It’s Always Election Season in IsraelSlate, Feb 17, 2021
The next election, on March 23, will be Israel’s fourth in just two years. The last three—in April 2019, September 2019, and March 2020—all resulted in a stalemate between Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and the center-right Blue and White coalition led by Benny Gantz. No party could pull together enough allies for a majority in the Knesset, which meant new elections had to be held. Gantz had long refused to share power with Netanyahu, who is facing criminal indictment for corruption, but in April, after the most recent vote, the two rivals reached an agreement under which Netanyahu would be prime minister for 18 months before switching with Gantz. Gantz justified his flip-flop as an effort to restore stability in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
But that government collapsed in December after failing to pass a budget, automatically triggering new elections. Netanyahu’s party, which controls the finance portfolio, probably intentionally caused the collapse in hopes of bringing in a new coalition that can protect him from prosecution. The prime minister briefly appeared in court last week to formally respond to fraud and bribery charges related to his relationships with wealthy foreign donors as well as efforts to pressure media outlets into giving him and his family favorable coverage. His defense team is now arguing that the prosecution should not be allowed to present its case until after the election—yet another delay in a legal process that has dragged on for years.
So, why is Israel stuck in this cycle? While Israeli politics as a whole have drifted inexorably to the right, the right is divided on Netanyahu himself. It’s hard for Netanyahu to form a stable government, but impossible for any of his rivals to garner enough support to oust him.
“It’s entirely a function of Netanyahu. If anyone else were prime minister or head of Likud, there wouldn’t be a problem at all. You could easily have five years of an 80- to 90-seat right-wing government, and then five years of another right-wing government,†says Michael Koplow, an expert on Israeli politics at the Israel Policy Forum.
The most surprising thing about these upcoming elections is that they don’t feel like political Groundhog Day. March 2020 feels like a lifetime ago; the political landscape and the key players are dramatically different this time around.
More:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/israel-election-bibi-netanyahu.html
