of the Knesset. His opponents in the current coalition, led by former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, won 51 seats, with the remaining five seats held by the United Arab List party, which would join either one of the two blocs when a new government is formed.
With these results, Netanyahu is confirmed to head the next government, whether it is exclusively formed from his loyal bloc of parties or it is expanded to include other parties or members of the Knesset.
The elections and the results raise several questions: what enabled Netanyahu’s comeback to power after spending 14 months as leader of the opposition? how Israel managed to break the vicious circle which forced the country to hold four elections over only 3.5 years? and does Netanyau as a leader of a powerful coalition of parties mean an end to Israel’s political instability?
Implications of the Elections
Israel believes that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, citing that its political system is based on partisan plurality and the rotation of power through elections. However, the pattern of political interactions over recent years, and more precisely since 2015, in fact contradicted the dominant perception of democratic systems. That is, rivalry between Israeli political forces in general elections does not revolve around programs, policies and ideological and social biases, rather it revolved around Benjamin Netanyahu who served as prime minister for 15 years (from 1996 to 1999, and from 2009 to mid 2021). He broke Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion's record as Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
The full spectrum of Israeli opposition kept making the same mistake since 2015 by centering their election campaigns around the sole goal of removing Netanyahu from power and even political life. In doing this, the opposition overlooked the fact that the issues suffered by the Israeli society that candidates seek to solve were not caused by Netanyahu’s rise to power, but by deformities riddling the whole political system because of its rigidity, weakness of its parties and institutions as well as because the opposition lacks alternatives that can be introduced to the public to counter policies of the right-wing led by Netanyahu.
In response to the opposition’s personalization of the crisis, Israeli voters punished these parties by giving Netanyahu’s camp a majority of votes that was not expected by public opinion survey centers which, on the eve of the elections, forecast that the best result that Netanyahu’s coalition can achieve would be no more than 61 seats.
The message that the Israeli public wanted to send to the opposition leaders is that choosing a powerful leader who can take decisions is better than a formal democracy that led the country to political instability over the past four years. This message was clear enough even before it took shape through a study published by the Israel Democracy Institute upon reviewing the results of polls conducted in the first half of the current year. The study shows that the Israeli public took a sharp turn to the right during the period of political instability. Some 60 percent of those polled prefer policies embraced by the right-wing. Up to 71 percent of the youth aged 18-24 years expressed the same preference with answers explaining that they support Netanyahu’s security approaches to addressing Iran’s nuclear issue and relations with the Palestinians. The same young group reject the moderate positions taken by opposition parties on these two issues, despite the fact that this group largely prefers left-wing’s positions on social freedoms.
No doubt Netanyahu, through his leadership of the opposition over the past 14 months, succeeded in stigmatizing the governments led by Naftali Bennete and Yair Lapid as weak because of failing to take strong action against the United States’ bid to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, against Washington’s sponsorship of the natural gas deal with Lebanon, considered as unfair by Netanyahu and because of growing security breaches into Israel by Palestinian groups over the same period of time.
Radical Changes
A comparison between results of the Knesset elections, held in early November this year, and the previous elections held in March 2021, shows that Netanyahu’s camp and the Yesh Atid party (There is a Future), led by head of caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, emerged the biggest winners in the recent elections. The share of the Likud party led by Netanyahu went up to 32 seats, up from 30 in the previous elections. Moreover, the religious parties i.e. the Religious Zionist Party, led by Bezalel Yoel Smotrich, the Otzma Yehudit party, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Shas party led by Aryeh Deri, and the United Torah Judaism ( Yahadut HaTora) led by Yitzhak Goldknopf, increased their share to 24, up from 17 in the previous elections. The biggest losers were the two left-wing parties Meretz and Labor whose combined share fell from 13 to 4 seats hard-won by the Labor party, while Meretz fell narrowly below the 3.25% Knesset threshold.
The United Arab List won five seats only, and the alliance of the Hadash party (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) led by Ayman Oudeh and the Ta’al (the Arab Movement for Renewal) led by Ahmed Tibi, won also five seats, while the National Democratic Alliance ( Balad) failed to achieve the Knesset threshold.
Except for Yesh Atid, considered as a centrist party, two other centrist parties, the Kahol Lavan party (Blue and White), led by Benny Gantz, and the Tikvah Hadasha (New Hope) led by Gideon Sa'ar, separately run in the 2021 elections winning 8 and 6 seats, respectively. In the recent elections, the two parties formed a joint list named the National Camp winning 12 seats, down from 14 won in the previous elections. However, the overall percentage of centrist parties, including Yesh Atid, means that this bloc’s representation grew by five seats. It should be noted that counting the three parties as part of the centrist bloc was useful in one case only, and that is when Netanyahu’s camp was unable to win an absolute majority. Currently, the three parties do not seem to be willing to cooperate with each other, especially because Netanyahu is reportedly seeking to expand his alliance to include the National Camp and even the Yisrael Beiteinu party led by Avigdor Lieberman who won 6 seats in the new Knesset.
In other words, it can be said that the next Israeli government will be formed either from a powerful and highly cohesive right-wing coalition with 64 seats in the Knesset which means the opposition will not be able to disrupt its plans and security and political decisions. Consequently, the opposition in the Knesset will be weak and can only place pressure on Netanyahu from outside the Knesset by provoking the public against his policies and using civil society organizations and associations as well as media campaigns at home and abroad. If Netanyahu manages to expand his alliance attracting the National Camp and Yisrael Beiteinu, the opposition, including only Yesh Atid and Arab parties, is set to grow significantly weaker and even fail to take action in the arena of civil society against Netanyahu.
Conflicting Predictions
If the question that begged itself over the past four years was how political stability can be restored after four failing elections, Netanyahu’s comeback to power backed by solid representation in the Knesset for Likud and religious parties may hold a cautious answer to that question. That is, there are concerns that keeping the alliance cohesive and solid in the next four years at the expense of social cohesion. This means that religious parties, including zionist and Haredi parties, are not hiding their desire to bolster the policy of judaising the state, a bid that entails risks such as fighting battles with secular movements which seek to shrink the influence of religion on the state and society. Religious parties are also likely to fight with the pro-peace camp which wants a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, while the religious parties are working towards annexing the West Bank and back settlement activity in the territory. Moreover, religious parties do not care about growing tensions which are straining relations between Arabs and Jews inside Israel, and even seek to tighten their grip on East Jerusalem. The position is what caused clashes between the Israeli army and Arabs over the past two years.
On the other side, Netanyahu’s corruption trials in four cases for misusing public funds, abuse of power, and the fact that he might be convicted in all or some of these cases, are raising concerns in Israel’s society as it can trigger clashes between Netanyahu’s supporters and opponents. Like those loyal to the former U.S. President Donald Trump, Netanyahu’s supporters believe that the left-wing’s dominance on the media and pressure on the judiciary seek to destroy the foundations of the state and the society’s ethics.
If Trump’s experience showed that these fears of deep cracks developing in the state and society can come true threatening to trigger what can be perceived as “civil war”, then the situation in Israel is more fragile. And if clashes between Netanyahu’s supporters and opponents erupt, the Israeli public and security institutions will not be able to contain the situation that can explode beyond control if the court convicts Netanyahu over the crimes.
What makes it worse is that the opposition in Israel, especially after its failure to defeat Netanyahu in the ballot box, will have no further option but to take to streets to place pressure on the judiciary to speed up his trials. Consequently, if Netanyahu’s return has any positive impact on the stability of the government coalition, the issues that can be triggered by his comeback and preparedness to give in to the demands of his partners in the religious parties can no doubt reverse this stability into a situation far more dangerous than having caretaker governments, as was the case over recent years.
