Beginning on December 26, 2018, the biggest domestic political crisis in Israel’s history has already secured the country first place in the ranking of 21 parliamentary democracies with the most frequent elections. From 1996 to 2022, one vote every 2.4 years, with five calls to the polls in the current wave of instability alone.
From vibrant and kaleidoscopic to cacophonous and unstable, the Israeli democratic landscape was thus transformed. A system that witnesses monopolizing debates, such as the relationship with the Palestinians and the Arab world, in addition to fighting terrorism or enemies such as Iran – who question the right to exist of the country created in 1948 from a resolution passed at the UN.
Throughout the 20th century, Israeli politics fed on the classic polarization of that historical period, between right and left, with visions shaped by the existential threats surrounding the country. The rightist booklet advocated issues of security and territorial gains, while socialists sold the idea of ​​negotiation summarized in the concept “land for peace”.
Israel was under the leadership of Labor in its first three decades of existence, until the electoral triumph of the rightist Likud, in 1977. The ideological pendulum shifted as a result, above all, of migratory waves.
It was from Eastern Europe that, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, came the most numerous streams of Jews from the diaspora. They brought ideological and philosophical influences to support the creation of a society whose mother cell was the kibbutz, the collective farm.
From the 1950s onwards, the arrival of Jews from Arab countries to Israel intensified, after persecution and expulsions in regions such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq. They landed with a more conservative vision, in terms of customs and politics, and reinforced right-wing parties.
A new wave of migration, especially in the 1990s, has irrevocably shifted the pendulum to the right. The Soviet debacle corresponded to an opening of borders responsible for the landing of more than 1 million people, bringing in their baggage the rejection of leftist ideas. So more voters to the right.
The Israeli left has also paid for its failures, such as its bet on the unfortunately unsuccessful Oslo peace process, which began in 1993. From 2006 onwards, the strengthening of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, groups that deny the right to Israel into existence, also boosted the vision of the right, to prioritize security issues.
The most recent chapter of the Israeli right-wing wave presented Binyamin Netanyahu as helmsman, in power from 2009 to 2021. And, from December 2018, the classic left-right polarization gave way to the confrontation between the pro and anti-Bibi camps.
Increasingly centralized, Netanyahu has witnessed right-wing groups move into opposition and seen Israeli society fragment in either the opposite or favorable view of the controversial leader.
This is where the root of the problem lies. None of the camps, in recent years, has shown itself capable of obtaining a solid majority in Parliament, a formula that pushed the country into a political impasse.
Now, the anti-Bibi coalition, in power for a year and including parties of the right, left and the Arab community, has dissolved. Returns to the routine of inconclusive elections.
Israel illustrates the classic example of crises fueled by political projects to the detriment of national agendas. They are the ones who must prevail. A democracy cannot aim for stability with a general election every two or three years.
