Israeli Election Circus 2019: ENCORE!!!

I told you it’s a circus, didn’t I?

Long story short: after scoring his best parliament-seat haul for Likud in his entire career as leader (that would be 7 election campaigns; check it out, he got 35 seats this time and his previous best was 32 in 1996)…. and despite having a very solid path to majority…. 

“King” (pfffft) Bibi Netanyahu managed to trip on his own shoelaces and squander the entire 28+14 days allocated to setting up a coalition. 

Clearly his hubris and complacency undermined him. Also, all right-wing coalition partners feel blood in the water — it’s not the same Bibi of old — and have been less than accommodating in negotiations. He didn’t have a single bilateral agreement signed when time run out, and he needed five.

So now, for the first time in Israeli history, the parliament dismissed itself a month after being convened, without setting up a government. The elections are slated for September 17, barely 5 months after the last ones. h/t FellowTraveler who brought the story here first.

Ironically, it is Bibi who has engineered, once he saw time running out, the McConnellish maneuver to call new elections right away. The proper procedure is for the President to nominate someone else to try and set up a coalition first, or for the President to declare that no other nominee has been found. But Bibi found a trick to pre-empt handing the keys to anyone else.

The irony is that per my humble judgment, this trick is going to backfire pretty spectacularly. And it is the opposition, particularly the traditional opposition, which has cried foul and opposed the move, that is likely to end up benefiting. Perhaps not enough to win power (although I would not rule this out) — but certainly to improve over its dismal showing from April. And Bibi himself has been mortally weakened.

Slightly more below the salmon.

Since 1967, Israel has controlled the lives of the Palestinian people living in East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza, without giving them citizenship; the vast majority have been forced to live as stateless, rightless subjects under military rule. Even now, as Occupation-tolerant advocates often deny and discount this basic reality (or are shamefully ignorant of it), Israel controls the freedom of movement of these territories' residents, in particular their ability to go abroad and return; controls their residency status; their airspace, currency, water supply, fuel supply, most of their electricity, and their ability to import and export products. All the while, deeply exploiting their day labor and natural resources — and further controlling their social and intimate lives via a secret police that extorts an extensive network of collaborators. THIS IS A VERY PARTIAL LIST.

This Occupation regime has continued unabated for nearly 52 out of the Israeli parliament’s 70 years of existence, covering the last 14 out of Israel's 20 general elections. Apart from a couple of elections in the 1980s-90s, no major Israeli party has campaigned on ending it.

As long as this continues,  the Israeli elections cannot be considered really democratic. That said, elections sometimes open the door to the Law of Unintended Consequences, in a good way.

Besides, it’s one of the world's most entertaining electoral circuses. So I'm writing this series.