Country goes to fifth election in less than four years; The expert believes that the November 1 vote will not be final and Israelis will have to face another process of electing parliament
MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP
For the fifth time in less than four years Israel There will be a general election to try and form a new government. Next Tuesday, November 1st, was chosen as the date for the vote. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ruled the country for 12 years and will step down as prime minister in 2021, is the mostcited name to win. Yair Lapid, who is trying to get elected, has been in office since late June, when Prime Minister Naftali Bennett resigned as prime minister. However, the results are not very promising for him. A poll published in Haaretz newspaper indicates that the Labor party, which has ruled the country for decades, is likely to win just 4 seats out of a total of 128. The farright return to power appears with 31 seats at the top. Samuel Feldberg, a political scientist and researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center, says Netanyahu’s victory is certain, but it’s enough to know if he “can form a bloc to form a new government, because that’s an interesting feature of the Israeli electoral process is that the party with the most votes is not necessarily the first to be nominated to form a government”.
The expert explains what is happening in Israel that makes it difficult for him to get a stable government. Since 2019, the country has been in a “loop” that seems far from over. Feldberg says that unlike in Brazil, where you elect a candidate and whoever gets the most votes wins and becomes the new ruler, in Israel “victory is not enough, the party that won the election is determined, but in the next phase this party must be able to form a government”, and at this moment the elected have shown shortcomings because they have not been able to form a government. “The electorate is so divided that the result of the election does not allow the formation of a majority government,” he explains. He recalls that in the last elections in March 2021, the centrist party managed and even succeeded in forming a government allied with left parties, Arab parties and some members of the right something historic in the country However, it took only a year to form a government government. For Feldberg, the elections should not be final now, he believes that the Israelis still have to go through an election. “It is likely that there will be another impasse and it will not be possible to form a new government that will hold the sixth elections in three months,” says the expert.
Netanyahu’s arrival worries some voters because he is still on trial on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges he’s accused of accepting $264,000 worth of gifts from tycoons, negotiating with a newspaper to get more favorable coverage for his government and grant regulatory favors to the Israeli leadership for telecommunications companies. The former prime minister denies the allegations he is also banking on alliances with the far right and ultraOrthodox to achieve what he has been working towards since the beginning of the campaign, namely bringing together the 61 seats (minimum for a majority) into a “government of law”. to build. With these parties, according to polls, the Likud would come close to a majority. One of the most important names in this alliance was Itamar Ben Gvir, an extremist who was once part of an organization considered criminal by the US and who defends the expulsion of Israeli Arabs. He’s been gaining public support in recent days. In two years he got 0.42% of the vote and is now the third political force. If Netanyahu wins, Ben Gvir is expected to take one of the highest posts in the cabinet, freeing him to pursue his extremist policies and leaving the country facing a major setback in decades.
However, according to Feldberg, “the party with the most votes will not necessarily be the first nominated party to form a government,” so “if most parties nominate Lapid to form a government, he has the first chance to form a coalition. For Netanyahu, the motley coalition of Lapid, his main opponent, is “a dangerous and disastrous experiment.” “It’s time to say ‘jalas’ (‘enough is enough’ in Arabic),” Bibi said at a campaign event on Sunday night. Despite lagging behind in the polls, the interim centrist prime minister has seen his party doing better in the polls in recent months and has multiplied diplomatic initiatives, traveling to Germany and France to discuss Iran’s nuclear program and to discuss a border agreement with Lebanon. In Israel’s proportional representation system, parties must receive at least 3.25% of the votes to have MPs in parliament. Regardless of who wins, Feldberg points out that there are some issues in the country that require more attention from the government, such as: visa costs, which are very high in Israel, housing people cannot buy their own houses and the government has not done much and security in the Arab minority sector.