Jean Shaoul
Israel’s elections held on Tuesday have failed to deliver a conclusive result, delivering a potentially fatal blow to the political career of the likely soon-to-be-indicted prime minister and close Trump ally, Benjamin Netanyahu.
With 95 percent of votes counted in a poll that saw voter turnout of around 70 percent, up slightly from April’s deadlocked vote, Netanyahu’s Likud party has secured 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. This is one less than the 33 seats won by the Blue and White Party led by former Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) chief of staff Benny Gantz.
Gantz’s so-called “centre left” bloc, which includes the Labour Party and the Meretz Party, which lined up with former prime minister and army chief Ehud Barak, has captured 44 seats. However, in staking claim to form government Gentz, like Netanyahu, will be able to point to the support of 56 Knesset members. This is because the Joint List, an alliance of Palestinian parties which is projected to win 12 seats, is ready to back the former IDF head’s Blue and White against Netanyahu.
The Joint List has even offered to join in a Blue and White-led coalition government, but Gantz has rejected this.
This leaves Avigdor Lieberman, whose right-wing nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our Home) Party is set to win eight seats, as the potential kingmaker. In April Lieberman refused to join a Netanyahu-led coalition unless it introduced legislation to force ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the IDF. Now this longtime Netanyahu ally turned rival is demanding that Likud form a secular national unity government with Blue and White, excluding the religious parties, and threatening that if it doesn’t he could support Gantz in forming a government without Likud.
Yesterday, Lieberman reiterated his support for a “broad liberal unity government” that would include Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud, and Blue and White.
Gantz for his part said that while he is waiting for the final election results, “We will act to form a broad unity government that will express the will of the people.” However, he has ruled out serving under Netanyahu or sitting in cabinet with him.
Should a “national unity government” be formed, the Joint List would be the largest opposition party. Yesterday, its chairman Ayman Odeh said he was interested in becoming the first ever Arab leader of the official opposition in the Knesset, including “attending security briefings.”
In the short term, the results mean weeks of political horse trading and infighting, as Netanyahu seeks to cling to power. The elections were for him always a desperate gamble to evade the possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail for any one of several charges of corruption. He faces a pre-trial hearing within the next few weeks.
Israel’s prime minister since March 2009 and for three years in the late 1990s, Netanyahu has come to personify the Zionist state’s embrace of rabid militarism and Greater Israeli expansionism, and its cultivation of ultra-nationalists and the religious right. He spearheaded the recent adoption of the “Nation-State Law,” which enshrines Jewish supremacy as the legal foundation of the Israeli state. For years he has agitated for US military action against Iran. Boasts about his close friendship and political partnership with Trump were central to his election campaign.
After failing to form a government in May following April’s similarly inconclusive elections, Netanyahu preempted President Reuven Rivlin’s right to call on another member of the Knesset to try and form a government, by forcing a bill through the Knesset calling for fresh elections. Had he won Tuesday’s elections, his bloc would have pushed through legislation granting a sitting prime minister immunity from prosecution and if necessary further legislation curbing the powers of the Supreme Court, which is viewed as likely to overturn any such immunity bill.
In a bid to secure his election victory, Netanyahu resorted to countless maneuvers, many of them illegal. Last week, Facebook suspended Netanyahu’s chatbot for 24 hours after it sent messages stating that “Arabs want to annihilate us,” which the technology giant said breached its policy on hate speech.
Much of his campaigning centred on fear mongering and attempts to suppress the Arab vote, with Netanyahu “warning” his supporters that they needed to counterbalance high turnout in Arab areas. He had sought legislation, opposed by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, that would have allowed political parties to film inside polling stations, a move seen as intended to intimidate Arab voters. In the event, this backfired, prompting a significantly higher Arab turnout than in April, when only 49 percent of Arab Israelis voted.
Just days before the election, in a move calculated to appeal to his ultra-nationalist support base and undermine other far-right parties, Netanyahu pledged to annex the Jordan Valley and settlements in the West Bank, illegally occupied since the 1967 war.
Gantz’s Blue and White have voiced no opposition to this. Indeed, Gantz has no major differences with Netanyahu on any political, economic and military issues. He focused his campaign almost entirely on Netanyahu’s personal scandals and divisive tactics, presenting himself as the only clean and responsible alternative, thereby underscoring the lack of any political vehicle through which the working class could express its opposition to the financial elite on whose behalf Israel’s militaristic and corrupt politicians speak.
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