At the time of writing, Israel is preparing for its third general elections in 18 months. In popular and media discourse, this ongoing political crisis has been labelled a ‘Gordian knot’. It is a reflection of a political reality that seems unsolvable: A stalemate between the political camps in Israel in which neither side is capable of achieving an outright victory to form a stable parliamentary coalition and receive the Knesset’s authorisation to form a government.
But contrary to the past – and to some extent in similarity to the situation in other western contemporary democracies – the political crisis does not reflect the balance of forces between ‘traditional’ right and left. The ideological divide that characterised Israeli politics for generations, the conflict between ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’ over how to handle the Arab-Israeli conflict, has been replaced by personalised politics. The more Israel has become tied up in this political tangle, the clearer it has become that ideological and factional loyalties have melted away in the face of a new and fundamental dilemma: to Bibi, or not to Bibi.
A concise history of a Gordian knot
Benjamin Netanyahu, who served as Israel’s prime minister in 1996–99, returned to the premiership in 2009 and led the Likud, the party of the Israeli right, to electoral victories in 2013 and 2015. Following the withdrawal of Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party from the government, the coalition was weakened to the extent that it was unable to legislate new laws (primarily an amendment to the Defence Service Law on conscription of Yeshiva students). As a result, elections scheduled for November 2019 were brought forward to April 2019. Israel went into what in retrospect turned out to be three consecutive election campaigns in the space of 18 months.
Likud won 35 seats (out of 120) as did its rival, Blue and White, headed by former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz. Blue and White was a newly formed party that included a former Likud member who had served as defence minister under Netanyahu, Moshe Yaalon, who had also previously been IDF chief of staff. Blue and White wasn’t an ostensibly leftwing party and defined itself as a centrist party. Despite Blue and White’s achievement, parties associated with the ‘Netanyahu bloc’ – namely those declaring they would join a government headed by Netanyahu – had a majority and it appeared that the incumbent prime minister would be able to form a new government. However, Israel Beiteinu, which traditionally identified with the rightwing bloc, conditioned joining the coalition on legislation that would force ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to serve in the army – something that the ultra-Orthodox parties, which also form part of the coalition, are vehemently opposed to. Lieberman decided in the end not to join the coalition, thus preventing the formation of a government, and the Knesset dispersed to new elections.
Yet a cloud was cast over these elections by the Netanyahu’s questioning on suspicion of several different affairs concerning the alleged receipt of illegal gifts and the provision of regulatory benefits to media groups in exchange for positive political coverage. The investigations played an even greater role in the second round of elections set for September 17. It was in these elections that the ‘Netanyahu bloc’ was formed – namely the parties from the National Camp who committed to stand by Netanyahu and to work as a bloc in any coalition negotiations. The political stalemate remained in place after this round as well, and a new, third round of elections was set for March 2020.
Yet again, the results yielded a stalemate: The Netanyahu bloc won 58 seats compared to 55 for the anti-Netanyahu bloc, but with the support of the Joint Arab List – an amalgam of Arab parties – the mandate to form a government was given to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz. But in the wake of the political crisis that threatened to gridlock the work of the Knesset, and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz and Netanyahu signed an agreement to form a national unity government in which Netanyahu would serve the first term as prime minister and would then be replaced in the role by Gantz. The government was defined as a ‘parity’ emergency government with a mutual supervision mechanism. Due to the changes in governing structures, petitions were filed to the High Court of Justice against the government’s formation, and some Blue and White members resigned and defected to the opposition – at the same time, the rightwing bloc came apart and the Yamina party was left out of the coalition.
The ‘parity’ government lasted for several months and managed the coronavirus crisis, but failed to pass a state budget, which, in accordance with Israeli legislation, led to the fall of the government and the dispersal of the Knesset. A fourth round of elections was set for 23 March 2021.
In this round, Likud, headed by Netanyahu, together with the pro-Netanyahu parties, won 52 Knesset seats. President Rivlin placed the task of forming a government on Netanyahu, but he was forced to return the mandate after failing to put together a coalition. While Netanyahu was trying to form a government, attempts at forming an alternative government commenced under the leadership of Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. The leftwing parties, Avoda (Labour Party) and Meretz were partners in this effort along with Gideon Saar’s New Hope, a newly formed party comprising Likud defectors, and Ra’am (United Arab List), which for the first time expressed a willingness to be part of the coalition. This collaboration between parties that have no ideological common denominator was intended to solve the political stalemate by forming a majority that would block Netanyahu from forming a coalition, and, for the first time in over a decade, establish a government without Netanyahu at the helm.
Yamina came under intense criticism within the rightwing bloc, as its leaders, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, had made an unequivocal commitment in the media that they would not form a government with Yesh Atid and would not serve in any government headed by the centre-left Lapid. Despite the criticism, the contacts over the formation of a ‘government of change’ continued until the Gaza war in May and the attendant eruption of violent Arab riots in mixed Arab-Jewish towns. The security situation led the rightwing parties in what was then known as the ‘bloc of change’ to announce that ‘the government of change is off the table’. Against a backdrop of criticism that political advantage was being handed to the ideological left, and criticism of collaboration with an Islamist Arab party, doubts emerged as to whether such a government would be able to function successfully against security threats. However, shortly after the riots died down, the political players announced their willingness to complete the political move and form a ‘parity’ government in which Bennett would serve as prime minister for the first half of the government’s term, after which he would be replaced by Lapid. On 13 June 2021, the government was sworn in, and after 12 years of Netanyahu-led coalitions, Bennett replaced him as prime minister, and Likud went into opposition.
The ‘change coalition’, which, at least externally, displayed excellent working relations and a refreshing political culture and commitment to the government’s success, was based in practice on a marginal majority of 61 to 59. The situation gave outsized leverage to the many coalition members who made weighty demands backed by constant threats of withdrawal by all the players. Tensions among the members of the government reached a boiling point from time to time whenever a decision on issues with an ideological bearing came to the fore, requiring some coalition members to vote against their fundamental positions to maintain the stability of the government. Gradually, some members of the government threatened to withdraw, and eventually, Bennett and Lapid reached the conclusion that ‘the efforts to stabilize the coalition had run into a dead end’ and on 30 July 2022, dispersed the Knesset. A fifth round of elections was set for November 1.
A 10-year itch
The deeper Israel plunged into political crisis, the clearer it became that the crisis was to a great extent tied to opposition to Netanyahu. The criminal investigations against him bred a protest movement that held regular demonstrations in front of the Attorney General’s residence demanding a criminal investigation against Netanyahu, and once an indictment was indeed filed, the movement began protesting regularly by the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem. The movement received broad resonance in the media, and politicians from the left gave their support and even attended protests. From this movement emerged an unofficial political stream that was labelled in the press and on social media as ‘Just Not Bibi’.
Gradually the political forces in Israel aligned over one question: Bibi or not Bibi. Netanyahu was marked by his rivals as presenting a danger to the rule of law and democracy and as the local representative of authoritarian populism of the kind associated with Viktor Orban in Hungary, and, alternatively, with Donald Trump in the United States. Opposition to Netanyahu became a political-ideological goal in itself, one that should take priority over diplomatic, economic, and social goals. Over time, political elements associated with the right rather than the left began to join this movement, a development that in the end enabled the formation of a government headed by Bennett.
The criminal investigations and the public protests that followed seeped into the rightwing camp and even led to calls from within the right for Netanyahu to resign, and willingness on the part of some rightwing MKs – some of them Netanyahu’s former partners – to join forces with parties on the left to throw Netanyahu out of power. The potency of the ‘Just Not Bibi’ movement led political players to not only violate explicit election promises but also to cross a Rubicon, joining forces with ideological rivals and even participating in a coalition with an Islamist, anti-Zionist Arab party – a sensitive taboo that parties on the left and right alike had refrained from breaking since the establishment of the State of Israel. This created a momentum, as already stated that resulted in Likud losing power, but at the same time also put in motion – or, alternatively, reflected – deeper processes in the relationships between the political players, in political identities, and in the political discourse itself.
The collection of articles in this volume is devoted to the political crisis that has gripped Israel and to the four rounds of elections that have rocked Israeli society. It seeks to point to significant processes that have taken place among different political groups, and to the realignment of the political system amid a new political climate. The articles are divided into two main sections: The first section examines distinct political groups and explores various transformations in their identities and political participation. The second section examines processes in public opinion and political discourse against the backdrop of the political crisis.
The article by Menachem Lazar and Asher Cohen analyzes the patterns of political participation of the Religious Zionist stream, and the realignment of its partisan landscape as an expression of a deep sociopolitical process of de-alignment – abandoning traditional parties and fragmentation to small political frameworks. Nissim Leon focuses on the ultra-Orthodox parties in the rightwing bloc, primarily analysing the Shas party, which received an opportunity to rehabilitate its political power as a result of the frequent political crises and elections, and the occasion to strengthen its identification with the values of the Israeli right on the continuum of security and tradition. During the past two years, without giving up on its ultra-Orthodox identity Shas has become a party that holds a constructive dialectic with the traditional-Zionist stream in Israel.
Arik Rudnitzky dissects the transformations that have occurred in the participation in the political process of Israel’s Arab citizens, who were represented for the first time in nearly fifty years by an Arab party, Ra’am, in the coalition. The article examines the effect of social, cultural, and political processes experienced by Arab society in Israel on the political ethos of some Arab parties, and of Arab representatives in the Zionist parties.
Eithan Orkibi analyzes the modalities by which the Israeli left has turned the supposed danger of a collapse of Israeli democracy into its central raison d’être and describes how it appropriated a new social role: saving Israeli democracy and culture from the fascist populism promoted by the Israeli right.
Completing the first section is Gayil Talshir who shows how the bipolar Israeli system is realigning around a new or alternative ideological divide – the struggle for the nature of Israeli democracy, which has replaced the debate over the future of Judea and Samaria and a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The second section of this collection opens with a pioneering study by Nadav Gabay on the connection between the political leanings of central media outlets and the results of polls published in those outlets during election campaigns. Gabay explains the tendency of media outlets associated with opposition to Netanyahu to underestimate the electoral strength of Netanyahu’s supporters. Sharon Haleva Amir examined the progress of digital campaigns in Israel’s recent rounds of elections and points to several innovations that have affected the political discourse and traffic of messages, primarily Algorithmic Campaigns that promote a reality in which the public is constantly and manipulatively exposed to disinformation in social networks. The final article in the collection is by Narmina Abdulaev and looks at the election campaign of Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Beiteinu party, who alongside echoing the general public’s interests, continues to integrate folkloristic elements connected to the particular identity of his ‘base’, Russian speakers in Israel.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Notes on contributors
Eithan Orkibi
Eithan Orkibi is Senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ariel University, Israel