The announcement this week of early elections for Israel may have been, at least in part, precipitated by polls showing that the results of a new vote would great strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But after six years of Netanyahu at the top of the heap, not unsurprisingly, there is a lot of “anybody but Bibi” talk ricocheting around the Internet that posits that the Israeli public is ready for a change in leaders even if there doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative to him or a willingness to reject his policies on the peace process. Equally unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of volunteers to be the PM’s replacement and opposition figures as well as coalition rivals are negotiating furiously with each other for new alignments that might somehow magically unseat Netanyahu. But while a lot can happen in the three months until the election, neither the boredom with Bibi or any combination of new elections slates seems likely to produce a formula in which he is not sworn in for a fourth term sometime next Spring.
Most of Netanyahu’s foreign critics are blowing smoke when they claim that the Israeli people are about to reject him because they are dissatisfied with his inability to make peace with the Palestinians. After 20 years of failed attempts to trade land for peace and the growing volume of terror attacks fueled by incitement by the country’s so-called partner, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, only a minority of Israelis have the least faith in the prospects of peace. But as is the case in any democracy, a feeling of exhaustion with Netanyahu after three terms as PM and a desire for a change is to be expected.
Indeed, the less than satisfactory results of last summer’s war with Hamas, a sluggish economy and justified dismay at the way the prime minister turned a pointless dispute with his fractious coalition allies into a move to entirely unnecessary elections ought to form a rationale for his ouster. But as even his most bitter enemies on the left concede, there is no one on either side of the left-right divide who strikes anyone as a likely replacement.
The Knesset’s vote to dissolve was quickly followed by intense negotiations on the part of the various parties to set up informal or formal alliances. On the one hand Netanyahu seems to have struck a bargain with his chief rival on the right, Naphtali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party in which the two would run separately but work together after the vote to set up a government. Other members of the recent government, including Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid may also work together in conjunction with the real wild card of the vote: Moshe Kahlon, the former Likud Cabinet member who is starting his own populist party. At the same time, Tzipi Livni of Hatnua is shopping for a new electoral home (her fourth in the last decade after stints in Likud, Kadima and her current roost) in either Labor or Yesh Atid since the chances of her splinter group getting back into the Knesset on its own steam are not great.
This is all fascinating stuff for Zionist political junkies but the bottom line here remains the fact that no matter how you reshuffle the political deck in Israel, you still come up with the same amount of cards on both the left, the right and the center. The stock and likely haul of Knesset seats for Lapid, Lieberman and Livni are all declining. Lapid may lose as many as half his seats. The Likud will likely gain seats from its current total (in the last election it split seats with Lieberman’s party and wound up with a smaller total than it could have gotten on its own) while Bennett’s party looks to gain even more. Kahlon’s new entity will likely pick off Lapid and Livni’s losses and may eat into Likud’s gains as Kahlon tries to position himself as being “a little right of center.” Anything can happen in 90 days of campaigning but the net result of all the maneuvering and politicking is probably going to be an overall gain for the right-wing parties and stasis among the centrists.
Even more important, and deeply discouraging for Netanyahu’s foreign detractors is that the parties of the Israeli left show no signs of being able to profit from the ennui and dissatisfaction with the prime minister. Labor head Yitzhak Herzog is well liked but, at least to date, considered something of a political cipher. The once dominant Labor Party appears headed at the moment to a loss of seats rather than gaining. Meretz, its ally to the left is not doing well either.
That, along with the expected gains for the right, stems from the fact that security issues are more important this time than in the last vote when domestic concerns about the economy made Lapid the star of the election. All of which brings us back to where we started in discussing the unrealistic hopes of those who believe Israel needs to be saved from itself. The overwhelming majority of Israeli voters do not want a government that will bow to pressure from an American president that they have good reason not to trust or a European community they regard as being influenced by a rising tide of global anti-Semitism.
The campaign will be difficult for Netanyahu and he won’t have an easy time negotiating a new coalition agreement even if the current trends hold and the parties of the right have a governing majority even before adding religious or centrist parties to the mix. But the reshuffle of the deck that we are currently witnessing doesn’t seem to be likely to prevent a fourth term for the prime minister. President Obama and his J Street friends may be praying for an “anybody but Bibi” result next March. But the old political axiom that says you can’t beat somebody with nobody would appear to trump those hopes.