Return of Netanyahu? Israelis are called to the polls again tomorrow

The parties in Israel are today making a last ditch effort to change the balancea day before the country’s fifth general election in three and a half years, which could mark the return of the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in charge.

Israel’s 73-year-old longest-serving leader, who is on trial on corruption charges, is trying to gather a majority of the 61 seats in the Knesset by working with ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties.

According to the latest polls, Netanyahu’s “coalition of the right” has 60 seats, compared to 56 for outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his allies.

An Arab party hostile to Netanyahu does not currently support the coalition under Lapid and remains independent.

In his election posters, Netanyahu shows his rival Lapid together with the heads of Arab parties and accompanies this photo with the caption “once was enough”, describing his government as “dangerous”.

The head of the Yesh Atid (there is a future) party led in June 2021 a “government coalition of change”, which included parties of the right, the left, the center as well as an Arab one, with the aim of ousting Netanyahu from power.

Lost votes?

But a year later the coalition lost its majority in parliament after right-wing MPs walked out, prompting the government to call early elections on Thursdays from spring 2019.

Although the election campaign got off to a slow start, it has picked up speed in recent days, with religious parties hanging banners in the streets of Jerusalem and Arab parties distributing leaflets in Arab cities asking the left to support them.

“Without us, the right will form a majority government. You need us to stop it. Your vote can change the situation,” Ahmed Tibi, one of the most prominent figures of the Arab Hadas-Taal coalition, said yesterday in Hebrew.

In 2020 the Arab parties had formed a coalition and had gathered 15 seats after a dynamic election campaign. But this time they are split into three ballots: Raam (moderate Islamists), Hadash (secular) and Balad (nationalists).

Under Israel’s electoral system, a party must garner 3.25 percent to enter the four-seat parliament.

Divided Arab parties are more likely to fall short of this threshold and thus contribute to the victory of the coalition under Netanyahu.

Security

The election contest is being held in a tense atmosphere in the occupied West Bank with two attacks launched in recent days by Palestinians, one of which killed an Israeli citizen on Saturday night in Hebron.

After a series of anti-Israel attacks in the spring, the army has launched more than 2,000 raids in the West Bank, mainly in Jenin and Nablus. During these operations, incidents and riots often break out. So far more than 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, the highest toll in seven years.

In the Israeli press a question prevailed today: whether these violent episodes will favor the right.

RES-EMP

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