PM drops to third among settlers, Smotrich in first
What to know about how Judea and Samaria voted
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fell from first to third place among West Bank settler voters, while Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich replaced him as the most popular politician in the hilltops of Judea and Samaria.
An analysis by The Jerusalem Post of data published by the Central Elections Committee shows that while Netanyahu may have bested all his opponents by securing 30 seats for Likud – 13 more than his closest rival Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid – he is fighting with Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett over who is best placed to lead a right-wing government.
Smotrich may be far from the premiership, but the politician who led a newly formed party in this election has now become the heart of a new, bolder Right. Even Bennett, who has in the past led or has come second among settlers, fell below Netanyahu into fourth place.
Here are nine things to know about how settlers voted.
Netanyahu only comes in third
Netanyahu has branded himself as the leader of the Right, an identity he has always been loath to lose and which is central to all of his campaigns.
His role as champion and protector of the settlements is one of the pillars on which his claim as king of the Right rests. Yet he has struggled from the start to win the hearts and minds of the settlers, despite resounding support from a large swath of it leadership who are members of the Likud Party and have never abandoned it.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan swore in the days before the election that activists from Samaria would personally work to get out the vote, thereby increasing Netanyahu’s support tenfold.
In the last election in 2020, with annexation in the offing, Netanyahu secured settler support and handily won 29.7% of the vote, while Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett trailed behind him at 22.8%. Netanyahu was also the top vote getter in the April 2019 election. This is the first time he has dropped to third place, securing only 19.4% of the vote.
Who will represent Anglos, Diaspora in new Knesset? Page 2
Bennett drops to fourth place
Bennett, who is often seen as Netanyahu’s chief rival on the Right and who has always stood firm on settlements, campaigned this time around corona and the economy. He tumbled down to fourth place among settlers with only 13.5% of the vote, but it was still more than the 6.2% he received nationwide. It was also better than his 11% showing in the April 2019 election, when his party failed to cross the electoral threshold and gain a Knesset seat.
BIBI
going Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party as his partners. There would have been a rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office that would have allowed him to focus on his trial, but then, according to the deal, he could have rotated back in.
The apparent political mistakes Netanyahu has made have put his career in jeopardy. The following five blunders could have easily been avoided.
• First, it would be ironic if Netanyahu’s apparent obsession with harming Bennett ends up boomeranging against him. In the past six elections, Netanyahu tried to take away Bennett’s votes and then lowball him in coalition talks afterward.
After the last election, Bennett merely wanted to be health minister, but Netanyahu left him out of the coalition altogether. Had he treated Bennett with a little respect then, he may not have needed to depend on him now.
• The same goes with New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar. Netanyahu knew that Sa’ar quit politics six-and-a-half years ago, because he was not included in the security cabinet. All he had to do this time was rectify that.
Instead, like he has done with so many of his past allies and advisers, Netanyahu pushed Sa’ar away. He promoted others ahead of him, and left Sa’ar out of his cabinet completely. He would not even give him a Knesset committee chairmanship.
• The third mistake was not accepting a debate offer from Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, which could have allowed him to display his strengths and highlight Lapid’s weaknesses. Netanyahu had nothing to be afraid of, and he could have won the extra support he needed in retrospect.
• The fourth was wasting so much time and energy wooing Arab voters. The numbers prove this strategy was a bust.
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Is it safe to swim and use other natural resources?
“We couldn’t see any chemical changes,” said Dr. Eyal Rahav, head of the Biology Dept. at IOLR. The lab has autonomous underwater robots with carbohydrate sensors that measured the entire water column.
Rahav, who researches the effects of crude oil on marine micro-organisms, explained that if that water was badly polluted it would quickly affect the bottom of the food chain. However, he found no “significant change or decline in productivity or biomass.”
While the chemical makeup of the water has not changed, tar is still washing up on shore. Surfers from Herzliya reported this past week that they came out of the water with their boards and legs entirely black, even after the Health Ministry reopened the Mediterranean to water sports on March 9. Lifeguards at the Acadia beach said some swimmers are still experiencing burning eyes, dizziness and headaches.
What marine resources will be affected, and for how long?
Since much of Israel’s water comes from desalination plants, another fear was that such pollution would overload their filters. It seems, however, that the plants have fared well despite the pollution.
“We were lucky that in this [recent] event, it was tar, which tends to go directly to the beach and not into the intakes of the desalination plants,” said Rani Amir, director of the ministry’s Marine Environment Protection Division.
How fast will oil go away?
The aftermath of the oil spill is difficult to predict, as it is not yet clear how much remains in the water, sediment and seabed.
“I expect to find some of the pollution in sediments and the deep sea,” Rahav predicted of the upcoming sea dives to survey the ocean floor. The expedition is expected to take place in the coming month. Scientists will “collect sediments and look for chemical signals of crude oil and see if bacteria were affected by the pollution.”
Rahav is concerned about the MOSSFA (Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation & Flocculent Accumulation) phenomenon that causes oil to sink down and cover the sea floor, like snow. This accumulation has the potential to remain for years, and could contaminate fish species that find their food in sea floor micro-organisms.
Another marine habitat that could retain the pollution much longer is the “hedge table” – rocks along the coast that house many sedentary species.
“The rocky area is characterized by daily cycles of tides where ‘hedge tables’ are formed, where most of the biological activity is concentrated,” Dr. Joshua Shakedi, chief scientist of the Nature and Parks Authority solemnly announced in February. “The pollution…covered and suffocated the animals clinging to the rocks...Only the removal of the tar will allow the algae and animal society to recover on the coastal rocks.”
Shakedi suggested that the tar-covered areas be mapped
and the rocks be cleaned, “stain after stain,” which will take months to cover manually.
Weather factors such as waves, sun, chemical makeup, etc. will also affect the rate at which the oil and tar break down. There are many micro-organisms in the ocean that can digest hydrocarbons from the crude oil as well.
Over time, “the ecological system fixes itself on its own,” said Astrahan. Only continued research will reveal when Israel’s coastline will fully recover.
How will coastal communities be affected in the shortand long-term?
Of Israel’s 101 official beaches, 82% of them have passed the “tar index,” after massive cleanup efforts scoured the shoreline to collect tar waste. With the help of volunteers, government officials and the Environmental Protection Ministry, 61% of the beaches have been cleaned with barely any residue left, and only 3% are still closed due to the pollution.
The Environmental Protection Ministry has uploaded an interactive map of safe beaches that are now clean and open to the public.
Are we better prepared for the next oil spill (which will occur)?
Following the oil spill, Israel passed a Memorandum of the Preparedness Law and Response to Incidents of Marine Pollution and the Coastal Environment in Oil. It will develop an emergency plan for maritime disasters using advanced technology, ships and assignment of responsibilities to regional bodies affected by the disaster. The law also established the Fund for the Prevention of Marine Pollution, which will have a NIS 25 million budget.
Additionally, the Environmental Protection Ministry launched an investigation into the source of the pollution. Through retrospective mapping of the spill, it found the “crude oil tanker called Emerald...illegally carrying cargo from Iran to Syria” to be responsible for polluting Israel’s coast on February 1 and 2, Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel informed Israelis.
Israel is working to “claim compensation for the severe damage to Israeli shores,” she announced on March 16. The insurance claim is in compliance with the 2004 Liability for the Compensation for Oil Pollution Damages Law, and will help Israel rebuild from the damages and invest in its newly established prevention plan.
Since the Emerald had turned off its AIS (automatic identification system) in a deceptive shipping practice intended to hide its exportation of oil to Syria, the tanker was not discovered until it was too late. Had there been efficient satellite observation of coastal waters, Israel could have detected the spill at the source, said Ami Daniel, CEO of Winward. His company helped Israel analyze and identify the tanker with retrospective satellite imaging and artificial intelligence.
Rahav explained how crucial early detection is in containing oil spills. “When it’s at sea, there are ways to clean most of the oil,” he said, but since there are hundreds of tankers passing through the Mediterranean, preparing for the next one is a must. “It’s just a matter of time,” he warned.
Daniel is hoping Israel will employ optical satellites and surveillance to help keep tabs on all 2,500+ vessels passing its shores each year, even those that turn off their AIS. Winward’s AI technology can also identify every ship in the sea and the cargo they are transporting.
“The strength of our research is our partners and collaborators, looking at a problem through multiple perspectives (biologists, chemists, geologists, engineers),” Murawski told last month’s oil spill panel. “Oil spills do not respect territorial boundaries. And so we need a more integrated multinational approach to this.”
It seems Israel has followed Murawski’s advice well, calling upon scientists, engineers, government officials, and international bodies to combat the ecological disaster and ensure that the county is better equipped for the next tanker spill in its waters.
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Smotrich is king of the hills
Smotrich, who ran for the first time as a party head, bested all his rivals in Judea and Samaria, receiving 21.7% of the votes, which was slightly more than a full mandate. He did so without receiving any major endorsements from the settler leaders, but with a strong mandate from the religious Zionist rabbis, who told their followers to vote for him.
Smotrich received an endorsement in the last weeks of the campaign from Netanyahu, who, in a strange political move, told his supporters to vote for Smotrich by way of attempting to weaken Bennett.
Netanyahu made two visits to the West Bank prior to the end of the campaign, to areas that had previously supported Bennett, so that he could personally deliver this message.
Himself a settler, Smotrich stood out among the candidates for his strong, no-holdsbarred support for West Bank sovereignty irrespective of the diplomatic climate. He has consistently been one of the settlements’ strong champions, both in the Knesset and through field visits.
UTJ was second-largest party
United Torah Judaism was the second-largest party, receiving 19.5% support, enough for a full mandate.
Together with the Shas Party, which came in fifth in the settlements with 9.7% of the votes, the two parties represented 29.2% of the voting power of the settlements.
Both parties pulled heavily on voters from the two largest West Bank settlements of Modi’in Illit and Beitar Illit, which are exclusively ultra-Orthodox. In Modi’in Illit, some 19,309 votes went to UTJ and 4,289 to Shas. In Beitar Illit, some 12,752 votes went for UTJ and 5,734 for Shas.
Two mandates lost to apathy
There are seven mandates to be had in the settlements, enough for a mid-size party, but only if all 253,681 eligible voters in Judea and Samaria head to the polls.
While it’s true that the settler voting rate – 73.6% on March 23 – was higher than the national average of 67.4%, it was still not a strong enough showing and was part of a slow decline.
In April 2019, the settler voting rate was 78%, falling to 76.8% that September, and dropping slightly in March 2020 to 76.2%.
Settlements were one of the main campaign issues of the 2020 election, with Netanyahu pledging to annex West Bank settlements if he won.
This time around, with annexation suspended and a pandemic on top of everyone’s agenda, the settlements were on the periphery. Candidates had little to exclusively offer settlers aside from national issues to entice them to vote.
In the last two weeks of the campaign, Netanyahu spoke of a needed two extra mandates, which he might have found in the settlements – except that 66,984 people failed to vote, leading to a loss of two mandates, leaving politicians with only five mandates to garner from there.
Lapid more popular than Gantz
In the last election, Blue and White led by Benny Gantz received 9.1% of the vote.
This time around, his party – which Netanyahu blamed for halting efforts to legalize West Bank outposts, and which had initially delayed West Bank sovereignty – received a mere 2.26% of the votes.
Lapid, who had run with him in the 2019 and 2020 elections, proved to be more popular, receiving double support with 4.55% of the votes.
The abandoned foot soldier
New Hope Party head Gideon Sa’ar should have swept the settlements, running neck and neck with Netanyahu.
It’s hard to find a more ardent foot soldier on behalf of the settlements than Sa’ar. He is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, wants to legalize the outposts, and holds that all of Area C of the West Bank should be part of sovereign Israel.
And with Sa’ar, it is not just talk. He is vocal politically in the Knesset, visits the settlements, and shows up at rallies and protests.
Sa’ar spoke of West Bank sovereignty long before Netanyahu did, although like him he agreed to suspend it in favor of the Abraham Accords.
He also received enormous endorsements from the settlers, with former Yesha Council head Dani Dayan – also the former Israeli Consul-General in New York – running on his ticket. This was followed by Yesha Council head David Elhayani leaving the Likud to join his party.
Yet when it came to the ballot box, Sa’ar failed to gain traction in the settlements, receiving only 3.7% of settler support, compared with the 4.74% he garnered nationwide.
The unpopular settler
Nationwide, Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman was more popular than Smotrich, receiving seven mandates to his six. On a popularity scale, the secular candidate won 5.6% of the vote, compared with Smotrich’s 5.1%.
In the settlements – where both men live – it was an entirely different story. Liberman traditionally fails to bring out settler voters. This year his popularity waned ever further, dropping from 3.6% in September 2019, to 2.8% in March 2020 to 2.2% this year.
Liberman didn’t carry a single settlement. Even in Nokdim where he lives, he came in fourth place, with just 7% of the vote.
His largest base of support comes from Ariel, which has a strong Russian immigrant population and where he netted 1,519 voters, followed by Ma’aleh Adumim where 832 people supported him.
Settlements that love Labor
Pragmatically, the Labor Party, which believes in a resolution to the conflict that involves the withdrawal from isolated settlements, should not be popular in those communities.
So it comes as no surprise that Labor won only 1.6% of the vote, compared with its 5.8% nationwide support. The numbers are a slight bump up from last year, when it received only 1.3% of the settler vote, but still not as high as the 2.3% it received in September 2019.
Still, there were at least three isolated settlements where Labor was the most popular party in town: Almog in the Jordan Valley, and Mitzpe Shalem and Netiv Hagdud near the Dead Sea.