Both Right and Left need to court Ra’am’s Abbas

The complete tally of Tuesday’s election will not be announced until Friday, but preliminary results indicating that Ra’am (United Arab List) leader Mansour Abbas will be the kingmaker for the next coalition have seen both political camps beginning efforts to woo him.

According to the preliminary results of 97% of the regular votes counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc won 59 seats, two short of a blocking majority, unless Abbas would help him form a government. But there were indications late Wednesday that the numbers would change.

Netanyahu’s Likud won 30 seats, Yesh Atid 17, Shas nine, Blue and White eight, United Torah Judaism, Yamina, Yisrael Beytenu and Labor seven, New Hope and the Religious Zionist Party six, and Meretz five. After initial indications that Ra’am had not crossed the 3.25% electoral threshold, current results give it five seats and the Joint List six.

Preliminary results of the rest of the regular polling stations were delayed by technical problems. Late Wednesday, the Central Elections Committee began counting some 430,000 double envelopes, which are ballots from hospitals, nursing homes, emissaries, soldiers, prisoners and special polling stations for returnees at Ben-Gurion Airport and for the sick and quarantined from COVID-19.

Sources close to Netanyahu said the Likud would be open to parliamentary cooperation with Abbas, but Netanyahu’s associates asked Likud MKs to stop talking about the matter. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is set to meet with Abbas later this week.

Abbas kept his cards close to his chest on Wednesday and would not say whether he will support a coalition led by Netanyahu or join the “change bloc,” which seeks to unseat the prime minister. He said in several interviews on Wednesday that he is keeping all options open, and will negotiate with major parties of the entire political spectrum.

Speaking with KAN 11 News, Abbas said that his party is “not in the hands of anyone.

“We are not committed to a specific bloc or a candidate,” Abbas said. “We’ve said it multiple times – we’re not in the hands of anyone, neither Left nor Right.”

When asked who he will sit with, or not sit with, he said that he’s “not ruling out anyone. I’m ruling out whoever rules me out.”

Abbas was referring to an initiative by Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, who said in recent days that he will not sit in a coalition with Lapid, and at the same time asked Netanyahu to say that he will not form a government that is based on the support of Ra’am.

Abbas then said that his goal is to promise that the next government to be formed will not ignore the needs of the Arab society in Israel.

“We have urgent issues of life and death,” he said. “Things like crime and violence, and major housing and economic crises .... There’s a long list of chronic problems in Arab society that the state

and government many years.”

In an interview with N12, Abbas was asked whether he would sit in a cabinet with right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, and repeated his position that Ra’am will not rule out whoever does not rule out it.

Sources in Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beytenu said the parties already began efforts to prevent Netanyahu from forming a government. The plan includes capturing the Knesset speaker post, key Knesset committees and promoting a bill that would prevent the prime minister from running if another round of elections is initiated.

Asked if he will join the initiative, Abbas kept his vague position, saying: “I don’t feel obligated to address every hypothetical initiative. When the offer comes, we will revise, and act according to our interest.

“If there will be a request by a big party, Ra’am will conduct the negotiation in a dignified manner,” he said. “Our point of interest is a party with the potential to be a ruling party, and its candidate to be a prime minister – not with a satellite party,” he said.

Ra’am represents the southern stream of the Islamic Movement in Israel. He has run as part of the Joint List, and previously in a list with Ahmad Tibi’s Ta’al Party.

Ra’am separated from the Joint List due to disagreements regarding several issues, including the party’s ability to cooperate with other parties and join a coalition, and bills dealing with LGBT rights.

In the vote to dissolve the Knesset last December, Ra’am joined the Likud position and opposed going to an early election.

MK Waleed Taha told The Jerusalem Post during the campaign that the party did so not because it is getting closer to Netanyahu and the Likud, but because it believed that “going to an early election round will not benefit our voters.”

Taha then said that Ra’am’s new approach is meant to provide Arab society with more options and give them the ability to have influence and make a difference.

“We want to reach a point of ‘give and take,’ in which we could change policies,” he said. “So far, no Arab MK has managed to change policies. How do you change policies? When you become a kingmaker, and the person forming a coalition needs you: He has no choice.

“You then tell him what your conditions are – conditions that will change the policies,” Taha said. “By that, we want to change the Kamenitz Law, bring recognition to the Bedouin villages in the Negev, and make the education and health budget equal to those the Jews get.”

The Kamenitz Law was passed in 2017 to stem the construction of thousands of illegal structures in the Arab sector. neglected

PHENOMENON

for expediency.

And this is the secret of Smotrich’s success – because, independently, none of these movements would have secured enough votes to enter the Knesset.

Smotrich himself is the head of the National Union Party, which represents the hard-line, conservative wing of the religious-Zionist community and is one of the two largest voting blocs within the Religious Zionist Party.

Otzma Yehudit is the successor to the far-right Kahanist Kach Party and the other major voting bloc with the united list.

By looking at recent elections, it is possible to gain an approximate estimate of the electoral strength of Smotrich’s faction and Otzma.

In the April 2019 election, the National Union, Bayit Yehudi and Otzma united to form the Union of Right-Wing Parties (URP) and garnered 159,000 votes, amounting

to 3.7% of the total vote and giving it five seats in the Knesset.

In the next election in September, Otzma was frozen out of the political alliances on the Right and ran by itself. It received 83,000 votes, 1.88% of the total – equivalent to more than two Knesset seats but under the electoral threshold of 3.25%, so it failed to enter the Knesset.

The National Union of hard-line religious-Zionist voters and Otzma would appear to have a roughly similar electoral value, with even a small advantage to Otzma.

But the party added at least another 34,000 votes between its first run as URP to give it an extra seat.

Where did those votes come from?

Before the union between National Union and Otzma, the latter had united with Noam – a fringe, extremist, anti-LGBT party representing the very outer edges of the hard-line, conservative wing of the religious-Zionist community.

It is thought that this party might be worth 10,000 to 15,000 voters, although this is based on estimates, since the party has never actually contested an election on its own.

Another significant tranche of voters came from the Chabad movement. Although often classified as a subsector of the ultra-Orthodox, large parts of the community are inclined to vote for far-right parties due to the emphasis of the last leader of Chabad, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, on preserving Jewish control of the biblical Land of Israel.

In Kfar Chabad, the Religious Zionist Party took 59% of the vote, amounting to some 1,500 of the town’s votes.

Estimates of the total number of Chabad voters in Israel are put at between 30,000 and 40,000, and it is thought by Chabad sources that RZP likely picked up about half of the total Chabad vote countrywide, meaning 15,000 to 20,000 more votes.

Finally, RZP also performed well, relatively speaking, in some ultra-Orthodox strongholds, such as Betar Illit, where it took 10% of the vote, amounting to 2,100 votes, and El’ad, where it also took 10% of the vote (1,900 votes), and Bnei Brak, where it got 3,600 votes.

If this share of the ultra-Orthodox vote was obtained more broadly across all ultra-Orthodox voters, it would amount to a significant addition to RZP’s vote tally.

Those in the ultra-Orthodox community voting for Smotrich’s party are largely thought to be the so-called “modern ultra-Orthodox,” a small subsector of the community, often from the younger generation, many of whom have received a higher education and have integrated into the workforce. Some have served in the IDF, and are less hostile to the state than others in the sector.

A final factor in RZP’s increased share of the vote above its April 2019 tally is the leadership of Smotrich himself.

In 2019, then-leader of Bayit Yehudi Rabbi Rafi Peretz headed the URP list. Peretz’s leadership was widely criticized as uninspiring, while Smotrich is known for his charisma, sharp intelligence and energy, which could have attracted more voters from the mainstream religious-Zionist community.