Getting to 61?

 (Originally published in The Times of Israel)

Today is election day in Israel.  Under Israeli law, polling stopped Friday night at midnight. The last polls generally showed former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and his Yashar party at around 23 seats and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at around 20 or 21 seats.  Both are a long way from the 61 seats necessary to form a government in the 120-seat Knesset. 

The polls indicate that the opposition parties, other than the Arab parties, will get to about 54 seats with the current government getting to around 51.  

That’s when the real vicious fighting will start. 

Israeli polls are notoriously unreliable because people engage in a lot of last-minute decision-making if they think their choice is not going to make the 3.25% of-the-vote threshold for winning seats, or if they want to give a candidate more leverage in the negotiations over policy positions and ministries, or if they want to help a party that looks to be just below the threshold make it into the Knesset, or for a myriad of other reasons.   

One irony:  Netanyahu would be much closer to a coalition if he had not convinced several leaders and parties on the right to abandon him.  Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman and former Prime Minister and current Yachad leader Naftali Bennett, both former Netanyahu allies, broke with Netanyahu and refuse to serve with him largely due to broken commitments and machinations and manipulations.  In many ways, they fit more with the current government than the opposition. 

Even though Eisenkot said he will not form a coalition with parties that do not meet conditions like support of Israel as a Jewish state, while other opposition parties were more blatant in saying they would not serve with an Arab party, it is likely they would find a way to bring Monsour Abbas’ Ra’am Party into the coalition. 

The irony is that the Ra’am Party, or at least its origins, are as an Islamic party.  But Abbas has shown himself to be a realist.  He has largely accepted, or at least acknowledged, Israel as a Jewish state.  He says he simply wants his people to have equal rights and an equal share of the pie.

He often appears more accepting of Israel as a Zionist state than several of the rabbis who are the spiritual leaders of the political leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties.  And there is precedent:  Ra’am served in the short-lived Bennett-Lapid government.

Even with Ra’am in the tent, Eisenkot gets to around 58 or 59 seats, not the 61 necessary to form a government. The other Arab parties have been less pragmatic, more interested in Palestinian nationalism, and ideologically opposed to Israel as a Jewish state.  They have always rejected serving in a government. 

However, they have said they would consider supporting an Eisenkot government from the outside.  That means a minority government, never a recipe for stability. 

We can expect Netanyahu to do just about anything imaginable, and then some, to try to torpedo the opposition from forming a government.  He is the acknowledged master of political manipulation and underhanded maneuvers. 

Just in the last few days, out of apparent desperation, Netanyahu has raised the prospect of economic sanctions and the need for cryptocurrency and other means for working around the world banking system.  He has posted an AI-generated picture of a nuclear bomb exploding on Tel Aviv, reminiscent of the famous, or infamous, 1964 “Daisy” ad that the Lyndon Johnson campaign ran against Barry Goldwater. 

He reportedly directed Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to execute an unspecified military action against Iran just days before the election, the execution of which Zamir reportedly stalled by demanding written authorization. 

Netanyahu’s not so subtle message:  only he has the ability, the knowledge, and the strength to lead Israel through such perilous times.

It is difficult to believe that with everything that has transpired—the attack on the judiciary that bitterly divided the country, the trials for corruption that are ongoing, the billion dollar payments from Qatar to Gaza and Hamas that the government encouraged and facilitated, the close Netanyahu aides doing well-paid PR work for Qatar while working in the Prime Minister’s office, and the massive October 7^th security debacle that resulted in the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust--that Netanyahu and Likud still poll as high as they do.

But, then, it is hard to believe that many Republicans who are very uncomfortable with Trump and MAGA still vote Republican, and that many Democrats who are repulsed by the Democratic Socialists of American and the anti-Israel/anti-Jew turn that many in the party have taken still vote Democratic.  Apparently, old habits do die hard, particularly when the alternatives are deemed unattractive.

A stalemate—with neither the current government coalition or the opposition coalition being able to form a government—is a likely outcome.  It is an outcome many Israelis dread.  Israel had five elections in four years (2019-22), a record in the democratic world.  No one looks forward to going through something like that again.  And no one in the opposition looks forward to a caretaker government led by Netanyahu. 

Polls show that even Likud supporters and others on the right want Netanyahu to step aside if there is a stalemate and the right is not able to put together a coalition.  It would be wholly out of character for Netanyahu to step aside voluntarily, but if there is a groundswell from Likud voters, it might encourage some Likud Knesset members to finally rebel. 

Two things are certain if Prime Minister Netanyahu stays in power, and if he continues to need the support of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to do so, and if he allows Justice Minister Yariv Levin to continue his efforts to neuter Israel’s judiciary:

One, the deep divisions in Israeli society and the lawlessness in the West Bank will continue, and Israel’s international standing will continue to plummet.

And two, a significant stream of very talented and productive Israelis, including many in hi-tech and medicine, will be heading for the exits.

It would be a very sad day.