It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Israel will return for the third round of elections this year, with the most likely outcome being a unity government with power-sharing between Blue and White and Likud, with Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman maintaining a senior cabinet position. It remains to be seen whether Blue and White leader Benny Gantz will give up his opposition to splitting the premiership while Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under indictment, or whether Likud will buck Netanyahu as the head of their party in order to form a government.
On October 24, 2019, it was announced that Netanyahu and Gantz will meet in the near future to discuss the possibility of forming a unity government. After Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition, President Reuven Rivlin has tasked Gantz with doing so. Blue and White has said that Gantz has spoken with each of the leaders of the various factions elected to the Knesset. Likud confirmed there would be a meeting between Gantz and Netanyahu, but Netanyahu would be negotiating on behalf of the bloc of right-wing and religious parties loyal to him and stressed he would not enter a coalition without those 55 members behind him. Blue and White previously rejected this negotiation.
The Knesset is Israel’s unicameral parliament which is made up of 120 lawmakers. The prime minister is the coalition leader of the Knesset, generally the head of the party with the greatest number of seats. In an election, voters vote for a party rather than individual candidates, with seats in the Knesset apportioned according to the percentage of votes each party receives in the election. After the election, a coalition government must be formed by the elected representatives in the Knesset. A ruling coalition generally must have at least 61 members to ensure a majority of the 120 seats, though it is possible to form a “minority government” with less than 61 seats, provided opposition parties approve the coalition from the outside.
The president of Israel formally asks whichever party leader he or she feels is most likely to be successful in forming a government to attempt to form a governing coalition. Since no party has ever achieved a 61-vote majority on its own, they have always relied on other parties to join the coalition. Following the September 17th election, President Rivlin gave Netanyahu the first mandate to form a government, which lasted 28 days and ended on October 21st when Netanyahu returned the mandate, having failed to form a coalition.
The 22nd Knesset was elected on September 17th, 2019 and features nine political parties, represented by 120 members of Parliament. There are three main political groupings: Blue and White, Likud, and Orthodox parties. Blue and White, with 33 seats, is a newly formed party led by formed Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a political neophyte who ran on a centrist platform primarily against perceived corruption by Netanyahu and his government. Gantz pledged on the campaign trail that he would not form a government with Netanyahu, who will soon face indictment on several alleged corruption cases. Next is Likud with 31 seats. Likud is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party and is the largest right-wing party in Israel. The party remains committed to keeping Netanyahu in office despite the pending indictments. Finally, there are 17 seats held by two primary Orthodox parties: Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Shas has previously joined coalitions led by Likud, supporting Netanyahu in the elections. The party has no stance on a two-state solution, and they lean right on other social issues. On the other hand, UTJ is a non-Zionist faction which does not endorse the creation of a secular Jewish state, but which supported Netanyahu in the elections.
Additionally, there are also other factions playing a role in the elections. Joint List, with 13 seats, is a unified ticket of four major Israeli Arab parties that have become the third-largest faction of the Knesset. There is the communist party Hadash, the secular Arab interest party Ta’al, the conservative Islamist United Arab List, and the nationalist Balad party. Then there are Left-wing Zionist parties with 11 total seats. The Israeli political left is represented by the Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp, two smaller parties who adhere to leftist domestic and foreign policies but also embrace Zionism as opposed to the Joint List which is generally anti-Zionist and made up of majority Arab-Israeli parties. There is also Yamina with seven seats, which is a united list of right-wing parties who are in support of Netanyahu, and Yisrael Beiteinu with 8 seats. Yisrael Beiteinu is the right-wing political party led by Liberman that was founded to represent the concern of Israel’s million-plus Russian-speaking immigrant community. The party is a proponent of Lieberman’s plan to achieve a two-state solution, which calls for Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank in Israel that are predominantly Arab.
To summarize all of the competing parties, the Israel Policy Forum groups them into three blocs. The first is the pro-Netanyahu bloc, which is a united front of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties that has 55 total seats. The second bloc is comprised of a group of centrist, left-wing Zionist and Arab political parties that oppose Netanyahu with a total of 57 seats. The last bloc is Yisrael Beiteinu who controls eight seats and whose secularist leader Liberman has pledged not to sit in a coalition that includes either the religious parties or the Arab ones. In all, there are four potential outcomes to the elections: a unity government (Gantz, Netanyahu, Liberman); a unity government minus Netanyahu (with Gantz, Gideon Saar, Liberman); a Minority government with Gantz, Liberman, and Arab parties in minority, or a bloc of the left and religious parties.
A unity government between Kachol Lavan (33 seats), Likud (32 seats), and Yisrael Beiteinu (eight seats) would total 73 seats. This would require compromises from both Likud and Kachol Lavan. Netanyahu and Likud would be required to cede control over the right-wing “bloc,” the smaller parties the prime minister is currently negotiating on behalf of. There is also President Rivlin’s proposal, which calls for a rotating premiership, something Kachol Lavan adamantly opposed on the campaign trail. Mr. Netanyahu would serve as prime minister first, but if charged, he would declare himself incapacitated while he sorted out his legal troubles. Mr. Gantz would then serve as acting prime minister with full powers. Finally, there is Liberman’s plan, which is somewhat like Rivlin's proposal. Like Rivlin, Liberman calls for a rotating premiership between Netanyahu and Gantz. However, Liberman’s plan would also require Netanyahu to back out of an agreement with the religious right-wing bloc. These parties (Shas, United Torah Judaism, and the Ayelet Shaked-led Yamina alliance) could only join the government later based on agreements that the three parties will have to reach amongst themselves. As a part of his plan, Liberman also hopes for this unity government to focus on two key issues. First, he wishes to reach an agreement with Likud and Kahol Lavan to pass a law that would force ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to draft into the military and nix a law that would keep supermarkets close on Shabbat. Second, Lieberman wants the parties to discuss minimizing budgets, raising taxes and finding a permanent solution for the situation in the Gaza Strip.
For a unity government without Netanyahu, there would be Gantz, Gideon Saar, and Liberman. Theoretically, Likud could have joined a unity government without Netanyahu and with Kachol Lavan. However, the party supported the prime minister’s push for new elections instead. Likud MKs like Gideon Saar and Michal Shir, perceived as critical of Netanyahu, ultimately voted in favor of dissolving the Knesset and moving to new elections.
Gantz could form a minority government with Liberman and Arab parties in the minority. Likud said in its campaign that both Liberman and Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh had spoken about recommending Gantz as prime minister. However, a government that includes both those parties, which despise each other, seems impossible. Liberman has said he won’t join a coalition with the Arab parties, and most factions within the Joint List reacted with outrage to Odeh’s comment about possible political cooperation with Gantz. Gantz has the option of forming a minority government with outside support from the Arab parties — a course advocated by Democratic Camp’s Ehud Barak — but neither side would be thrilled with that arrangement and the resulting government would be on extremely shaky ground.
A coalition government between the Left and Religious blocs is unlikely, but at this point could very well be possible. The question remains what would it take to get the left-wing bloc without the Arab parties, but concessions to get the orthodox parties onboard? One option could be for the ultra-Orthodox parties to join Gantz, Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp. Similar center-left governments with the Haredi parties existed in Israel decades ago, but Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) have in recent decades become automatic supporters of Likud. UTJ already declared it stood by Likud “all the way.” Another problem is that as it stands, those parties seem to add up to a very narrow majority — not a recipe for a stable coalition.
Israel is returning for the third round of elections, signaling a second failure by Netanyahu to form a government, as well as a failure by Gantz in his first test as a political leader. The responsibility to form a unity government shifted to Gantz and he had 28 days to do so. The 28 days passed and no coalition was formed, so a third election is the last resort. If Gantz couldn’t form a government within his allotted time, the president also had the option to hand the task to Parliament, giving lawmakers an additional 21 days to come up with a candidate who can command a majority. Many thought this was the more likely option, as no one desired another election. Netanyahu was also reliant on the fact that the public and political pressure to avoid a third election would have persuaded the half-dozen additional lawmakers, whose support he needed, to come to his side.
Israel could have avoided the third round of elections if any of the major parties dropped their necessary conditions for an agreement: Likud’s retention of Netanyahu as head of the party, Gantz’s refusal to share the premiership with Netanyahu under indictment, and Liberman’s refusal to serve with the Arab parties. As a dual kingmaker and spoiler, Lieberman will likely prevail with his demands.
The early polls for the third Israeli election in the span of a year, scheduled for March 2, 2020, predict another inconclusive result: that is, neither the Center-Left-Arab bloc (to the extent that such a thing actually exists) nor the Right-Religious bloc, minus Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, are expected to win a majority in the Knesset. Likud and Kachol Lavan are still in a horse race with the latter having a slight edge. There will be nearly three months of campaigning, which can always make a difference, but if the election were held today the needle would barely move.
Israeli politics should not be where it is today. The second election was an unnecessary embarrassment, brought on by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to play by the same rules applied to his immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and the prospect of a third vote is out-and-out shameful for the very same reason: think what you will of Kachol Lavan’s inconsistent and muddled negotiating strategy, it is Netanyahu’s insistence on serving as prime minister through at least the early stages of an indictment while requesting the Knesset grant him immunity, that has prevented a new coalition from being formed. Gantz has a slight advantage in the blame game, but the anger that may erupt with the dissolution of the twenty-second Knesset (perhaps exacerbated by President Reuven Rivlin’s intervention, in which he blamed both sides equally) can turn on anyone in a volatile news cycle.