Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
National vote held again as political crisis grinds on
JERUSALEM >> For the fifth time since 2019, Israelis were voting in national elections on Tuesday, hoping to break the political deadlock that has paralyzed the country for the past three and a half years.
Again, the vote centers around former premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s fitness to lead while he faces corruption charges. And while polls predict another stalemate, Netanyahu is looking to the surging power of farright lawmaker Itamar BenGvir to propel him back to power.
Election officials said that by 4 p.m. local time, turnout stood at 47.5%, the highest at that time since 1999. But there was no breakdown of the vote that might show who was benefiting.
Netanyahu’s main rival is the man who helped oust him last year, the centrist caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who has warned against the nationalist and religious alliance that would emerge should Netanyahu return to power.
“Vote for the state of Israel, and for the future of our children,” Lapid said after casting his ballot in the upscale Tel Aviv neighborhood where he lives.
After he cast his vote in the West Bank settlement where he lives, Ben-Gvir promised that a vote for his party would bring about a “fully right-wing government” with Netanyahu as prime minister.
Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted of incitement for his anti-Arab rhetoric and has promised to deport Arab lawmakers, has seen his clout rise in the polls ahead of the vote, and has demanded a key portfolio should Netanyahu be tapped to form a government.
‘I’m a little worried’
With former allies and proteges refusing to sit under him while he is on trial, Netanyahu has been unable to form a viable majority government in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament.
“I’m a little worried,” Netanyahu said after voting. “I hope we end the day with a smile.”
Netanyahu’s opponents, an ideologically diverse constellation of parties, are equally hamstrung in cobbling together the 61 seats needed to rule.
That impasse has mired Israel in an unprecedented political crisis that has eroded Israelis’ faith in their democracy, its institutions and their political leaders.
“People are tired of instability, of the fact that the government is not delivering the goods,” said Yohanan Plesner, a former legislator who now heads the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
Buoyed by his followers’ almost cult-like adoration, Netanyahu, 73, has rejected calls to step down by his opponents, who say someone on trial for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes cannot govern. Netanyahu denies wrongdoing, but embarrassing details from his ongoing trial repeatedly make front-page news.
In Israel’s fragmented politics, no single party has ever won a parliamentary majority, and coalition-building is necessary to govern. Netanyahu’s most likely path to the premiership requires an alliance with extreme nationalists and religious ultra-Orthodox parties.
These parties would demand key portfolios in a Netanyahu government, and some have promised to enact reforms that could make Netanyahu’s legal woes disappear.
The ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, whose provocative top candidate Ben-Gvir is a disciple of a racist rabbi who was assassinated in 1990, has promised to support legislation that would alter the legal code, weaken the judiciary, and could help Netanyahu evade a conviction. Ben-Gvir, promising a tougher line against Palestinian attackers, this week announced he would seek the Cabinet post overseeing the police force.
‘The final days’
Critics have sounded the alarm over what they see as a threat to Israel’s democracy.
“If Netanyahu is triumphant,” wrote columnist Sima Kadmon in the Yediot Ahronot daily, “these will be the final days of the state of Israel as we have known it for 75 years.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party has tried to tamp down worries, saying any changes to the legal code won’t apply to Netanyahu’s case, and that the more extreme elements of his potential coalition will be reined in.
Netanyahu, currently opposition leader, paints himself as the consummate statesman and the only leader capable of steering the country through its myriad challenges. Polls say the race is too close to predict.
Netanyahu was ousted last year after 12 years in power by the diverse coalition forged by Lapid, Netanyahu’s main challenger.
The coalition, made up of nationalists who oppose Palestinian statehood, dovish parties that seek a peace agreement, as well as for the first time in the country’s history a small Arab Islamist party, united over their distaste for Netanyahu. But that coalition collapsed this spring because of infighting.