Some reflections on the Israeli elections of 2022

In this, the fifth round of deadlocked Israeli elections in a little over two years, Israel finally chose a clear winner. Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who left office only a year ago, will likely be able to form a 64-seat coalition government. At the same time, not only did the current left-leaning coalition lose, but some of the far-left parties fell under the electoral threshold and have been wiped out in parliamentary terms.

The Knesset’s (parliament’s) map

For the first time in decades, there will not be a progressive Jewish party in Israel’s parliament. Moreover, the socialist Israeli Labor Party, the party which founded the state and monopolized all aspects of Israeli life and governance for the first decades of Israel’s existence, was nearly wiped out and received only 3.55 percent of the vote – a mere 0.2 percent over the threshold – leaving the “social justice” left in Israel with only 4 of 120 seats. This alone reflects a substantial divide between Israeli and American Jewry, where social justice issues and progressivism figure more prominently among American Jews.

All remaining Jewish parties are free-market liberal-nationalist or religious nationalist in various shades to the left and right. The balance between the left and right – which is a little deceptive because there are some who could reasonably be considered center-right even though they are in center-party – among the Zionist parties is right now 64 vs 47 seats, with the remaining 9 seats being Arab parties.

The Arab nationalist, anti-Zionist parties also suffered in the polls, dropping from their current six seats to four. In contrast, another Arab party with slightly more centrist leanings held its ground at 5 seats. But that party works within the Israeli system while the others refuse to be part of an Israeli government. At one point in 2015, the Arab parties held a high-water mark of 13 seats.

On the right, there are four parties: the Likud, the two religious parties (Shas and United Torah Judaism-UTJ) and the Religious Zionist Party, which is really the amalgam of two smaller parties. Likud is about as big as all the other right-leaning parties are combined.

Trends

Likud is center-right nationalist, but not historically a religious nationalist party. And yet, its rank and file have become more religious over the last decades. Given that the other parties of the right are religious or religious nationalist, that leaves somewhat of an underrepresented community of right-leaning secular nationalists. That community is substantial but has not managed to organize itself into an effective political force of its own, so it currently divided its vote between secular center-left parties (like the Blue White Party), the Likud, or the Religious Zionist party. That hole in the spectrum bears watching in the coming years.

The religious parties, while historically not nationalist, are more comfortable on the right side of the spectrum. Their voters tend to be more traditional or religious, but their natural place on the right-side of the spectrum combined with their constituents’ nationalist preferences essentially made them to the right on national security and legal policy matters. An interesting development in this camp, however, is the sharp rise in seats for the Shas party to 11 seats. Shas started out decades ago as an ethnic party representing oriental (Sephardi) Jews, but ran on tradition and social, cost-of living issues in the last campaign. In some ways, that shows the shift over the last decade of the Sephardi issue in Israel toward becoming a socio-economic rather than ethnic issue – attracting some non-Sephardi along the way.

Equally interesting in the religious party camp was the bleeding of some seats from the UTJ party to the Religious Zionist Party (RZP). UTJ is an old school, more Ashkenazi Hassidic party. Although it largely has sided with right-leaning governments, it stays above national security questions focusing almost exclusively on religious issues, given that its constituents in the past had largely been rather introverted religious Hassidic communities, many of whom spoke Yiddish rather than Hebrew in day-to-day life. The defection of some of its young voters toward the Religious Zionist Camp reflects an earthquake in that community. Its youth, while still Hassidic (Ultra-Orthodox), increasingly consider themselves part of Israeli society and want to be more integrated – which means on national security questions as well.

The combination of Shas and the shift from UTJ to RZP reflects the tremendous ferment of religious Jews – many of whom originally opposed the creation of the Jewish State – are going through as the Diaspora-shaped religious institutions and leadership adjust to Jewish sovereignty for the first time in 2000 years.

Two other big takeaways:

The party that ran as “the security establishment” and as the party of the four generals, Blue-White, as the party of the “responsible” senior “statesmen” who “defend the country,” failed. They got 11 seats, which is just under 10%. Israel can be said to have delivered a verdict on its view of the defense establishment. It rejected their leadership. For a country under so much threat and critical strategic choices, this is significant.
The Arab party (Ra’am) that chose to work within the system and focus on crime and welfare in the Arab sector held its ground. The Arab parties that call for destruction of Israel (Balad) or lack of cooperation (Hadash-communist) failed and at the edge or were wiped out. Moreover, Israel’s most progressive Jewish party, which has Arabs in it, and some of whose Jewish members champion the Palestinian national issue, is also at the edge and may be wiped out. In other words, Arabs chose Arab parties that promised to work within the Israeli system rather than challenge Israel, consider themselves Palestinians (as opposed to Israeli Arabs) or push the Palestinian nationalist agenda.

In other words, the Arabs who vote either Arab parties or Meretz said they want a party that will address their bread-and-butter issues – particularly the rampant crime and violence internally afflicting the Arab sector – more than the Palestinian identity issue.

The rise of the RZP

The result of the election not only attracting the greatest attention but giving the Washington foreign policy elites the greatest heartburn was the meteoric rise of the Religious Zionist Party. The RZP is really a block of two parties: Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party and Itamar ben-Gvir’s Otzmah Yehudit (“Jewish Strength”) party. The two do not get along that well, and it is more likely than not that they will soon split on their separate ways again.

Articles appeared within a day of the election result suggesting there will be a crisis of relations between Western capitals and Israel if the verdict of the elections is genuinely honored and RZP were given any real power.[1] And on cue, “sources” in the administration began to tell their favored Israeli journalists that the Biden administration will boycott any cooperation with any ministry led by the party.

Some of the agony in Israel was perhaps exacerbated within Israel too by a bill being proposed by some in the Likud party that Israel’s supreme court decisions can be overridden by a majority or super-majority parliamentary vote, which could lead to a democratic tyranny of the masses. The robust Israeli LGBT and Arab communities instantly felt threatened by this prospect. Ironically, it is unclear whether the RZP even supports these proposals for “majority-overrule” since they came from the Likud raised by Miki Zohar in the hours after the election but walked back by him the next day), not the RZP. To be clear, the RZP does support legislation to curb LGBT rights, but has not weighed in yet on the “majority-overrule” issue. The RZP clearly does, however, advocate — as does Israel’s entire right and some in the center and center-left — a fundamental reform of Israel’s legal system which has not been changed since the State’s early days, and which some have felt is becoming a tyranny of the court that is drifting toward a European model beginning to go off the rails. These are legitimate questions that will inevitably govern considerable controversy, as are the anticipated attempts by Israel’s right-leaning parties to re-legislate the protection of values they feel are culturally under assault through policies or laws.

These issues certainly touch profound issues of identity and legal philosophy, and as such will trigger harsh exchanges and quasi-apocalyptic forecasts. But they should be understood not as the end of a debate, but its beginning, to lay a more solid legal foundation to the rule of law in the state. Israel is transitioning from its philosophical and political foundations of its creation to a new structure that reflects the push and pull of the Jewish people’s first encounter with sovereignty in two millennia.

But the apocalyptic sturm and drang should be left aside. Both sides of Israel’s spectrum believe in rule of law, and both sides seek to understand how personal rights can be guaranteed in a state under security duress and a bewildering cultural tapestry that demands a great deal of mutual tolerance. The aggressive cultural policies of the American left cannot work in Israel, since they run against not only the more culturally conservative elements of Jewish Israeli society, but also against the entirety of Arab culture in Israel. At the same time, fundamental Jewish values, which also serve as the foundation of Western political thought anchored to the primacy of “inalienable rights” as given by God puts the breaks both on the threat of the tyranny of the democratic majority and on the assault on individual human rights by imposed religious practice. There will be mistakes in both directions in this and successive governments from both sides, but the guardrails keeping Israel from falling off completely in one direction or another are too strong.

Moreover, the problem of Israel right now which led to the rise of RZP, and convinced many who otherwise are not religious nor care much for imposed religious policies, is not too much law, but lawlessness.

Some of this growing sense of lawlessness is rooted in the deteriorating security situation – which is why seam-line communities voted in greater numbers for the RZP – and in ideology – which is why settlements voted in greater numbers for the RZP – but some is rooted in the overall perception many generally secular Israelis have that they are losing control of their streets to both Arab radicals and to organized crime. The best indicator of the existence and influence of this last group in the recent elections is the vote tally in several towns that embody Israel’s emerging high-tech society at the heart of the country. In fact, they greatest increase in support of the RZP over previous elections a year ago is in just those communities, such as Petah Tikvah and Ra’anana, both Tel Aviv bedroom communities which saw a 100-120% increase in support for the RZP and shockingly, and in the Kibbutzim– collective farming communities who had until now always voted for the socialist or progressive parties and had formed the core of the old socialist Labor party and state in its first years.

Because several factors have been largely unreported outside of Israel, and even underreported within Israel, they are vastly under-appreciated, or even unknown, to those who currently are commenting or criticizing Israel for its current democratic verdict. While not easily disentangled, the climate of lawlessness has both a criminal and an Arab nationalist overlay:

Israeli Arabs gangs who are arming heavily, and increasingly are engaged in growing violence and provocative, or even outright baiting, behavior. The rise of lawlessness in the Arab community of Israel not only expresses itself in traditionally Arab-Israeli nationalist terms, but in terms of criminal violence, including a head-spinning explosion of Arab on Arab violence as well. Israel has been plagued in the Galilee especially (and somewhat in the Negev as well) with classic mafiosa-like protection payment demands, arson, property theft and destruction, and murder.[2] This is not a nationalist threat or nationalist response, but it contributed to the sense people have that Israel has lost control of the street to the Arab community, which is largely responsible for the increase and in sadly governed ever more by internal violence and lawlessness as its parliamentary representatives from the Hadash and Balad parties consistently preferred to use their position in the Knesset to advance Palestinian nationalist issues rather than deal with this plague.
The Galilee Kibbutzim suddenly turned out unusually large vote of Ben Gvir. The violence and destruction of Arab gangs against their fields and equipment has escalated dramatically in the last two years, leading to this result.[3]
Then there is the complete loss of law and order on the roads in the Negev. Reckless driving, even on the wrong side of the road, has become rampant. Wedding and party processions arrogantly taking over roads and blocking traffic while shooting weapons in the air became daily occurrences. Off-road ATV vehicle rallies ripping up cultivated farming fields became normal. Road racing that led to accidents and deaths were frequent. Simply, a complete disregard for law and safety regulations has led driving in the south to become a life-threatening experience. There are droves of videos documenting this deterioration in the south, but they never made it to the blue-check social media of the Western presses, or even much in the Israeli press.

Although not nationalist in essence, this climate of deterioration contributed very strongly to the sense of loss of positive control over the land. Two terms heard almost always in any speech on the right-leaning side of the spectrum, but which were almost entirely absent from the left-leaning side are of the law “Akifat Ha-Khok” (upholding the law) and “Meshilut” (presence of governance).

This loss of the street not only shifted seats to the RZP, but ironically to the strong showing of the Arab Ra’am party under Mansour Abbas — whose central campaign message was to work with the Israeli system to control lawlessness in the Arab community — in both of the last two elections. Both RZP and Ra’am represented those in their populations who felt it was out of hand and needed a dramatic reset to bring it under control to avert calamity. For Ra’am’s Abbas, that path to survive was to reach out to the Jews. For the Jews of Ben Gvir, it was to reach out for law and order.

Of course, as always, there is also a backdrop of growing nationalist Arab violence, but also its surrounding context, which both has enflamed that violence and driven many Israelis to yield to their security fears and turn to the RZP and its harder right security policies. Some of the factors are:

The last half year in Israel saw the greatest increase in Arab terrorism in many years. Some Israeli Arab parties in the parliament not only failed to condemn the violence but praised the terrorists again and again. Moreover, the violence came not only from Palestinian terrorists from the territories, but from Israeli-Arabs as well.
There has been an unreported “Intifadah of the Roads.” Israeli drivers even on main highways along the coast are facing several daily, random “rock-throwing attacks” by Arab gangs that damage vehicles, cause accidents and frequently result in injuries, some serious. Similarly, Molotov cocktails have been used against public transport. But equally concerning has been the use of vehicles to cause accidents intentionally, sometimes in a suicide attacks (such as deliberate head-on collisions), and sometimes in attempts to trigger accidents (such as causing fish-tailing or running cars off the road). These are not isolated incidents, but daily realities.
This threat felt by Israelis to their personal security erupted last year in an orgy of one-sided pogroms against Jews in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel and the anticipation of even greater violence along those lines in and future conflict. This is reinforced by the vast flow of illicit arms trade into the Arab community.

This climate of terrorism is exacerbated by foreign polices of other nations that both encourage Palestinian extremism and has enflamed the violence, but also created a greater sense of siege felt by Israelis, to which they react by retrenching:

The increased actions of BDS and some western governments against Israel encouraged them over the last 15 years has convinced them that the “colonialist” European project is dying.
Turkey’s Erdogan over the last decade has funneled money to organizations and institutions that have radicalized Arabs in Jerusalem and led to a belief among Jerusalem Arabs that the Jewish population was on the defensive.
Iran too has fueled, funded, armed, incited and ultimately ordered waves of escalation and missile warfare, surrounded Israel with long-ran missile and drone threats, as well as stimulated the image of Israeli helpless perceived among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to stop its nuclear program, and encourage the expectation that it is only a matter of months and years, in their view, of Israel’s destruction.
The rise of Hamas’ ability to convince Palestinians and Israeli Arabs that Israelis are terrified by their missiles, even though do not really kill many Israelis. This feeling of Israeli weakness is further deepened by the belief that Israel is deterred, being too weak and scared to enter Gaza.
The death of the Palestinian Authority as a functional institution since 2005 has triggered a battle to the fill the vacuum.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have used the issue of Jerusalem as an emotive battleground for over a decade.
There was no change in favor of Jewish rights in the status quo in Jerusalem over the last decade, but the collapse of the Palestinian Authority is not the only cause of the vacuum which Hamas and the PIJ seek to fill. Sadly, there has been a dangerous and destabilizing shift in Jordanian policy of inciting the Palestinians on Jerusalem rather than helping calm it. That also applies to other issues, such as the unexpected demand by Jordan several years ago to return the Naharayim salient to Jordan. Jordan’s incitement escalated tensions greatly also in 2017 over the Israeli desire to install magnometers (metal detectors) at entry points into the Temple Mount after fatal terrorist attack by terrorist who used the mosque there as a storage arsenal – and indications that the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf, which operates under Jordan’s auspices was involved with the storage. This was further escalated over the last half decade as Jordan, rather than revisit its support for the radicalizing Waqf, but actually turned more incitement against the Israelis and demanded to expand the institution. Jordan’s indulgence of the Waqf’s dangerous activities and efforts to strengthen the Waqf over recent years actually led Israel quietly talking to Saudi and UAE in 2014 onward (which helped set the stage for the peace), and Turkey (huge mistake) to try to pressure the Jordanians to be more cooperative. Over the last 18 months, Jordan has become a major source of incitement on Jerusalem against Israel and Jews more broadly.
On top of all this was the complete complacence and breakdown of homeland security and police forces tracking the massive weapons flows into the Israeli Arab organized crime world and the failure to investigate and punish the pogrom activists and leadership the launched the orgy of violence against Jews in mixed cities in 2021.

The underlying causes of the rise of the complete disregard for Israeli law and increased nationalist challenge to Israel’s existence have combined to combined to create a toxic, growing sense of incited rage among Arabs, encouraged optimism over Israel’s ostracization by its colonial allies, growing sense of lawless and police passivity, and the dark gathering of the armies of destruction that really fueled the rise of confidence on the Arab street that then led Israelis to believe that their sense of security is collapsing.

Indeed, while this causes agony for many American foreign policy elites as well as many American Jews on the liberal side of the spectrum, this climate of lawlessness to which the election of the RZP is in part a reaction has many roots, all of which will have to be addressed for the RZP to return to its traditional parliamentary size.

Making coalitional sausages

Prime Minister elect Netanyahu will likely have relatively smooth negotiations to form a cabinet, but not entirely. In the end, it’s all now about leverage. Netanyahu is not only the leader of the largest party and riding fairly high currently since he has made yet another political comeback after his obituaries had already several times been written. But he also has to contend with the fact that his coalitional victory is possible only because of the meteoric rise of the RZP under Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, which means they have a lot of power.

Netanyahu has shown little sign that he would do anything other than turn to this party and the religious parties first to form a solid right-block government. Netanyahu wants a stable right-leaning block government, and would hardly take any steps that would rest his coalition on members of Knesset from the center who could bolt at any moment. In other words, he is hardly likely to reach out to form a coalition with ideologically unaligned MKs to replace a coalition with far more ideologically aligned MKs. Moreover, it would actually decrease his leverage, not increase it. Netanyahu really has no easy alternative party he can pull off the shelf to wield over the RZP as a replacement. With Yesh Atid assuming now the role as the main opposition party on the left, the next largest party in the center, the Blue White Party under Benjamin Gantz, that could potentially assume a junior role in the government has only 12 seats. Losing RZP’s 14 seats to gain Gantz’ 12 does little to advance Netanyahu freedom of maneuver. So, it is hardly likely that Netanyahu will reach out to the center to avoid forming a coalition with the RZP.

But forming a coalition with the RZP is only part of the question. In the post-election horse trading, for top jobs, RZP hold a lot of leverage and will demand several choice portfolios. Netanyahu’s political history tells us he is a lone wolf, not a team-player; he hates being either beholden or under anybody’s control. Thus, these negotiations for coalition formation are only party about setting up the coalition; it is for Netanyahu also about navigate to build his room for maneuver on personnel and policy.

First, Netanyahu will try to split somewhat between Smotrich and Ben-Givr of the RZP. The RZP is really a fusion of two parties led by each respectively, and they stand a good change of splitting in the coming days back into two parties. Additonally, Netanyahu is trying to wrench away from the centrist-left party under Gantz two former Likud parliamentarians who were elected under Gantz’ list – Zeev Elkin and Matan Kahane. If he succeeds, that would expand his block to 66 seats. That is still not enough to tell any part of the remaining RZP, even Ben-Givr’s half of the RZP were it to split, that he can go it alone with it. But it does leave the option of bringing the rest of Gantz’ party as leverage to force Ben-Gvir to accept a more modest portfolio. Ben Gvir would have to relent at that point, because ultimately, he is replaceable at that point by Gantz – assuming Gantz would agree to play so junior a role to Netanyahu, whom he does not hold in high regard. But that would give Netanyahu a little more room for maneuver and would give him the leverage to bring Ben Gvir inside in a more minor portfolio.

But to be clear, it is highly unlikely that Netanyahu would actually leave Ben Gvir out. The question is whether he gets a substantial portfolio or is forced to accept something akin to Minister of Trash Collection or Minister of Winter Sports.

Final thoughts

The big analysis in the center-left punditry today in Israel is essentially that the three year “anybody but Bibi” effort to ostracize him not only failed to “kill the bear,” but has only left him totally reliant on those to his right. Until now, in every government, Bibi had people in his coalition and at his side in Likud that pulled him leftward in governing. This time, he has nobody pulling left, but a lot of people pulling him right. So the pressure is building on both Lapid and Gantz among the punditry class to relent and ask for a right-led unity government. But they have no leverage to demand one, and only a little to offer Netanyahu in exchange for offering one.

Bibi holds the cards.

The recriminations on the left have already begun in full force. This is especially so since although Netanyahu has garnered 64 seats versus the current governing block’s 54, the actual vote count was surprisingly close, with only 30,000 votes (advantage Netanyahu) difference. This represented a complete flub by both the Arab parties who failed to unify, as well as of the Labor party for refusing Meretz’ offer to unify. Together, those mistakes cost the left maybe five seats, and they could be at 60 seats, including the Arabs.

This misalignment between the vote count and the actual parliamentary seat distribution has created what some on the left in the West call Israel’s parallel “electoral college” problem. Maybe, but one should remember that the first of these last five rounds of elections which led to three years of political deadlock also returned such a misalignment, but in the other direction. The vote count in 2019 would have given Netanyahu 65 seats against the left’s 55, but the failure to unify right-leaning parties and conclude excess vote-sharing agreements burned away five votes from the right, leaving Netanyahu unable to form a coalition.

Another interesting failure was the fate of the Blue White party under Benjamin Gantz. This was a party led by a former chief of staff and defense minister who alone manifests the security establishment. To boot, he had a party full of chiefs of staff, campaigned as the “statesmanly” party and clearly enjoyed strong American support. He added a few center-right figures too for good measure. Once the hope of the left to be main opposition party, Blue White could not get above 10% of the vote.

For all his faults, Lapid – who seems to be the particular target of reprobation and bitterness from the left — has steadily built his party to a strong second party which has reflected a consistent upward trajectory of support over seven or eight elections.

But this tempest of complaints about how close it was and anger that tactical failures burned from the left 4 or so votes, should remind one of the story of a pitcher who complained that with bases loaded in extra innings, the shortstop had an error and let the winning run in. The pitcher was raging at the shortstop, but the shortstop said, “who loaded the bases”?

In the end, the left, even if it played it perfectly, could only fight to a draw. It cannot seem to win, and has largely been unable to do so for 30 years. The only time it managed to get power has been through the vehicle of breakaways from the right.

The left in Israel has to ask itself some basic questions, therefore, about the content of its message, not just the tactics.

[1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/narrow-government-ben-gvir-and-smotrich-threatens-us-israel-ties

[2] https://twitter.com/Dada_analyst/status/1588103806843248641?t=Gvy-Kq_cSwAItk-Yd2kxzg&s=08

[3] https://m.ynet.co.il/articles/sj7ouvzsj