For Israeli election, 4th time will be the charm

With the electoral crisis growing and no real winner showing in the polls leading to next week’s vote, all signs point to a real possibility that Israel will need yet one more national election to nail down a government.

By Prof. Dov Fischer, ISRAEL HAYOM

With Israel’s third national election in a year, it may be dispiriting to consider that it actually will take yet a fourth election to finally nail down a national government. However, if it does come to that – and it very well may – the good news is that the fourth try should be the charm.

Months of Israeli electoral surveys by the country’s wide range of pollsters all point to one constant: no one is blinking and no one is backing down, from electoral stalemate to electoral stalemate. Thus, Blue and White endlessly jostles back and forth with Likud for bragging rights as the larger party, with each scoring 32-36 seats.

Avigdor Lieberman repeatedly scores 6-9 seats for his Yisrael Beytenu party that appeals primarily to older immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who are right wing politically and secular theologically. And the Joint Arab List now scores 12-14 seats.

Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism and Sephardi counterpart Shas, each regularly comes out with some 7 or 8 seats. Yamina, a faction comprising the New Right, National Union, and Habayit Hayehudi parties, come out with 7-9 seats. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party regularly wastes several thousand votes that could have amounted each time to two or three Knesset seats for the religious-right bloc if he had not run.

In all, the religious-right bloc seems pretty well established for now, one way or the other, with 54-58 seats.

On the other side, Blue and White is bolstered by the Left coalition of Labor, Gesher, and Meretz, who tend to combine for 8 or 9 seats.

That repeatedly gives the Center-Left bloc 43-45 seats, not even nearly close to the 61-seat coalition needed for forming a ruling majority. Thus, when viewed dispassionately and objectively from outside the “spin room,” the Blue and White aspiration seems as destined for bankruptcy as was the Fifth Dimension company that was headed by Blue and White chair, Benny Gantz. They just cannot reach 61 mandates in the present political constellation.

To form a majority, Gantz continually has needed to achieve one or more of several mathematical and philosophical impossibilities.

To attract support from the haredi UTJ and Shas, he needs to make religious concessions that would revile Lieberman and also would break up Blue and White itself, with Yair Lapid pulling his Yesh Atid faction out.

Besides, UTJ and Shas presently are locked in with the Likud coalition. When Gantz tries bringing in the Joint Arab List, he not only alienates Lieberman and possibly the Moshe Yaalon faction (“Israel Resilience”) of his own party, but the Joint Arab List ultimately would bring down any Blue and White government it temporarily would support.

There seems no question but that Israel will be facing several critical foreign policy issues as soon as a government is formed, including how to approach President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” whether to extend sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and how to crush the incessant rocket fire into Southern Israel from Gaza’s Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups. Each and every one of those issues will result inexorably in some decision that forces the Joint Arab List to withdraw support from any Blue and White arrangement.

Meanwhile, the Joint Arab List will not sit with Lieberman, and Lieberman, who lives in the Judea-Samaria community of Nokdim, will not sit with them. Lieberman’s seats alone cannot bring a Blue and White Center-Left coalition to 61. There simply is no mathematical way for Blue and White to reach 61 unless they come close enough to that number with their Labor-Gesher-Meretz partners such that they could induce (i.e., bribe) one or two Likud members to jump in with them across the aisle.

They could offer cabinet ministries, chauffeur-driven limousines, and other goodies. However, in the end, that effort almost surely would fail, even if they stood at 58-59 seats because a Likud crossover member would realize that such a government would fall within months or even weeks.

The reality is that, once one assesses the Knesset layout without the Arab Joint List, it emerges that the Jewish Zionist and religionist parties will control approximately 107 Knesset seats, with more than 60 percent aligned with right-wing ideology. That is, in addition to the Likud-religious bloc of approximately 55 seats, Lieberman ‘s party is philosophically right-wing, and approximately one-fourth of Blue and White are Likud “expatriates” merely awaiting a Likud without Prime Minister Netanyahu. That is why the fourth election may well be the charm.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial is set to begin on March 17, two weeks after the third election. The trial will proceed in fits and starts, and may run a few months. In the end, he will be either acquitted or convicted. If he is acquitted, that result will peel off a few seats from those now voting for Blue and White because they have not wanted to vote for someone they think acted criminally.

Likewise, an acquittal will do for Bibi what the impeachment acquittal in America recently did for President Trump, unloosing a wave of sympathy and locked-up support from people who waited to see what resulted. Several Likud voters who sat out the second election and again the third will come out for Bibi if he is acquitted. That will result in a majority government.

On the other hand, if he is convicted, that will result in his stepping down from the head of the Likud ticket. One of two results then will ensue. Gantz is hoping that he then will tower over any alternative Likud leader in the eyes of the Israeli voter. That may happen because Gantz now has been contending on a virtual par with Bibi for a year, unlike anyone in the Likud who would replace Netanyahu. Gideon Saar tried to emerge as that alternative force, and he so far has failed. Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, and former Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat would-be contenders to lead Likud, but Gantz would believe he has the edge. If Gantz is correct, he then would exceed his prior electoral attainments and would form a government on the fourth round.

Nevertheless, a Netanyahu conviction more likely could be the secret key to inducing Avigdor Lieberman to drop most of his party’s religious issues after all and to join into a No-Bibi Likud government that would assign him a plum cabinet ministry.

That really is what he wants, a Likud government without Netanyahu. Meanwhile, if the investigation ensuing these next months into Benny Gantz’s Fifth Dimension Company results in findings of corruption there, it will devastate Gantz, even if he is found personally innocent of wrongdoing. As Fifth Dimension CEO, voters will reason that, if he cannot monitor his own company as it engages in multi-million-shekel schemes and flounders to bankruptcy, he surely cannot lead Israel competently.

Lots of scenarios, lots of maybes. But they all point to a real possibility, if not probability, that Israel will need yet one more national election – but only one more – to nail down a government. Finally.