Israel Update for February 2009

David Dolan

The February 10 ballot saw 12 political parties make it into the Israeli Knesset, which is average for the country. But the two largest parties, Kadima and the Likud, ended up in a virtual dead heat. This left Israeli citizens uncertain as to who would actually emerge as their next prime minister.

All opinion surveys had predicted for many months that opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party would capture the most seats in the Knesset election. However the government's well executed military campaign against Hamas clearly boosted the political standing of the ruling Kadima party, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. It captured one more legislative seat than Likud, 28 verses 27. Ehud Barak's Labor party only finished in an embarrassing fourth place in the national contest, indicating that the Defense Minister did not enjoy the same boost that Kadima did as a result of the war.

Despite Kadima's late surge, most political analysts still expect Netanyahu to emerge as the next premier, returning to a post he held from mid 1996 until mid-1999, when he lost an early election to Barak. The veteran politician was given a mandate to try and put together a coalition by President Shimon Peres on February 20 after Livni rebuffed his pleas that she bring her party into a broad national unity coalition with the veteran Likud leader at the helm.

Razor Thin Vote

Opinion surveys taken during the first week of February forecast that Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party would increase its pre-election Knesset total of just 12 seats to at least 25 mandates, and maybe to as many as 28. Polls taken before the Gaza conflict began in late December had indicated that the party might capture over 30 seats, or at least one fourth of the 120 member Knesset.

Last minute polls did pick up the Kadima party surge, but still had it garnering no more than 25 seats. They also showed Kadima's main ally, Labor, falling from 19 seats to around 15.

In the end, Kadima captured 28 seats to the Likud's 27, with less than 30,000 votes out of the over two and half million cast separating them (Kadima garnered 758,032 votes to Likud's 729,054). The outcome represented a drop of only one seat for Kadima despite the fact that the new party created by Ariel Sharon in late 2005 had lost significant support do to infighting and the escalating legal crisis surrounding outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

New Number Three

Despite coming in just slightly behind Kadima, the results still demonstrated the predicted massive surge of support for Netanyahu's party, more than doubling its previous Knesset standing. And most analysts agreed that the party would have done even better if the farther right Yisrael Beiteinu party had not soared to become Israel's third largest political grouping.

Under controversial leader Avigdor Lieberman, the party won nearly 400,000 votes, jumping from its previous 11 Knesset seats to 15. Post election surveys showed that thousands of voters switched at the last minute from Likud to Yisrael Beiteinu because Lieberman pledged to back Netanyahu as premier, with many saying they hoped the populist Russian immigrant politician would help keep the Likud leader on a right-wing course in the face of expected American and European pressure to take a softer line in peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Labor lost an astonishing six Knesset seats, falling from 19 to just 13-its lowest level ever. If anyone had predicted that Israel's long dominant political party would fall below a right-wing party headed by the outspoken Lieberman a decade ago-the year that Barak came to power and Lieberman was a crony of the defeated Netanyahu-they would have been laughed out of the room. But now Labor will probably return to the opposition benches unless a broad unity government including Labor is somehow stitched together-a humiliating prospect for Barak.

Other parties likely to join a narrow Likud-led government captured a significant 23 seats between them. The Sephardic Orthodox Shas party won 11 spots in the Knesset, down just one from its 2006 total. The Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party captured five seats, up one from its previous standing. The National Union party, which is mainly supported by modern Orthodox and secular Jewish voters who reside in Judea and Samaria, won four seats, while the new Jewish Home party received three mandates.

The biggest surprise of the 2006 election proved to be the biggest dud of the February vote. The Gil Pensioners party, which astounded most pundits by winning seven seats three years ago, received just 17,571 votes this time around, meaning it was not even near the threshold for entering the new Knesset. The leftist Meretz party dropped from five to three seats, while three mainly Arab parties captured 11 Knesset seats between them. Attempts by the official election committee to ban two of those parties from the race due to their anti-Zionist platforms were overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, as also occurred three years ago.

Turning Right