Intransigent Netanyahu brings Groundhog Day for Israel

There is far from a feeling of third time lucky about Monday’s Israeli general election. The opinion polls are forecasting another indecisive outcome, similar to those of the previous two elections of 2019 that led to prolonged horse-trading and unsavory negotiations that yielded no government.

Instead Israel has been led for more than a year by an interim government with questionable legitimacy and an ever-worsening, gutter-style of political debate. The most striking feature of this latest democratic exercise has been the inverse correlation between the mighty importance of the election and the issues at stake, and the cumbersome and trivial campaigns of most parties; they have been unable to rise above incitement, fearmongering and personal abuse, with the chief mudslinger being Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

A foreign diplomat friend who recently returned from a visit to Israel asked me, half seriously and half sarcastically, if the lack of election posters in the streets was evidence of the country giving up on elections as the mechanism to select its representatives and by extension its government. Obviously, the answer is no; however, if the opinion polls are correct there is an intrinsic rigidity among the country’s electorate, few of whom are prepared to change their voting habits, come what may.

The two major developments since the last election in September — the formal indictment of Netanyahu on corruption charges, and the announcement of Washington’s Middle East peace plan — have had a minimal impact on voter preferences. Likud, led by Netanyahu, and Blue and White, led by Benny Gantz, are still neck-and-neck in the polls, and there has been no change in the makeup of the two blocs of parties on each side of the main political divide. This has resulted in illogical, self-destructive and negative campaigning by the major parties within the blocs to persuade people to vote for them and not their smaller allies.

One can only explain this negative campaigning within the blocs, especially by Blue and White, as a panic reaction to the most recent polls that predict a minuscule lead of two seats, 35-33, for either Likud or Blue and White. Considering the margin of error of these polls, and that both blocs lack a majority, it would have been wiser to try and persuade supporters of the opposite bloc to switch over instead of wrangling within their own camp. If this situation does not change, the Israeli political system will look again to Avigdor Lieberman, who is in complete control of his Israel Beitenu Party, and whose support will decide who forms a coalition, This would hand tremendous power to one of the most dangerous and least principled of Israel’s politicians.

When the ballot papers are counted next week, we should not hold our breath in anticipation of the murky waters of Israeli politics becoming clear.

Yossi Mekelberg

Defying all logic, neither Netanyahu’s formal indictment nor the Trump peace deal have stirred up big waves in this election campaign. It beggars belief that the prime minister’s being a defendant on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of contract has had almost no impact on the public debate, and has not even been exploited by Netanyahu’s political rivals. There is no law that prevents a prime minister from serving while also defending himself in court, but both practical and moral reasoning show this to be a shocking situation, which is bound to hinder good governance while also tainting the image of the prime minister’s office, national politics in general, and Israel’s reputation internationally. The opposition’s inability to capitalise on this absurd situation is evidence of its weakness, and hence its inability to make a breakthrough in the polls.

The lack of any serious debate over Trump’s plan for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, especially during an election campaign, is also hard to explain. Under normal circumstances this would have provoked a debate between diametrically opposite views. For Netanyahu it was victory, and a demonstration of his influence in Washington’s corridors of power. However, it was also a golden opportunity for the opposition to expose the plan as a charade, and suggest a viable alternative. Instead they played along with it, and left the field on the most important issue in Israeli politics to Netanyahu and his right-wing allies. So one can hardly blame Netanyahu for calling Gantz a poor imitation of himself, when the country is desperate for a leader and a party with a distinctive alternative vision.

Despite Netanyahu’s corruption trial, despite his failure to win the previous two elections and his jaded and ill-tempered appearance, he is still regarded by the public as a more suitable premier than Gantz. There is a third issue on which Gantz could have asserted and distinguished himself as a leader: Netanyahu’s ugly delegitimisation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and their representatives. But instead of galvanising the forces who believe that a government with the support of the Arab Joint List would be a watershed in relations between Jews and Arabs, he fell into Netanyahu’s trap of ruling out the representatives of the Palestinian Israelis as equal partners in running the country.

When the ballot papers are counted next week, we should not hold our breath in anticipation of the murky waters of Israeli politics becoming clear. That might require the removal of Netanyahu from office after his trial begins, or it might require Lieberman to yield to the pressure on him to decide which of the two major blocs to side with and thereby avoid a fourth election, which is still a real possibility.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg