Israel’s political instability continues its march into uncharted territory. An unprecedented 2 general elections in 2019 were followed in early 2020, completing an unprecedented 3 general elections in <12 months. And 9 days from now there’ll be yet a fourth election, marking an unprecedented 3 consecutive calendar years with general elections.
If the 2nd election called in 2019 seemed like a parliamentary fluke due to coalition negotiations that went unexpectedly sideways, starting in spring 2020 this has snowballed into all-out general political instability. As the headline image shows, massive anti-Bibi demonstrations, and violence against demonstrators from police and pro-Bibi citizens, have continued and even expanded during the pandemic. Major political parties have appeared, disappeared, merged and splintered all over the place at a dizzying pace, including — new for this 4th election — a split in Bibi’s own Likud party.
And yet, at least in my books the now-indicted Bibi remains favored to emerge on the other side of this election still on top of the heap. This will be first and foremost thanks to his uncanny talent (and obsession) for wheeling and dealing. Somehow he keeps managing to entice or pressure people who should know better, into shady deals that benefit him the most, and often are not even a win-win.
Trump and Bibi could not be more different on this. Trump may have paid someone to ghost-write a book called “Art of the Deal” for him, and endlessly brags about his dealmaking savvy, but now everyone (save some of his deluded worshippers) knows what a lousy dealmaker he is. Bibi OTOH would prefer to highlight his supposed “vision”, “statesmanship”, “responsibility”, “competence”, etc. — but really almost 100% boils down to his Olympic-medal-grade talent to get a leg up on everyone else through various shady deals.
Not sure why I write this diary, really…. the audience for I-P topics here has shrunk pitiably over the past few years. But FWIW if you’d like to learn more, read the salmon disclaimer then go below the fold.
the basics
Israel’s electoral system resembles many European countries: proportional voting to the national Knesset parliament. There are no districts — voters just put one slip (yup, a physical paper slip) into an envelope, representing an electoral List of candidates (a party, ad-hoc amalgam of parties, or something even crazier).
All Lists whose vote total clears the threshold percent split the 120 seats proportionally, and their candidates become Knesset members according to the List order. No List has ever reached 60 seats, so a ruling coalition of at least 61 seats is created post-election. The government is set up by this coalition, and the prime minister must be also a Knesset member. Thus, separation of powers is far smaller than in the US system.
Parliamentary terms are nominally set when the election is called, for a duration of 4-4.5 years. However, Israeli coalitions rarely survive the full term; it last happened >30 years ago. Sometimes it’s just a coalition partner pulling the plug a few months early to gain advantage. But often unwieldy coalitions collapse much earlier.
The two 2019 elections were unique in that no one even succeeded in building a coalition, so a new election was eventually called. Bibi got to continue ruling the country as an “interim” PM for over a year in 2019-2020, with some nominal limitations.
a 21st-century tragedy
In the late 20th Century the two major blocs vying to lead a coalition in Israel were center-left vs. center-right. But since 2000 the main center-left parties have shrunk dramatically (see graph above), and the question became only what flavor of right-wing will rule, and how much moderating influence might center and center-left forces (either as List members or as junior coalition partners) have. Usually, and sadly, almost no such influence.
Then since 2015 things took a turn for the even-worse, and the elections became all about Bibi. No one offers a serious alternative agenda, surely not on the Occupation (a term that has become taboo again). It’s just about a repeatedly failed, Charlie Brown and Lucy style, effort to get Bibi out of office. So the two “warring” forces vying to lead a coalition nowadays, should be accurately described as Pro-Bibi Hard Right vs. Everyone Else. Everyone Else includes hard-right, center-right, center-left, Arab-Israelis, and everything in between. In a nutshell, Bibi has become The Blob that Ate Israeli Politics.
Just look at them deals!
On the merits, Bibi’s ballot-box performance over the years has been barely above average. He usually hangs on by some deal. Prominent examples:
- In 2009, the election that started his 12-year streak, he was heavy favorite but Likud got outvoted 28-27 by center-right Kadima. A power-sharing deal seemed inevitable, but then Bibi enticed 13-seat Labor, solidly to the left of Kadima on most issues, to join as a (very) junior and ineffectual partner, leaving Kadima out in the cold. In the next election Kadima got only 2 seats, and then evaporated.
- For the 2013 elections Bibi didn’t take any chances, and pre-arranged a mega-List deal with his erstwhile chief of staff Lieberman, who then had near-monopoly on the former-USSR-immigrant constituency. This mega-List loomed so big in the polls that no one thought the other side had any chance. Eventually it under-performed, Bibi’s bloc only got the bare 61 seats, and had to partner with centrist parties. But without that deal he might have lost. Ironically, it’s the very same Lieberman who in 2019 pulled the rug from under Bibi’s feet, starting the cycle of repeat elections and the phenomenon of an anti-Bibi camp in the right wing.
- A super-odd deal in effect since 2019, one that shows how far Bibi can go to engineer a deal: in exchange for several fanatical Orthodox-nationalist parties banding into one List rather than splintering and failing to clear threshold, Bibi now grants them… one safe spot in the Likud list. I don’t know how this is even legal, and that’s besides the fact that some components of that splinter list are explicitly racist-fascist Kahanists.
The big 2020 deal
The most impactful deal right now happened after the 2020 elections. It was a third rematch between Likud and a center-right “3 Generals and a Clown” List, producing a third stalemate. Bibi advanced a bit from a September 2019 setback, but his bloc still numbered only 58. Across the aisle, the 62 seats included both Palestinian-Israelis and right-wingers, each side vowing not to sit with the other. The only thing they tentatively agreed to, was to convene the Knesset and enact a law barring an indicted PM from running. That would at least block Bibi from running in the 4th rematch, and then the country could tend back to other business.
Then, as the weeks dragged out and the country went under Covid lockdown, a Deal was suddenly announced. The anti-Bibi bloc leader, blue-eyed, soft-spoken General Benny Ganz who managed to siphon off huge numbers of center-left voters to support a mostly center-right List in the desperate hope of ousting Bibi, agreed “due to the national emergency” to fold his flag and join Bibi in a new role of “Alternate PM”. After a year and a half they would switch roles.
So, what did this deal achieve?
- Bibi got to continue to be PM and do pretty much whatever the F he wants.
- Ganz’s List immediately split right down the middle, with half going to the opposition. Among the 3 Generals+Clown, the Clown — Yair Lapid, a glib talk-show host who entered politics in 2012 — has turned out to be the most serious politician, mounted a determined opposition, and is now predicted to head the second-largest List after Likud.
- Pretty much everyone laughed at the “1.5 years switch” clause in the deal. It was clear Bibi would find some pretext to break the coalition before handing over power. Eventually it happened after 8 months, the timing imposed on Bibi against his will — but Ganz was really a sucker to ever believe it.
- Where does Ganz’s List, which (amalgammed with Lapid’s party) won 33-35 seats in the 2019-2020 rounds, poll now? At either 4 seats, or ZERO.
- Last but not least, the deal unleashed a wave of public anger that has fueled a continuous streak of weekly mass demonstrations, demonstrations which played a role in pushing enough politicians in Ganz’s party to eventually “go rogue” and topple the coalition.
wait, there’s another stinky deal… or whatever that is
In the 2020 elections Bibi managed to move the needle among Jewish voters vs. his September 2019 performance. The thorn in his side was the Arab-led Joint List, who scored a record 15 seats and denied him the coveted 61. Where did the Joint List come from?
It is the Arab-led parties’ response to a racist voter-suppression bill passed in 2014 (with the support of Lapid’s party, in case you’re wondering). The bill raised the threshold percent from 2% to the strange value of 3.25%. Why such a strange number?
Well, 2 of the 3 Arab-led lists at the time cleared 2% but would fail to clear 3.25%. No established Jewish-led party faced a similar fate. Now, like any society Palestinian-Israeli society is diverse: leftists, liberals, right-wingers, feminists, Islamists, Christian conservatives — you get the idea. That’s why they had 3 Lists. The idea behind the threshold hike was to either eliminate some of the Arab representation, or to force all Arab parties to band together. Then, the Jewish-Israeli public would have a field day maligning and ridiculing the feminists sitting in one List with an Islamist married to 2 wives, etc. etc. It would be Exhibit A that Arabs are just, well, “not up to par”. Plus, it would be extremely hard to build and maintain.
Initially, Arab parties took the challenge and owned it. In 2015 the new Joint List won a record 13-seat representation for its public. The Jewish-Israelis did their bit, ridiculing, maligning, and (among progressives) turning up their noses at the Joint List — but the Arab voters turned out. However, by 2019 there was much petty squabbling inside the Joint (we’re talking about politicians, after all), and they ended up running in two separate Lists. Angry voters gave them only 10 seats combined, with the smaller of the two barely scraping the 3.25%. For September 2019 the politicians seemed to learn the lesson, re-joined, and got 13 seats again. Then in March 2020, unity and mass mobilization scored the record 15 seats.
Meanwhile, in a rare demonstration of ironic/poetic justice, it’s been mostly hard-right Lists suffering damage from the 3.25% threshold, by coming close but missing it. To date, no Arab-led List had experienced this humiliation.
So Bibi set his eyes on Joint List components and the Arab public. He — who in 2015 infamously whipped up last-minute voters in a racist Facebook video saying “The Arabs are moving to the polls in droves”, a video condemned even by Obama’s mild-mannered White House — the very same Bibi suddenly makes speeches and overtures expressing his love to our Arab brethren.
Shortly afterwards, the Islamist party leader (one of the Joint List’s 4 main components) starts speaking in Tongues, saying stuff like “we are neither right nor left”. Then the Islamists voted with Bibi’s coalition a couple of times. In the final December vote to topple the government (which Bibi lost by a hair) they abstained. If not for a couple of renegade coalition members, Bibi would have survived the vote.
It’s unclear what kind of deal Bibi even offered the Islamists. But whatever spell he cast on them, it was enough to split them off the Joint List — which is still running — and to run on their own for next week’s election. Now the polls indicate they will either get close to 3.25% causing maximum damage, or just scrape by.
And Arab voters are once again pissed off and disenchanted. The Joint List without them is polling mostly under 10 seats. The damage was done. Bibi did that. And just like with the Pfizer deal (which I won’t get into here), no one knows exactly how and what.
So… the outlook:
Grim.
- The classic 21st-Century Israeli political grift of siphoning off center-left votes to support right-wing politicians against Bibi is in full effect, with several popular options.
- Meanwhile, the 3.25% threshold has turned every election into an even more unpredictable game of Russian Roulette / Musical Chairs. For the 2021 round, an unprecedented 3 Lists in the anti-Bibi camp totter right around that threshold in the polls: the Islamists, Ganz’s List, and the progressive Meretz. Across the aisle, only that splinter fanatic far-right party seems at such risk. A 2-0 or 3-1 tally of Lists coming close but missing the threshold, will likely doom the anti-Bibi bloc, because the typical fallout from such near-misses is more seats to the largest Lists, and Likud is certain to be #1 by size.
- Meretz’s dim prospects in particular are accelerating the mass exodus of left-leaning voters to support center-right anti-Bibi Lists. More fuel to the grift.
- Arab turnout is slated to fall again.
It’s not looking very good right now. But who knows. The circus continues.