I recall corresponding with a friend back in November 1959, toward the elections to the fourth Knesset. I was not yet of voting age, but my friend was, and what he wrote to me left a deep impression in my memory: “The elections will bring about no change: Mapai will win, and what was is what will be.”
Indeed, David Ben-Gurion’s Mapai received 47 Knesset seats, and Menachem Begin’s Herut party – which came in second – received 17. One could describe the situation as rigid and predictable.
It was to take another 18 years before the political “upheaval” finally shook our political system out of this stalemate – long after demographic and cultural changes had started raising emotions to dangerously high levels.
Today, our political situation is again stuck in a sort of rigidity, but one that is very different from 1959’s. This rigidity once again encourages stalemate: a situation in which the most either side can hope for is a very marginal victory – nothing that promises real stability, with no party predicted to receive more than half of the number of seats Mapai had received in 1959. I hate to think what the demographic and cultural changes behind it all might eventually bring about.
This isn’t a preordained situation, but rather is man-made. Every generation it has different causes. Today, it results from the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convinced that only his all-Right/religious coalition can ensure his political survival (which seems to be his be-all and end-all), while the rather fragile Right/Center/Left bloc facing him cooperates with this game with the “just not Bibi” slogan.
In the upcoming elections, only MK Benny Gantz (Blue and White) seeks to break this paradigm – but his chances of passing the 3.25% qualifying threshold are naught.
Until September 28, the final date that lists can register with the Central Elections Committee for participation in the elections, it is very difficult to predict the election results with any accuracy, since we do not know exactly which lists will be running.
At the moment, there are three Right/Center or right-wing groups that are considering running (Gilad Erdan/Yuli Edelstein, Yoaz Hendel/Chilli Troper, Benny Gantz/Dedi Simchi), all of which are hoping to attract former Likud voters who have not yet found a satisfactory alternative home (see below).
These groups appear to agree on the need to enlist haredim to military or national service, and disagree over which group they are unwilling to sit with in a future government. According to recent polls, none of them seems likely to pass the qualifying threshold, should they run on their own. They have about a month left to get their acts together.
We do not yet know how many Arab lists will participate in the elections, and whether one of them – Ra’am – will put former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz in the second slot on its list as its potential candidate for National Security Minister.
There are predictions that the Arab lists will garner 10-15 Knesset seats, which will greatly affect the election results.
Another unknown is whether a new haredi party – The Haredi Public, which seeks to integrate the haredi sector more closely into Israeli society, without breaking away from the haredi community – will finally decide to run independently.
The party was founded by the deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh Motti Leitner (who is Ashkenazi), and there are rumors that former Shas leader Eli Yishai (Sephardi) may join. Both Leitner and Yishai have served in the IDF.
Recent polls suggest opposition parties will gain six to 10 seats more than the current coalition parties
While these are some of the major unknowns that could affect the election results, there are several facts we do know.
Most opinion polls appear to agree that the current opposition parties running in the 26th Knesset elections will receive six to 10 seats more than the current coalition parties. They also indicate that Likud is liable to lose around a third of the 32 seats that it received in the elections for the 25th Knesset.
This suggests that around two-thirds of the Likud’s 2022 voters have not been convinced by the events of the last four years to change course, and that for them, Netanyahu remains “the one and only.”
In fact, events of the last four years did not raise any second thoughts among the majority of Likud voters. Inter alia, they included: attempts by the government to carry out a judicial revolution by legislative means; the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre and Netanyahu’s refusal to take responsibility for it, or set up a state commission of inquiry to investigate its causes; three years of a multi-front war, at an exorbitant cost, in which Israel won some impressive battles, but attained none of its declared goals.
Additionally, Likud voters seem unfazed by the government makeup, which has undermined Israel’s liberal democratic and Zionist principles as proclaimed by Israel’s Declaration of Independence, or by the serious malfunctions in which the current Prime Minister’s Office and government operate, or the evidence regarding Netanyahu’s faltering health and cognitive faculties.
It is said that Netanyahu is aware that, in all likelihood, the Likud will not be called upon to form the next government. In an effort to make the Likud party list more attractive, there are last-minute efforts to manipulate its primaries (to be held next Monday), and a smear campaign against Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, who is Netanyahu’s most serious rival for the premiership. It is said that Netanyahu is hoping for a deadlock, which would lead to another round of elections.
That is what happened after the elections to the 21st Knesset in April 2019, and again in the elections to the 22nd Knesset in September 2019. The result was Netanyahu heading Israel’s 34th government and serving for five years, through Israel’s 20th, 21st, 22nd, and the beginning of the 23rd Knesset.
Hopefully, this is not where we are heading, and that despite everything, a new, stable government will lead Israel back on track, while avoiding civil strife. We shall all be the wiser on October 28.
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.