Topic: Isaac Herzog
Israeli Exit Polls: Netanyahu is Re-Elected
Exit polls aren’t official results but those just released by the Israeli media leave little doubt about the ultimate outcome of today’s elections. Though the last published opinion polls issued last week gave the Labor-led Zionist Union Party with a decisive four-seat edge over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, the exists just released minutes ago show the two leading parties neck and neck. Given that historically these polls tend to undercount the right and don’t include the very significant vote of soldiers on active service in the Israeli Army, which also tends to tilt to the right-wing parties, the likelihood is that the Likud will wind up with a plurality. But even if the two parties wind up tied with either 27 or 28 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, this almost certainly means that Netanyahu will lead the next government of Israel, a result that will be received with dismay in the White House and set off a deluge of hand-wringing columns about Israel’s future from the mainstream liberal press.
Exit polls aren’t official results but those just released by the Israeli media leave little doubt about the ultimate outcome of today’s elections. Though the last published opinion polls issued last week gave the Labor-led Zionist Union Party with a decisive four-seat edge over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, the exists just released minutes ago show the two leading parties neck and neck. Given that historically these polls tend to undercount the right and don’t include the very significant vote of soldiers on active service in the Israeli Army, which also tends to tilt to the right-wing parties, the likelihood is that the Likud will wind up with a plurality. But even if the two parties wind up tied with either 27 or 28 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, this almost certainly means that Netanyahu will lead the next government of Israel, a result that will be received with dismay in the White House and set off a deluge of hand-wringing columns about Israel’s future from the mainstream liberal press.
If you understand the basics of Israeli politics, the reason why Netanyahu will remain the prime minister is easy to understand. Even if Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union finished first with the expected four-seat margin, he was going to have a difficult time getting a coalition that commanded a majority of the Knesset since they would have had to rely on anti-Zionist Arab votes or Haredi or right-wing parties that are unlikely to want to sit in his Cabinet.
Despite all the talk of this election marking a revolutionary change, the results show a degree of political stasis. The right-wing parties held their own when compared to 2009 and 2013 and the left led by Herzog gained almost nothing. The ultra-Orthodox party kept their share of the vote. Even the Joint Arab list, which now appears to have attained the status of the country’s third largest party only gained two seats over the 11 its three components (Islamists, Communists and radical Arab nationalists) won separately in the previous two elections and will almost certainly split apart again within days of the votes being counted.
Centrist parties did fairly well even though Yesh Atid has gone down from the 19 seats they won last time. Those votes went to Kulanu led by Likud defector Moshe Kahlon. Every election provides a new success and Kulanu is this year’s winner of that role.
But the bottom line is that the electoral math makes it almost impossible for Herzog to form a government. Netanyahu’s natural coalition is there in place even if the negotiations will likely be long and difficult as the various parties barter in the competition for Cabinet posts.
What will also remain unchanged are the tense relations between the White House and the Israeli government. President Obama may have been counting on Netanyahu being defeated but, like it or not, the prime minister will not only get a fourth term but be there after the president leaves office in January 2017.
Netanyahu Won’t Create a Palestinian State. Neither Will Herzog.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s last-minute appeals to right-wing voters set off a storm on Twitter among his left-wing and liberal critics. Though Netanyahu had publicly embraced the two-state solution to the Middle East conflict years ago and had offered statehood to the Palestinians in the talks sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry, yesterday he vowed that such a thing would never happen if he were reelected. For those who refused to blame the Palestinians for repeatedly refusing such offers from Netanyahu and his predecessors, this is a chance to claim that the lack of peace is the prime minister’s fault after all. Even worse, some are now claiming that he had been tricking President Obama and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Are they right? Not really. Though Netanyahu may be justly accused of flip-flopping now, that doesn’t justify past Palestinian refusals of peace offers. More to the point, despite his continued embraced of the idea, the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog isn’t any more likely to sign a deal to create a Palestinian state than Netanyahu if he wins the election.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s last-minute appeals to right-wing voters set off a storm on Twitter among his left-wing and liberal critics. Though Netanyahu had publicly embraced the two-state solution to the Middle East conflict years ago and had offered statehood to the Palestinians in the talks sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry, yesterday he vowed that such a thing would never happen if he were reelected. For those who refused to blame the Palestinians for repeatedly refusing such offers from Netanyahu and his predecessors, this is a chance to claim that the lack of peace is the prime minister’s fault after all. Even worse, some are now claiming that he had been tricking President Obama and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Are they right? Not really. Though Netanyahu may be justly accused of flip-flopping now, that doesn’t justify past Palestinian refusals of peace offers. More to the point, despite his continued embraced of the idea, the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog isn’t any more likely to sign a deal to create a Palestinian state than Netanyahu if he wins the election.
Both Netanyahu and Herzog and their principal supporters have been at pains to differentiate their stands on security issues. That fits Netanyahu’s narrative in which he depicts himself as the only thing standing between Israel and a left-wing government that would give away Jerusalem and allow the creation of another “Hamasistan” in the West Bank like the one in Gaza. By contrast, Herzog has encouraged the U.S. government (if not the Israeli people) to think of him as far more reasonable than Netanyahu on the peace process. Moreover, Herzog does talk as if he could actually entice the Palestinians to accept a two-state solution that would respect Israel’s security needs and recognize its legitimacy, thus ending the conflict.
But the truth about their differences is a lot less dramatic than either of them would have us believe.
Netanyahu is talking tough now that he needs center-right voters to abandon the small parties they have embraced because they assumed the Likud would lead the next government. So rather than appeal to moderates, he’s now telling them that if they want to avoid the nightmare of a terrorist run state in Jerusalem, they must vote for the Likud. But throughout his nine years as prime minister he has always shown a willingness to negotiate and even make concessions on settlements and territory. It was he who withdrew Israeli troops from Hebron during his first term. He froze settlement building in the West Bank during his second term though he got no credit from President Obama for doing so. And it was Netanyahu, despite his current impassioned denials, who made it clear to both the Americans and the Palestinians that he would agree to a Palestinian state on terms very similar to the generous offer made by his predecessor Ehud Olmert. If he is reelected, you can bet he will saunter back to the center as he has done before.
By contrast, for all of the expectations he has encouraged about making progress toward peace, Herzog has campaigned in Israel opposing the division of Jerusalem, a sine qua non for any agreement that Abbas would even think about discussing. Nor does he oppose building in the Jewish neighborhoods built in the city since the 1967 war. And he supports holding onto the same West Bank settlement blocs that the Obama administration has blasted Netanyahu for building up. Like Netanyahu, Herzog will demand that the Palestinians give up the right of return for the descendants of 1948 refugees.
But the real reason why neither man will sign a peace deal with Abbas has nothing to do with their respective and all-too-similar stands. Rather, it has to do with the unchanged political culture of the Palestinians that has prevented Yasir Arafat and then Abbas from accepting Israeli offers of statehood four times in the last 15 years. Until Palestinian nationalism stops being inextricably connected with a century-long war on Zionism, peace will never happen. And with Gaza still firmly under the control of Hamas, the already slim odds of Abbas feeling strong enough to make peace (assuming that he actually wants to) will remain zero. Moreover, most Israelis think a repeat of the disastrous 2005 withdrawal from Gaza would probably result in another Hamasistan in the West Bank.
Though President Obama and Secretary Kerry continue to labor under the delusion that pressure on Israel provides the magic formula for peace, the opposite is true. It is the Palestinians who need to change, not Israel. And Israelis, who once embraced the hope of Oslo, know it all too well. That’s why, to Netanyahu’s discontent, they are currently more interested in domestic issues rather than war and peace.
The real joke is not on Netanyahu for being a flip-flopper but on those who think either possible prime minister will make peace with a Palestinian leadership that is still unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.
If Bibi Loses, the Next Defense Minister Still Wants to Bomb Iran
Most American coverage of the Israeli election continues to center on the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his possible replacement by a Labor-led coalition that will steer the Jewish state away from confrontation with the United States. If Netanyahu loses tomorrow, there’s no doubt that it will greatly please the Obama administration. The president and his foreign-policy team regard the Israeli leader as public enemy No. 1 both because of their personal antipathy for him and his willingness to challenge their desire to create détente with Iran. But just as the White House’s expectations for a more pliable Israeli negotiating partner with the Palestinians may be unrealistic, so, too, is their confidence about Labor’s attitude about Iran. As a Times of Israel interview makes clear, the opposition’s designated candidate for defense minister, former general Amos Yadlin, is every bit the hawk about stopping and, if necessary, bombing Iran, as Netanyahu has been.
Most American coverage of the Israeli election continues to center on the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his possible replacement by a Labor-led coalition that will steer the Jewish state away from confrontation with the United States. If Netanyahu loses tomorrow, there’s no doubt that it will greatly please the Obama administration. The president and his foreign-policy team regard the Israeli leader as public enemy No. 1 both because of their personal antipathy for him and his willingness to challenge their desire to create détente with Iran. But just as the White House’s expectations for a more pliable Israeli negotiating partner with the Palestinians may be unrealistic, so, too, is their confidence about Labor’s attitude about Iran. As a Times of Israel interview makes clear, the opposition’s designated candidate for defense minister, former general Amos Yadlin, is every bit the hawk about stopping and, if necessary, bombing Iran, as Netanyahu has been.
It bears repeating that the image of Netanyahu as an extremist that is often the keynote of American press coverage betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of Israeli politics. Though after three terms and nine years as prime minister Netanyahu may have outlasted his expiration date for the Israeli public, the general dissatisfaction with him should not be mistaken for disagreement with this policies on either the Palestinians or Iran. To the contrary, polls show that there is little support for more concessions to a Palestinian Authority that has repeatedly rejected chances for peace, let alone to the even more implacable Hamas in Gaza. Nor is there much of a constituency for complacency about the peril about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Netanyahu’s problems in the election stem from anger about his foolish decision to call an election when he didn’t need to do so and the fact that many voters want more attention paid to economic and domestic issues that the prime minister has sidelined while highlighting security threats.
Though his Zionist Union opponents have criticized Netanyahu’s confrontational tactics with the Obama administration, they have been falling over themselves to make the public think there isn’t much difference between them on security issues. That is largely the case since it is unlikely that either Isaac Herzog or Tzipi Livni (who represented Netanyahu in the peace talks the past two years) will be able to offer the Palestinians any more than the prime minister. Indeed, Herzog has been eager to declare that he wouldn’t divide Jerusalem, as Obama wants him to do.
Assuring the Israeli public that his government wouldn’t be any less tough than that of Netanyahu was the reason Herzog brought Amos Yadlin onto his ticket and designated him as the likely defense minister in the next government. Yadlin, a former head of intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces, is, like many in the old left-dominated army establishment, a stern critic of Netanyahu. But if Obama and his team are reading what Yadlin is saying they might be a little less enthusiastic about the prospect of a new Israeli government. That is especially true of his rhetoric on Iran:
“Are we at the juncture where [all options have failed and] we have to choose between two very problematic alternatives: to accept an Iranian bomb, or to do what it takes so they don’t have a bomb? In English, ‘the bomb or the bombing?’ We have to ask ourselves constantly if we have reached this juncture? Have we exhausted all the other options to stop Iran?”
Many in Washington — “in the ‘belt,’” as Yadlin calls it from his days as military attaché to the US — “are at this juncture and are willing to accept a nuclear Iran. They believe in containment and deterrence.”
Do “they” include President Obama or his cabinet?
Yadlin skirts the question. “You’ll find them among the strategists and among the government officials. I still belong to those who believe that President Obama won’t let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.” …
Readers who discern distinctively Netanyahu-esque rhetoric in this list of US-Israeli differences on Iran are not mistaken. When it comes to the scale of the danger, the precariousness of trusting in American assurances, and the intentions of the ruling ayatollahs in Tehran, one might be forgiven for labeling Yadlin something slightly more hawkish than the catch-all “centrist.”
And that’s only natural, Yadlin explains.
“The goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and the desire to reach an agreement that will push Iran back as much as possible is not an issue of disagreement between Israel’s [political] parties.”
This is a key point. There really isn’t any genuine disagreement between Israel’s mainstream parties (Labor and Likud) on the basic issues of war and peace. Neither can offer a Palestinian leadership that is not interested in peace anything that will tempt them to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. And both are adamantly opposed to appeasement of Iran. Labor may speak kindly about the administration whereas Netanyahu is no longer bothering with pretending that he trusts the president. But when it comes to opposing the sort of concessions the U.S. is making to Iran, Yadlin is every bit the hawk that Netanyahu has been.
All of which means that no matter who wins tomorrow, tension between an American government determined to embrace Iran and to push for territorial concessions to the Palestinians and Israel’s government will continue.
Will Arab Votes Decide Israel’s Election?
One of the sidebars attracting attention from the international media’s coverage of the Israeli election has been the rise of the Joint List, the coalition of three Israeli Arab parties that is currently sitting at third place in the polls that predict it will hold either 12 or 13 seats in the next Knesset. But while that total is impressive, the assumptions that this represents a genuine breakthrough for Israeli Arab citizens or will aid the efforts of the Jewish left to topple Prime Minister Netanyahu both may be mistaken. While it would be a positive development if Israeli Arabs felt more invested in their government, the impact of a boost in the Arab vote or the chances that their ballots will make the difference between victory and defeat for Netanyahu’s Likud Party are being greatly exaggerated.
One of the sidebars attracting attention from the international media’s coverage of the Israeli election has been the rise of the Joint List, the coalition of three Israeli Arab parties that is currently sitting at third place in the polls that predict it will hold either 12 or 13 seats in the next Knesset. But while that total is impressive, the assumptions that this represents a genuine breakthrough for Israeli Arab citizens or will aid the efforts of the Jewish left to topple Prime Minister Netanyahu both may be mistaken. While it would be a positive development if Israeli Arabs felt more invested in their government, the impact of a boost in the Arab vote or the chances that their ballots will make the difference between victory and defeat for Netanyahu’s Likud Party are being greatly exaggerated.
First, it’s important to understand what a result of 12 or 13 seats for the Arab coalition will mean. Contrary to some of the excited coverage of this development, it will not be a huge gain for these parties. The Join List is a coalition of three parties: the Communist Hadash Party, the Islamist Raam Party, and the secular Arab nationalist Balad Party. Those three parties received four, four, and three seats respectively in the 2009 and 2013 elections. Forced to unite by a new law that would have doomed any party that received less than the votes needed to gain four seats, the combined effort of the trio will net them one or two extra seats. That’s not inconsiderable but it is by no means a revolution. Unless they get an unexpectedly large showing of Arab voters who traditionally turn out a rate of about 50 percent, as opposed to the approximately 70 percent of Jews, their influence in the Knesset may not be much greater it has been in the past.
Nor will these gains be likely to materially benefit Arab citizens who rightly complain about the lack of resources directed to their municipalities. That’s due in part to the problematic nature of the Israeli political system and partly to the fact that Israeli Arab politicians from these parties are often a big part of the problem on the local level.
Nor will the vastly different political points of view within the Arab coalition help them operate effectively in the Knesset. While all can be counted on to oppose the Zionist agenda of either a Likud or Labor-led coalition and to push for greater support for Arab communities, the vast gap between those who would like to transform the country into an Islamic state and the radical leftists who want a secular socialist government that is neither Jewish nor Arab will prevent them from achieving much once they’re done pushing for votes together.
But more important than these considerations is the question of whether the Joint List will help determine whether Netanyahu or his Labor Party rival Isaac Herzog leads the next government.
Some supporters of the Arab list as well as Netanyahu foes abroad are saying that the 12 or 13 seats they win will be combined with those of Labor’s supporters and potential centrist allies to give Herzog the 61-seat majority he needs to govern. Being in the minority in a parliamentary system is to be marginalized in a way that no member of a minority in the U.S. Congress could experience. But if they were the kingmakers for Herzog, they would be very powerful indeed.
In theory, that is possible. Even if Herzog and his new partner Tzipi Livni were not to include the Joint List as part of their Cabinet, the Arabs could still vote for Herzog from outside the coalition in order to allow him to lead the country at the head of a minority government.
The Wall Street Journal cites the precedent of 1992 when the late Yitzhak Rabin formed a government with the support of five Arab anti-Zionist Knesset members who were not formally part of this government. But Rabin had a majority without the Arab votes, though it was a shaky one since it included the leftist secular Meretz and the Ultra-Orthodox Shas parties. If, as the polls seem to be telling us, Herzog would need the 12 or 13 Arab votes to get to 61, that would be unprecedented and would put him at the mercy of the whims of his three Arab anti-Zionist partners in a way that no one leading a party that dubs itself a Zionist Union would want.
This makes it highly unlikely that Herzog would choose to form such a government or that Israel’s President Ruby Rivlin would even give him the chance to do so after the elections. But that does not mean the possibility won’t have an influence on the outcome.
In the last weekend of campaigning with no more polls to be published, Netanyahu is seeking to influence center-right Israeli voters to stop spreading out their votes among several parties and to support Likud so as to prevent the possibility of a government led by the left. If he is successful it would reverse the outcomes of the last two elections when Israeli voters were sure he would be the prime minister and thus gave Likud fewer votes than anticipated because they felt free to vote for smaller parties with specific agendas they liked.
But in addition to trying to scare them with the prospect of a win for Herzog and Livni, he’s saying that such a government would be dependent on Arab votes for its majority. He made that point in this interview in English with the Voice of Israel in which he labeled a Herzog victory as leading to an anti-Zionist government. Though Labor supporters will dismiss this as mere campaign rhetoric of a desperate candidate, the more the media in Israel and elsewhere hypes the chances of a big win for the Arab parties, the more credible his charge must be considered.
It would be ironic if the supposedly historic win for Israeli Arab voters were to return the man they most dislike to the prime minister’s office. But if enough undecided Israeli voters think Herzog really does need Arab votes to govern, that may be what will happen.
Can Netanyahu Bring His Voters Home?
The latest election polls in Israel have brought bad news to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The average of polls shows his Likud Party is now trailing the Zionist Union coalition of the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua faction by up to three seats. This downturn in the wake of his speech to Congress last week about the Iranian nuclear threat may show that he has made a couple of major miscalculations about the voting public’s priorities. Yet with several days to go before next Tuesday, his deficit is not large. More to the point, Labor leader Isaac Herzog still faces an uphill battle to create a governing coalition even if his party wins a plurality. The question now is whether, faced with the prospect of Netanyahu losing, enough center-right voters come back to Likud from the small and splinter parties they are currently backing in order for him to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.
The latest election polls in Israel have brought bad news to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The average of polls shows his Likud Party is now trailing the Zionist Union coalition of the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua faction by up to three seats. This downturn in the wake of his speech to Congress last week about the Iranian nuclear threat may show that he has made a couple of major miscalculations about the voting public’s priorities. Yet with several days to go before next Tuesday, his deficit is not large. More to the point, Labor leader Isaac Herzog still faces an uphill battle to create a governing coalition even if his party wins a plurality. The question now is whether, faced with the prospect of Netanyahu losing, enough center-right voters come back to Likud from the small and splinter parties they are currently backing in order for him to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.
Netanyahu made two major mistakes in this election.
The first was calling new elections in the first place. His coalition with center and secular parties was fractious and in many ways unworkable, but his belief that a new vote would gain him a greater advantage turns out to have been wrong. The public didn’t want the bother and the expense of a new election just two years after reelecting Netanyahu in 2013. Seeking his fourth term as prime minister in what would almost certainly allow him to surpass David Ben-Gurion’s record as the longest serving leader of the Jewish state, Netanyahu also took the voters’ patience for granted. Rather than another vote giving voters a chance to give him the mandate he thought he needed, it actually gave them an opportunity to register their annoyance and boredom with a man running as a major party candidate for prime minister for the fifth time in the last 20 years.
The second major mistake was that by running almost exclusively on war and peace issues, Netanyahu forgot that most Israelis were at this time hoping that their government would concentrate more of its energies on their well being and the economy. Most agree with Netanyahu on the peace talks and the Iran threat. Indeed, despite the very different tone enunciated by Labor, there is precious little daylight between him and Herzog on the big issues. The fact is the majority of the voters rightly assume peace with the Palestinians is impossible for the foreseeable future and that Israel ought to do what it can to stop Iran. That meant there was not as much traction for Netanyahu’s eloquent speech to Congress in terms of its appeal to Israeli voters as he might have hoped.
But while right now it looks as if Netanyahu has passed his expiration date with most Israelis, he still has a decent chance of prevailing. The reason for that is the same factor that diminished his victories in 2009 and 2013.
In both of those elections, voters headed to the polls assuming that Netanyahu would be the victor. They were right, as the coalition math dictated that the left couldn’t form a government and that the parties of the center-right would prevail. That allowed center-right voters to abandon the Likud and vote for splinter parties that most reflected their personal beliefs. In particular, Naftali Bennet’s Jewish Home Party benefited from this, but it also allowed voters who were counting on Netanyahu to lead the next government to support other secular or religious parties as well. The result was that Likud wound up with smaller than expected totals even if it didn’t change the fact that Netanyahu would ultimately become prime minister after the coalition haggling was done.
This time Netanyahu seems fated to finish second. Though that doesn’t necessarily mean that Herzog will be the next prime minister, a first-place finish would likely mean he would get the first shot at forming a government. That’s why Netanyahu’s last-minute appeals are aimed at scaring voters into thinking Herzog and Livni will really be leading the next government.
Will that shift enough voters from the small parties back to the Likud to give Netanyahu an unexpected win? It’s hard to say. But even minor shifts that still leave Herzog’s group in first place may make it impossible for him to govern. After all, Herzog will likely need both Moshe Kahlon’s center-right populist Kulanu Party and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu in order to get the 61 votes he needs for a majority. If both are diminished or the religious parties lose a seat or two in a shift back to Likud, the slim margin for a Labor government may evaporate.
That takes us back to Herzog’s formidable task even if he finishes first. He can’t include the largely anti-Zionist Arab parties in his government. And it will be difficult for the religious parties to serve with the far-left Meretz or the secular Yesh Atid. And it’s not clear that anyone on the left will sit in a Cabinet with Lieberman. The current polls give Herzog a path to victory, but any coalescing behind the two largest parties will only help Netanyahu and Likud. As Michel Gurfinkiel wrote yesterday here in his analysis of Israel’s atomized political system, a return to an era in which Labor and Likud dominated the system as its two major parties would serve Netanyahu’s interests next week.
Do voters care enough about keeping the prickly and generally disliked Netanyahu in office to return to the Likud? More to the point, does a Labor Party led by the unthreatening-looking Herzog at a time when no one thinks peace talks have a chance really scare centrists or right-wingers into holding their noses and giving Netanyahu a fourth term? The answer to that question will determine the outcome.
Why Isaac Herzog Is Channeling Menachem Begin–and the Mishnaic Sages Too
There is a famous Talmudic story about the Mishnaic sage Elazar ben Azariah, who was chosen by his peers to lead the rabbinate. He fulfilled all the criteria but he was only 18, and he looked it. The Talmud tells us God then made part of Elazar’s beard turn white, giving him the gravitas he needed to head the academy. Israel’s babyfaced Isaac Herzog, the young leader of a Labor Party on the cusp of winning Israel’s next national elections, is in need of such gravitas. But he’s not asking for a miracle; Photoshop will do. Herzog’s campaign has reportedly done something that might surprise consumers of our airbrushed pop culture: digitally altered his photo to make him look older–and, presumably, wiser.
There is a famous Talmudic story about the Mishnaic sage Elazar ben Azariah, who was chosen by his peers to lead the rabbinate. He fulfilled all the criteria but he was only 18, and he looked it. The Talmud tells us God then made part of Elazar’s beard turn white, giving him the gravitas he needed to head the academy. Israel’s babyfaced Isaac Herzog, the young leader of a Labor Party on the cusp of winning Israel’s next national elections, is in need of such gravitas. But he’s not asking for a miracle; Photoshop will do. Herzog’s campaign has reportedly done something that might surprise consumers of our airbrushed pop culture: digitally altered his photo to make him look older–and, presumably, wiser.
As Tal Schneider and Noga Tarnopolsky note, “According to the business tabloid The Marker, Yitzhak Herzog’s enviable baby face has caused a few rumpled foreheads, and the Labor campaign has actually used a Photoshop-like service to add the wrinkles of age and gravitas to its candidate’s unblemished face.” And indeed if you follow the link to The Marker you can see the difference.
The page is in Hebrew but it’s self-explanatory (and easily translatable). The Marker actually set up a useful tool in which they’ve layered one official campaign picture of each of the major candidates over a regular photo, and allowed the user to drag an icon over each photo to reveal the one underneath, for easy comparison. Everybody’s “official” picture looks as close to flawless as the camera can believably make them–except for Herzog. His digitally enhanced photo shows his wrinkles significantly more prominently, especially around his eyes. And his hair looks grayer.
The polls provide some explanation. While the Labor-led Zionist Union polls a few seats better than Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, when respondents are asked who they’d prefer as prime minister, Netanyahu wins by a significant margin (though the gap has closed somewhat). Herzog is trying to look more experienced, more distinguished, and more battle tested.
And aside from the understandable logic of it, there’s precedent too. Ronald Reagan’s great line in his debate with Walter Mondale that he was “not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience” may have been something of a joke, but in Israel such youth and inexperience can indeed be a liability.
Israel probably first learned this in earnest in its momentous Knesset election in 1977, when a Likud-led bloc was finally able to defeat the left-Labor coalition for the first time.
The Likud side was led at that time by Menachem Begin. The leftist Alignment was led by Yitzhak Rabin until a scandal over an illegal bank account spurred his resignation from the post. He was replaced by Shimon Peres. Begin was in his mid-60s and always looked at least his age. Peres was a decade younger. A few months before the election, Begin suffered a heart attack, was hospitalized, and lost weight. He was weaker than usual. To make matters worse, he had agreed to a televised debate before Peres had taken over leadership of the left coalition. The debate was scheduled for just days before the vote.
In his biography of Begin (released in English in 2012) Avi Shilon describes how the Likud tried to learn from Nixon’s debate with JFK:
Alex Ansky coached Begin for many hours in an effort to improve his physical appearance. In order to make him look more tanned, he wore, for the first time in his life, a pale blue shirt. “It was hard to get him one like that, as all his shirts were white,” Aliza said. The debate, hosted by journalist Yishayahu (Shaike) Ben Porat, lasted over forty minutes. … The two candidates were very excited, but Begin was clearly more so. When the debate first started, Begin’s gaze constantly searched for the cameras. Furthermore, despite his blue shirt, he looked pale and weak and sweated just as profusely as Nixon had done in his debate.
That’s when the two candidates learned an important lesson about the Israeli public:
What Americans perceived as a disadvantage was taken by the Israeli viewers as an advantage. The sweaty and excited Begin triggered sympathy. His appearance—which was ill-suited to the medium—actually made him seem to be a responsible and mature Jew who did not sleep at night because of his concerns for Israel. When the debate ended and the cameras were turned off, Begin could no longer resist some humor and remarked while Peres was removing his makeup, “Oh, look how beautiful he is.” His associates burst into laughter.
Begin was a powerful speaker–peerless when he was at his best. And he looked like the underground soldier, hounded by his enemies and marginalized by the Jewish establishment, that he had been for so long. He had been fighting all his life for the Jewish state, and it showed.
With his victory, he once again changed the course of Israeli history. But he also proved something great about his fellow Jews: democracy to them was not a beauty pageant. Herzog, the son of the late Chaim Herzog, an IDF general and former president of Israel (at the tail end of Begin’s premiership, in fact), knows this too. And he would like the Israeli electorate not to hold his (relative) youth and inexperience against him.
Israel’s Atomized Political System
According to a Midgam/Channel 2 poll released one week before the March 17 general election, 49 percent of all Israelis see Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud party, as the best potential prime minister. Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s chief contender and the leader of the liberal Zionist Union party, gets only 36 percent.
According to a Midgam/Channel 2 poll released one week before the March 17 general election, 49 percent of all Israelis see Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud party, as the best potential prime minister. Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s chief contender and the leader of the liberal Zionist Union party, gets only 36 percent.
However, the same poll says that the Zionist Union is likely to be the largest group in the forthcoming Knesset, with 25 seats out of 120, against 21 seats for Likud. According to Israeli practice President Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin, will thus first invite Herzog to form a governing coalition.
Some explanation is needed here. How come such a discrepancy between the personal popularity of Netanyahu and Herzog and the electoral fortunes of their respective party?
Israeli politics start and end with the electoral law, which provides for near absolute proportional representation. The threshold for a party to be represented in parliament is currently 3.25 percent of the national vote, which translates into four seats. Such system is an incentive for every political leader to start his own party, either as the advocate of a given constituency or as the promoter of some new political agenda. As a result, the political class is constantly in upheaval, and larger parties, which in fact are not large at all, constantly break up into smaller units.
What counts is coalitions. For the twenty-nine first years of the State of Israel (1948-1977), the Labor party, itself a conglomeration of at least three smaller groups, was able to build up a large coalition with the religious parties and some centrists. What helped Labor was that being in charge in a nation-building era meant being the de facto national establishment.
In 1977, Likud under Menachem Begin was able for the first time to build an alternative coalition. Many former supporters of Labor had defected to Begin’s Likud which, ironically, had come to be seen as the true defender of the working man and the underdog. The religious parties switched allegiances. And a substantial centrist party, Dash, popped up for the first time and joined the new majority.
Ever since then, there has been some sort of right/left alternation in Israel. The moment it lost power, Labor lost its grip over at least part of the elite. Moreover, demographics favored the conservative parties, which rest on more family-oriented and thus steadily growing constituencies.
In 2005, Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon, arguably one of the strongest political leaders in Israeli history, simply deserted his own party, which had rebelled against him, in order to create a new centrist-oriented coalition with some Labor defectors. Four years later, Likud was back with Netanyahu, and it managed to hold for six years with two successive coalitions. Until it faced both tensions with smaller allies and internal dissent.
Labor, under Herzog, is doing slightly better than Likud in the polls because it struck a deal with Tzipi Livni’s diminutive Hatnua party. The opposite is true of Likud: it was divorced by Israel Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman’s secular nationalist party, popular among Russian immigrants; it lost its populist-reformist wing, led by Moshe Kahlon, which resurfaced as the new Kulanu party; and it was not able to achieve an understanding with HaBayit HaYehudi, the religious nationalist party of the maverick high-tech entrepreneur, Naftali Bennett. Would the four conservative parties have united, like Labor and Hatnua, they would have garnered far more seats (though fewer than the sum of their individual polls).
Whatever the March 17 outcome, neither Likud nor Labor will decide the future Israeli government, but rather the medium and small parties. One may guess that every mini-leader will be tempted to sell himself to the most promising coalition. Still, politics, even in Israel, has to do with some principles, and the will of the people when it comes to some crucial issues. If principles are to prevail in the end of the day, Netanyahu, as indicated, is in better shape than Herzog.
The final choice will be indeed between a center-right coalition around Netanyahu and a center-left coalition around Herzog–except that Herzog could, theoretically, try to add the support of the Arab List, which will probably win 12 seats. But this is less likely because the Arab List is a coalition of three smaller Arab parties who stridently oppose the very existence of Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority.
One wonders of course why Israel has not been able, over the years, to move from proportional representation something closer to the first-past-the-post system. One answer is that, as a very diverse “patchwork nation” — Jews, Arabs, and other minorities, Ashkenazim and Sefardim, secular, or religious — Israel cannot afford not to grant representation, or the semblance of representation, to everyone.
Another answer is that some constitutional reforms have been introduced since 1992, with mixed results or even very bad results. One attempt to have the prime minister popularly elected turned the Arab minority into a de facto arbitrator, and was quietly dropped in 2000, in the wake of the Second Intifada. Even raising the threshold in proportional representation does not seem to work. When there was no threshold at all, larger parties were faring better than they are today.
How to Understand the Israeli Elections: The Likud Civil War
It’s no surprise that a narrative developed in the U.S. media that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress was all or mostly an election stunt. The Western press is a long way from understanding Israeli politics. But as news organizations still cast next week’s Israeli election in the shadow of The Speech, it’s become clear their readers are missing the real story of the polls: they’re defined by a Likud civil war.
It’s no surprise that a narrative developed in the U.S. media that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress was all or mostly an election stunt. The Western press is a long way from understanding Israeli politics. But as news organizations still cast next week’s Israeli election in the shadow of The Speech, it’s become clear their readers are missing the real story of the polls: they’re defined by a Likud civil war.
On paper, despite the fragmentation of Israeli party politics, it’s still easy to miss any subplot when the main story has Likud and Labor–the traditional pillars of Israeli right and left–back in a dead heat. But it turns out the Likud vs. Labor rivalry is actually the subplot here. The main theme of the elections has to do with why Labor’s Isaac Herzog is on the cusp of possibly becoming prime minister. There are several politicians instrumental to Herzog’s chances. And they’re all originally Likudniks.
Let’s look at the two scenarios by which Herzog would become prime minister. The first is the old-fashioned way, by winning the election and putting together a governing coalition of 61 or more seats. Just taking the latest polls, Herzog would need to overcome mutual resistance from Yair Lapid and Orthodox parties to sit in a coalition together. But it’s certainly possible, maybe even likely, that they could. Lapid isn’t interested in making Bibi prime minister, so he’s a natural ally of Herzog here.
All of which makes the “kingmaker” in this scenario Moshe Kahlon, who left the Likud to form his own party instead of challenging Netanyahu within Likud. He has enough votes to make or break a coalition of either side. If Herzog is able to piece together a coalition, it’ll be because the (ex-)Likudnik Kahlon made it so.
Additionally, in such a scenario Herzog would need one more ex-Likudnik: the once and possibly future kingmaker Avigdor Lieberman. Herzog’s coalition would in all probability require both Lieberman and Kahlon to get him above the threshold. It would not be a particularly stable coalition (Labor and Tzipi Livni presiding over a coalition that needs rightists to survive, including one who was recently emitting hot air about beheading Arab enemies, would be interesting to say the least). But it could at least form a government.
And there’s the second possibility for Herzog to become prime minister: a unity government. This would be another Israeli throwback, and in the past unity governments have been far more productive than they might seem from the outside. This is in part because they have so many seats that none of the fringe parties represent a threat to the stability of the coalition. If one or two minor parties bolted the government, the rest of the coalition would barely notice.
So how would Israel get a unity government? The most likely scenario to produce such a coalition would be if the election is so close, and so splintered, that either no clear voter favorite emerges or that no truly stable coalition seems possible otherwise. In such a case, the Israeli president, who chooses which party to invite to form a coalition, would ask for a unity government. In a close election, the president’s mostly ceremonial role finds its one true lever of power. And the current president is Ruby Rivlin, a member of the Likud.
Rivlin is a Likudnik in the classic mold, but he does not get along with Netanyahu, and has taken to criticizing Bibi publicly, an uncommon but not unprecedented practice for the president. Rivlin is reportedly leaning toward a unity government, which is not at all surprising. In a unity government, it’s quite likely that the person to get the nod as prime minister will be the head of the party with the most votes. Another option is to have a rotating premiership. Either way, Rivlin, the Likudnik, would place Herzog in the Prime Minister’s Office.
There’s one more “kingmaker,” so to speak, involved. Herzog has teamed up with Livni to form the Zionist Union. Livni may not be worth that many seats, but even a few will likely make the difference in this election. Livni is also a former Likudnik, though she did not leave over a feud with Bibi; she followed Ariel Sharon to Kadima. And she has built her current political identity around the peace process. So she’s far from the Likud of Rivlin, Kahlon, or Lieberman. But her political background is on the right, and she spent almost as much time in Likud as she did in Kadima, which was of course led by a faction of Likudniks.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been in or near the leadership of the Likud long enough to have plenty of rivals. Some of the bridges he’s burned have been repairable (Lieberman has come and gone from Likud with some regularity), some not. But his non-Likud political rivals on the right, such as Lieberman and Naftali Bennett, are ex-Likudniks. And his electoral rivals who might give the premiership to Herzog are current or former Likudniks. And Herzog would only have enough votes to get there because he’s allied with a former Likudnik.
The splintering of the Likud on Bibi’s watch is catching up to him. In his time in the leadership, Likud has groomed the next generation of dynamic rightist politicians. And they’re now the primary threat to his reelection.
Obama’s Uncomfortable Israeli Ally
Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog stated the obvious when he noted today that both the Israeli government and its opposition agreed on the nuclear threat from Iran. But as much as he shares Prime Minister Netanyahu’s conviction that Israel cannot tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon, he wants no part of a joint trip to Washington with his rival. Herzog rejected the invitation from the Likud to join the prime minister when he goes to Congress in early March. But while there are good reasons for both Israelis and American supporters of the Jewish state to question the wisdom of Netanyahu’s decision to accept the invitation to address a joint session of Congress, Herzog’s unwillingness to play along with Netanyahu’s gambit demonstrates that a move that has actually worsened the chances of Congress passing more sanctions may be helping the prime minister politically at home more than it is hurting him. By forcing Herzog to declare himself ready to trust the Obama administration to do the right thing on Iran—just at a time when it appears to be making even more concessions that endanger the security of the West and Israel—Netanyahu could be ensuring his reelection next month.
Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog stated the obvious when he noted today that both the Israeli government and its opposition agreed on the nuclear threat from Iran. But as much as he shares Prime Minister Netanyahu’s conviction that Israel cannot tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon, he wants no part of a joint trip to Washington with his rival. Herzog rejected the invitation from the Likud to join the prime minister when he goes to Congress in early March. But while there are good reasons for both Israelis and American supporters of the Jewish state to question the wisdom of Netanyahu’s decision to accept the invitation to address a joint session of Congress, Herzog’s unwillingness to play along with Netanyahu’s gambit demonstrates that a move that has actually worsened the chances of Congress passing more sanctions may be helping the prime minister politically at home more than it is hurting him. By forcing Herzog to declare himself ready to trust the Obama administration to do the right thing on Iran—just at a time when it appears to be making even more concessions that endanger the security of the West and Israel—Netanyahu could be ensuring his reelection next month.
With only three weeks to go before Israeli voters head to the polls, the race between Netanyahu’s Likud and the Zionist Union bloc led by Herzog is still too close to call in terms of which party will get the most Knesset seats. But the coalition math in which either party must negotiate deals with several smaller parties in order to get to a 61-seat majority and the right to govern still favors Netanyahu. In order to become the next prime minister, Herzog is going to have to finish first by a healthy margin and then put together a tenuous coalition including the religious and centrist parties but excluding the anti-Zionist Arabs.
Pulling off such a feat is possible but not likely. And the more Netanyahu is able to position himself as the sole figure standing up to American pressure on the Palestinians and fighting against appeasement of Iran, the worse Herzog’s chances look. Thus, it might have made sense to make some gesture of national unity that would have enabled him to steal at least some of Netanyahu’s thunder in Washington. But Herzog can’t do it. Why? Because the rationale underlying his candidacy is a critique of the way Netanyahu has messed up the alliance with the United States.
Herzog rightly understood that the invitation to join Netanyahu was a political stunt and that the Likud was hoping he would say no. The opposition leader isn’t wrong to view the speech as now having a lot more to do with Israeli domestic politics than an effective effort to stop an administration determined to cut a deal with Iran on any terms, even if its provisions virtually concede its status as a threshold nuclear power and will eventually allow the regime to build a weapon with impunity. But the problem for Herzog is not in diagnosing the futility of Netanyahu’s speech or the fact that it has helped President Obama pick off wavering Democrats and therefore prevent the creation of a veto-proof majority for increased sanctions on Iran. Rather, it is in being put in the position of being Obama’s man in Jerusalem just at a time when the president seems to be betraying Israel’s interests in the Iran talks rather than just engaging in another pointless spat with Netanyahu.
There’s no question that the White House will be holding its breath on March 17 and the days following the Israeli vote hoping that somehow Herzog and his ally Tzipi Livni can prevail. Herzog seems to appreciate this and is saying nothing to indicate that he will make trouble for Obama on Iran or any other issue.
But Herzog has to be worried about two things happening that would make Netanyahu’s congressional speech more than a campaign speech.
One is the very real possibility that the U.S. will cut a deal with Iran in the next couple of weeks that will give the Islamist regime the right to hold onto to its nuclear toys and give it a chance—whether by a breakout or waiting out a freeze period such as the one suggested by the U.S. this week—that will give it a nuclear weapon. If the president who is already deeply unpopular in Israel agrees to a deal that is widely seen as undermining Israeli security, Herzog will be hard-put to continue to claim that he can defend Israel’s interests more effectively than Netanyahu by warming up the relationship with Obama. At that point, he will be forced into a stance that will be a faint echo of Netanyahu’s full-throated opposition to an Iran deal and irrelevance.
But even if a deal isn’t struck before the speech or the election, Herzog still has to be concerned about the administration’s push for Iran détente becoming more overt. Indeed, the closer we get to a deal, whether or not it is signed, the steady stream of U.S. concessions to the Islamist regime makes Herzog’s position as Obama’s favorite in the elections more untenable than ever. Though Obama would like to help Herzog, the irony is that the harder he tries to achieve his main second-term foreign-policy goal—an entente with Iran—the worse Herzog’s chances may be. While Herzog is right to say that, if elected, he would, at least initially, be able to warm up relations with Obama, being cozy with someone who is getting cozy with Iran is a very uncomfortable place to be for a man who wants to be elected prime minister of Israel.
Israelis Have Noticed Obama Is Still Interfering in Their Elections
One of the running jokes about Barack Obama’s practice of repenting for past American meddling in other countries’ affairs has been that Obama came to office opposing regime change everywhere but Israel. This was a case of it being funny (only) because it was true. Obama has continued to ally with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s electoral opponents, and Israeli voters, according to a poll released today, don’t think he’s being all that subtle about it.
One of the running jokes about Barack Obama’s practice of repenting for past American meddling in other countries’ affairs has been that Obama came to office opposing regime change everywhere but Israel. This was a case of it being funny (only) because it was true. Obama has continued to ally with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s electoral opponents, and Israeli voters, according to a poll released today, don’t think he’s being all that subtle about it.
The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli public opinion continues to show that Israelis are proficient observers of the American political scene, especially with regard to President Obama:
Sixty-two percent of respondents said the Obama administration is interfering, 31% said it is not interfering, and 8% did not know.
A majority of respondents, 56%, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is correct in principle in his desire to address Congress on the Iranian nuclear threat, while 36% said he is not right, and 8% had no opinion.
Nevertheless, only 41% said that the prime minister should actually deliver the address, while 36% said he should not go to Washington at all, 17% said he should go, but speak only at the AIPAC policy conference, and 6% did not know.
As Jonathan Tobin has been pointing out, Netanyahu did nothing wrong by accepting the American invitation to address Congress and he is also correct in the intent and content of his speech, but once the Obama White House turned it into a partisan issue and even, embarrassingly, injected race into the discussion, Netanyahu’s better play was to cancel or postpone the speech. Israeli voters seem to generally agree.
As for the question of Obama’s interference, it’s actually surprising that only 62 percent thought so. The State Department is funding a group bankrolling an anti-Netanyahu campaign, and a former Obama campaign official is playing a leading role in the American left’s “Anyone but Bibi” efforts.
Additionally, Obama himself has telegraphed his intentions. Aaron David Miller acknowledges this over at Foreign Policy, but the headline and subheadline (probably added by an editor, not Miller) don’t get the story quite right. The column is titled “Obama Is Pursuing Regime Change in Israel,” which mostly correct; it would be right on target to say “Obama Is Still Pursuing Regime Change in Israel.” He has been doing so since the beginning of the first term of Netanyahu’s current premiership.
But the subheadline works too hard to water down Obama’s meddling: “Angered by Netanyahu’s invitation to address Congress, the White House is now quietly working to unsettle the prime minister before elections in Israel.” Again, this could be fixed with a minor word substitution. It could say “Angered by Netanyahu’s very existence…” since Netanyahu’s recent acceptance of his American invitation to Congress obviously had nothing to do with Obama’s two-term project of ousting Bibi.
In fact, the only thing this speech did was give Obama and his defenders in the media a pretext. As CNN reported earlier this week, one of the nuggets in David Axelrod’s memoir is that Obama planned to go “Bulworth” in his second term by doing things that might be unpopular but would at least be more honest. And stepping up his attacks on Netanyahu was part of the list.
Here’s how the president saw his post-election strategy:
These are things “I’ll want to work on in my second term,” the president told his top staffers, as one of them referenced the Warren Beatty movie Bulworth, in which a candidate goes on a reckless spree of truth-telling. “Some of them may make you guys nervous. But Axe keeps saying I should be ‘authentic.’ So maybe I should go out there and just let it rip.”
So what does it mean for Obama to be “authentic?” Here’s CNN:
In addition to revealing his actual position in favor of legal same-sex marriages, and working on immigration reform and to combat climate change, the president singled out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Axelrod wrote. Specifically, he wanted to be tougher on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Just to put this in perspective, Obama had been working to collapse Netanyahu’s government almost immediately. What Obama was saying was that trying to collapse the duly elected Israeli government was his way of pulling punches, of not being tough enough on Netanyahu. It’s easy to see why Obama thought this might make some of his advisors nervous.
But it’s also not much of a revelation, is it? And the irony is that if Obama is successful and Isaac Herzog’s Labor wins the next election, the president and the Western media will be forced to reckon with their characterization of Israeli politics but without the benefit of having a right-of-center leader to scapegoat. The press loves to talk about Netanyahu’s supposed intransigence on the peace process by saying that his “right-wing” coalition partners wouldn’t stand for certain concessions.
If people think Bibi is hostage to his coalition partners, they would be absolutely terrified by the political reality that would face Herzog. In order to govern, he needs not only to win the election but to put together a coalition. To even have a chance, he’d have to construct a rickety coalition dependent on center-right parties. And he’d have almost no margin for error.
Which is to say that Obama’s “Bulworth” strategy against Israel is not just morally bankrupt and ill advised. It also risks further eroding Israelis’ already-low trust in Obama for what would probably be negligible gain. Obama’s strategists might have pointed that out, though it’s unlikely the president would have listened.
How Different Would Herzog Be From Bibi?
With a little more than a month to go before Israel’s Knesset election, there isn’t much doubt that the White House is hoping and praying that Israeli voters reject Prime Minister Netanyahu’s bid for a third consecutive term in office. With Obama using Netanyahu’s plan to speak to Congress on Iran sanctions only weeks before the vote and the prime minister speaking of his “duty” to inform the world about the mistaken policy being pursued by the administration, tensions between the two governments are at fever pitch. While the impact of Netanyahu’s speech on Israeli voters is a matter of speculation, he remains favored to win. But what will really change if Obama gets his wish and, instead, the Labor Party’s Isaac Herzog emerges from what is likely to be a protracted period of negotiations as Israel’s next prime minister? The answer is that while the atmospherics between Washington and Jerusalem will undoubtedly be a lot better, the substance of the arguments between the two governments won’t change much. Nor will, despite the assumptions on the part of Netanyahu’s many critics, Israel be any closer to peace under Herzog than it is under the incumbent.
With a little more than a month to go before Israel’s Knesset election, there isn’t much doubt that the White House is hoping and praying that Israeli voters reject Prime Minister Netanyahu’s bid for a third consecutive term in office. With Obama using Netanyahu’s plan to speak to Congress on Iran sanctions only weeks before the vote and the prime minister speaking of his “duty” to inform the world about the mistaken policy being pursued by the administration, tensions between the two governments are at fever pitch. While the impact of Netanyahu’s speech on Israeli voters is a matter of speculation, he remains favored to win. But what will really change if Obama gets his wish and, instead, the Labor Party’s Isaac Herzog emerges from what is likely to be a protracted period of negotiations as Israel’s next prime minister? The answer is that while the atmospherics between Washington and Jerusalem will undoubtedly be a lot better, the substance of the arguments between the two governments won’t change much. Nor will, despite the assumptions on the part of Netanyahu’s many critics, Israel be any closer to peace under Herzog than it is under the incumbent.
To listen to Herzog and his new partner Tzipi Livni, who merged her defunct Hatnua Party with Labor to form what they call the Zionist Camp, the differences will be significant. Herzog has spoken of his commitment to the peace process. It’s likely that he would encourage a renewal of the talks sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry that collapsed last year after Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity pact with Hamas.
But would the terms he is willing to offer Abbas differ from those that the Palestinians have already rejected?
Herzog has danced around the question of a divided Jerusalem. Though he is saying now that he wants to keep the city united, in the past he has endorsed the Geneva Initiative’s plans for a division. That waffling is in stark contrast to Netanyahu’s adamant refusal to partition Israel’s capital. But in practice, Herzog might still find himself locked in disputes with the Obama administration on Jerusalem. That’s because Obama considers the 40-year-old Jewish neighborhoods built in parts of the city that were illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 to be little different than the most hilltop encampments in the West Bank where Jews are living. To the administration, both are “settlements” and obstacles to peace. Any Herzog-Livni government would be a coalition with centrist parties, including relative hardliners like Avigdor Lieberman, and not Labor’s allies to the left or the Arab parties. It is inconceivable that any such government would agree, as the president almost certainly will demand, for a building freeze in Jerusalem.
Herzog is also deeply committed to a two-state solution, something that is music to Obama’s ears and will be the selling point used by Kerry when he tries to entice Abbas back to the negotiating table should Labor win. But here again, harsh reality will intrude on Obama’s fantasy about a change in the prime minister’s office being a guarantee of peace.
Abbas has already rejected a two-state deal that included a Palestinian state in Gaza, almost all the West Bank, and a share of Jerusalem when Ehud Olmert offered him such an accord in 2008. He refused to even negotiate seriously with Netanyahu even though the prime minister accepted the two-state concept in 2009. Livni knows this because she was Netanyahu’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians for the past two years and has publicly complained that Abbas showed no interest in making a deal.
Will that change simply because Netanyahu isn’t in office? It’s theoretically possible, but given that the dynamic of Palestinian politics remains unchanged, it’s hard to see how things will be different. With Gaza still in the hands of Hamas and Abbas fearful of elections in the West Bank that he might lose (he is currently serving in the tenth year of a four-year term), it is highly unlikely. After years of avoiding being put in a position where he would have to commit political suicide by making peace, Abbas has no incentive to change now. So long as he and his people are unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, it doesn’t matter if the Likud, Labor, or any other Zionist party leads Israel, the outcome will be the same.
One would also expect a change in tone in discussions about Iran if Netanyahu doesn’t win. Yet Obama would be mistaken to think that Herzog would be any happier with a deal that allows the Islamist regime to become a nuclear threshold state than Netanyahu has been. Despite the carping at Netanyahu from many in the security establishment, there has always been a consensus among Israeli mainstream figures about the serious nature of the nuclear threat from Iran. The mild-mannered Herzog may express his disagreement with Obama in more measured tones, but the divide between the two countries over the desirability of détente with Iran is not one that will disappear with a Labor-led government. The same holds true about Iranian adventurism in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and even Gaza.
Those hoping for a Netanyahu defeat shouldn’t get their hopes up too high. The latest polls still show the Likud leading Labor. Moreover, even if Labor ties the Likud or earns a slight edge, it won’t be easy for Herzog to put a new government together. Though he has a path to a 61-seat majority, it is a precarious one involving discarding his Meretz ally and the Arab parties and making deals with centrist parties that are more natural partners for Likud. For that to be considered likely, Herzog’s party, which just fired its campaign strategist (always a bad sign this close to the voting) will have to beat Netanyahu’s Likud handily, something that doesn’t seem particularly likely at the moment.
But even if he does somehow win, the change will be one of personalities rather than on substance on the peace process. So long as the Arabs exercise their veto on peace, it really doesn’t matter who is prime minister of Israel. Neither Netanyahu nor Herzog will make peace with the Palestinians and there’s nothing Obama can do about it.
Even After Speech Fiasco, Israel Will Survive Netanyahu-Obama Feud
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session has brought down on his head the scorn of the American political establishment and press. But all is not lost for Netanyahu. There may be no good solution to his dilemma with respect to the speech to Congress and little hope that the Obama administration will do the right thing with respect to Iran, he remains the most likely person to emerge from Israel’s March election as the next prime minister. Though some may think that would be an even bigger disaster for his country considering that administration sources are spreading rumors that President Obama will never again meet with Netanyahu, no one should think such an outcome will be the end of the alliance or even such bad news for the prime minister.
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His decision to accept House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session has brought down on his head the scorn of the American political establishment and press. But all is not lost for Netanyahu. There may be no good solution to his dilemma with respect to the speech to Congress and little hope that the Obama administration will do the right thing with respect to Iran, he remains the most likely person to emerge from Israel’s March election as the next prime minister. Though some may think that would be an even bigger disaster for his country considering that administration sources are spreading rumors that President Obama will never again meet with Netanyahu, no one should think such an outcome will be the end of the alliance or even such bad news for the prime minister.
Though Netanyahu’s American supporters continue to defend the idea of him giving such a speech, there’s no way to sugarcoat what has become a disaster for Israel and the prime minister. The blunder has not only made it easier for President Obama to divert attention from his indefensible opposition to sanctions that would turn up the heat on Iran in the nuclear talks. It has also enabled the White House to rally Democrats to oppose more sanctions, causing some to say that they won’t even attend Netanyahu’s speech out of loyalty to the president. Joining the gang tackle, some in the press are floating stories about Ambassador Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s loyal aide and the person who helped cook up this fiasco with Boehner, being frozen out of future contacts with the administration.
But while, contrary to the expectations of some on the right, this hasn’t exactly boosted Netanyahu’s standing at home, neither has it caused his prospects for re-election to crash. Indeed, while his Likud Party seemed to be losing ground to the Labor-Tzipi Livni alliance that now calls itself the Zionist Camp, by the end of the week, polls showed that Netanyahu’s stock had gone up. A review of all the polls showed that Likud was either tied with Labor or edging slightly ahead.
More to the point, any way you look at the electoral math of the coming Knesset, finding a way for Labor leader Isaac Herzog to form a coalition, even one that isn’t particularly stable, seems highly unlikely.
Even if Herzog’s party manages to nose out Likud for the top spot in the March elections giving him the theoretical first shot at forming a coalition, his task seems impossible. A Labor-led coalition is theoretically possible but it would require the sort of coalition of not merely rivals but open enemies. Herzog must build his coalition with the joint Arab list — forcing him to rely on open anti-Zionists to form his “Zionist Camp” government — or the Ultra-Orthodox religious parties. It is impossible to imagine those two polar opposites serving together. But even if he eliminates one or the other, it’s equally difficult to see like Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu or Yitzhak Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, working with the Arabs. It’s equally hard to imagine how Lapid or Meretz, Labor’s natural ally on the far left, co-exist with the religious parties or how either scenario for a coalition could last.
By contrast, it will be far easier for Netanyahu to assemble a coalition consisting of the parties of the right and the center even without the religious parties though it is highly likely that he would opt for a Cabinet that included the ultra-Orthodox this time, giving him yet another strong, albeit quarrelsome government to preside over.
Thus, the odds are that sometime this spring, Netanyahu will be sworn in for a fourth term as prime minister, much to the chagrin of his sparring partner in the White House. But if Obama won’t talk to Netanyahu and is even pledging as one anonymous White House source claimed, to be willing to make the prime minister pay a price for his effrontery in opposing him on sanctions, won’t that be terrible for Israel?
The short answer is that it certainly won’t make for a cordial relationship. But it’s hard to see how it will make things any worse than they have been for the last six years.
After all, Obama has been sniping at and snubbing Netanyahu and his country ever since he entered the presidency. Obama has tilted the diplomatic playing field in favor of the Palestinians, undermined Israel’s claims to Jerusalem in ways no predecessor had done and even cut off the resupply of ammunition during last summer’s war with Gaza out of pique at Netanyahu’s government.
But in spite of this, the all-important security relationship continued. What’s necessary for the alliance to function is that the Pentagon and Israel’s Ministry of Defense communicate regularly, not the president and the prime minister. The same goes for the two security establishments, that continue to work well together.
In fact, it might be a very good thing for the alliance if Obama were to refuse to meet Netanyahu for the remainder of his time in office. Only bad things tend to happen when the two, who openly despise each other, are forced to come together. It would be far better for both countries for the leaders to stay apart, enabling their underlings to do what needs to be done to ensure the security of both nations. Were Obama to try and take revenge on Israel by supporting the Palestinians in the United Nations, it would harm the U.S. as much, if not more than it would Israel.
Netanyahu also knows that whoever wins in 2016, with the possible and extremely unlikely exception of Rand Paul, any of the possibilities to be the 45th president will be friendlier to Israel than Obama.
The issue of Iran’s nuclear threat will continue to hang over Israel and the alliance and Obama’s push for détente with the Islamist regime is a genuine threat to the Jewish state’s security as well as to that of moderate Arab governments. But once the current arguments about sanctions subside, as they inevitably will, Israel will carry on and Obama’s enmity notwithstanding, it will survive. Even a fourth term for Netanyahu will not change that.
Can Herzog and Livni Topple Netanyahu?
The agreement between the Israeli Labor Party led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua to form a joint list for the Knesset has, at least for the moment, seemed to change the dynamic of the election campaign. The first poll taken immediately after the merger shows Labor-Hatnua winning one more seat than Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Theoretically that would place Herzog in position to be tapped to lead the next government provided he could put together a coalition of parties. But while this survey has to set the hearts of the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s many critics racing, it is probably a mistake for them to jump to the conclusion that the PM’s days are truly numbered. While the possibility of a genuine alternative to the present government is generating some good numbers for Herzog, the math of Israeli coalition politics and the dynamic of an election in which the notion of two major parties may be revived may cut short his dreams of victory.
The agreement between the Israeli Labor Party led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua to form a joint list for the Knesset has, at least for the moment, seemed to change the dynamic of the election campaign. The first poll taken immediately after the merger shows Labor-Hatnua winning one more seat than Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Theoretically that would place Herzog in position to be tapped to lead the next government provided he could put together a coalition of parties. But while this survey has to set the hearts of the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s many critics racing, it is probably a mistake for them to jump to the conclusion that the PM’s days are truly numbered. While the possibility of a genuine alternative to the present government is generating some good numbers for Herzog, the math of Israeli coalition politics and the dynamic of an election in which the notion of two major parties may be revived may cut short his dreams of victory.
Prior to the announcement of early elections, Labor seemed to be continuing on its historical arc from once dominant party of government to irrelevant minor party. The first polls indicated Labor would be losing seats. As for Livni’s party, every poll showed it would be wiped out leaving the former foreign minister out of the Knesset. Ever the pragmatic opportunist, Livni drew the correct conclusion from the data and began marketing herself to the other larger parties for a merger. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid wanted her badly but Livni rightly saw that her arrival wouldn’t do much to halt its slide with polls showing it losing close to half of its seats. Nor did Livni feel comfortable sharing a platform with Lapid. Those two big egos were not going to work well together.
Labor was a much better fit in that the mild-mannered Herzog seems more like a team player and that choice would enable Livni to approach the elections by campaigning on her hopes to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians that Netanyahu wouldn’t make. Adding Livni and her followers to the Labor list also provides a jolt of energy to a party led by a man who is well regarded but seems to have the charisma of a soggy potato.
Though Lapid aspires to be the leader of a center bloc that could beat the Likud, Labor-Hatnua also gives the appearance of a real alternative to Netanyahu to Israelis who are understandably tired of the prime minister after six years of him at the top. That factor along with resentment at Netanyahu for pushing for an election that most Israelis think is unnecessary could be the reason for the fact that Herzog and Livni are doing far better as a couple than they would have done separately.
But before Herzog starts trying to piece together a coalition, there are some factors that may ultimately undo his momentary advantage.
The first is the very one that seems to have invigorated Labor. So long as there was no real alternative to Netanyahu as prime minister, it was possible for voters who generally support the parties of the center right or the right to vote for alternatives to Likud. Since it is almost certain that Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home will never join a coalition led by the left, voters were free to vote for them rather than Netanyahu’s Likud. It was that factor that led to Likud finishing behind Livni’s Kadima by one seat in the 2009 elections even though the parties of the right combined for more than those of the left leading to Netanyahu becoming prime minister. The same thing diminished Netanyahu’s results in 2013.
But if Israelis are returning to the old paradigm in which Likud and Labor dominate the Knesset, then we should expect the former to start gaining strength at the expense of their potential partners too.
Even more to the point, if the results will hinge on the public’s view of the peace process rather than domestic issues, as was the case the last time Israel voted, that, too, works in Netanyahu’s favor.
Though his foreign critics blame Netanyahu for the ongoing standoff with the Palestinians, most Israelis, including many who are less than thrilled with the prickly prime minister, know that it is the Palestinians who continue to thwart peace, not their own government. An election fought on the idea of more concessions to the Palestinians is not one that will favor those advocating anything that smacks of a duplicating the Gaza experiment in the West Bank. That is especially true after that summer war with Hamas that left most Israelis scrambling for bomb shelters as rockets fired from the terrorist state on their doorsteps rained down on them. Nor is it credible for Livni to offer herself as a real alternative to Netanyahu’s policies since it was she who was negotiating with the Palestinians during the last year.
Equally dubious is the notion that Israelis will reject Netanyahu because they are worried about Israel becoming more isolated under his leadership. Israelis are aware of the fact that it is anti-Semitism, rather than genuine concern for the Palestinians, that motivate European attacks on their government. Nor are they likely to vote for Herzog and Livni because Barack Obama, a president that they rightly believe to be the most hostile American leader to their country in more than a generation, wants them to oust Netanyahu.
With the new Kulanu party led by former Likud Cabinet member Moshe Kahlon entering the contest and other parties rising (Bennett’s Jewish Home) as others fall (Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu and Lapid’s Yesh Atid), it’s too early to predict the outcome with any certainty. There is the possibility that Bennett will join with Likud and create a far larger merged entity than Likud-Hatnua. Meanwhile, the theme of “anybody but Bibi” as Netanyahu vies for a fourth term that could lead to him being the longest serving prime minister in the country’s history may be one that will be hard for Likud to overcome. But if the country is moving back to two big parties that will fight it out over the peace process, it’s hard to call Netanyahu anything but still the favorite to prevail in March.
March 2015
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American Exceptionalism’s Global Legacy?
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Tormé the Entertainer
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Israel, Anti-Semitism, and the Arts
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Iran Showdown Postponed
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Enter Laughing
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