The Israeli national elections, a scant seven weeks ago, seemed like a nearly finished story. Netanyahu, weeks after having been indicted on a variety of bribery-related charges, emerged victorious. His party, the Likud, has gained seats since the last election. He had a narrow majority coalition, and was about to begin his fifth term, leading a more right-wing and autocratic government than ever before.
But then things went awry. Unless something very unexpected happens in the next couple of days, Israel will be going back to the polls at the end of the summer, and Netanyahu is more than ever at risk of losing his seat and his freedom.
A parliamentary majority is needed to establish a government: at least 60 members of the Knesset (MKs) out of a total of 120. Pending negotiations and agreements, the following right-wing coalition has emerged (with number of MKs):
- Likud. 35. Netanyahu’s majority party.
- United Torah Judaism. 8. The Ashkenazi Orthodox party. Its major focus is on support for the Orthodox community, of which more below.
- Shas. 8. Ditto, for the Mizrahi and Sephardi Orthodox.
- United Right. 5. Nationalist-religious. A union of settlers, nationalists, theocrats, fascists and Kahanists.
- Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel Our Home”). 5. Headed by Avigdor Liberman. A pro-war nationalist party, but stridently secular. Traditionally supported by Russian immigrants.
- Kulanu (“All of Us”). 4. Nominally right-wing, but focused on economic issues like affordable housing.
If you add all these numbers you get 65 seats, a narrow but functional majority. But then came the negotiations, and one issue turned out to be unresolvable.
A great number of young Orthodox Israelis are full-time students at yeshivas, which are schools of religious law. At the founding of the state of Israel, hundreds of yeshiva students were granted an exemption from military service, which is normally mandatory. The original intent of that was to enable the reestablishment of Orthodox learning traditions which had been decimated in the holocaust. But since then, yeshivas have grown and multiplied, and tens of thousands of yeshiva students are entirely exempt from military service. Secular Israelis view the exemption as perpetuating a class of freeloaders. Social engineers view the exemption as maintaining the insularity of the Orthodox and their separation from mainstream society. The Orthodox view the exemption as vital to maintaining their traditional life. The mainstream right-wing parties view it as a bargaining chip by which to make the religious parties adhere to their coalitions.
Over the years, there have been attempts to crack the yeshiva exemption regime, through lawsuits and through legislative efforts. The most recent proposed law was written and advanced by Liberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, a military hawk, a settler, but a staunch secularist. That law would cancel some draft exemptions for yeshiva students, and would be enforced by criminal and financial penalties. The proposal was frozen when the last Knesset was disbanded in December.
Once negotiations had started for a new coalition, Liberman decided to be a stickler for the law as proposed. He has not wavered from this condition, that the law is to be brought up to a vote, as is. With some support from the opposition, the law would likely pass.
Equally uncompromising, Yaakov Litzman, the leader of one of the factions comprising the United Torah Judaism party, has rejected bringing the law to the floor. Some compromises were suggested, (by way of convenient loopholes in the law which would make it moot), which Liberman refused to consider.
Let us look at the electoral calculus above. Without United Torah Judaism, there are only 57 votes, and no coalition. Without Yisrael Beiteinu, there are 60 votes. Legally and theoretically, that constitutes a coalition. In practice, it is too fragile to exist. Any party can threaten to leave if it doesn’t get its way, and destroy the coalition. A single coalition MK who doesn’t show up risks a 60-MK opposition getting its way in the Knesset. Because of that instability , the Kulanu party announced that it would not be part of a 60-MK coalition, and then it’s down to only 56 votes and no coalition.
There is one other possibility. The main opposition party, Gantz’s Kakhol Lavan (“Blue-and-White”), may be open to sitting in a coalition with the Likud. With its 35 MKs, they would form a stable 70-MK, two-party coalition, with not a lot of policy differences between them—except one.
It is not a secret that Netanyahu’s imperial personality has won him widespread antipathy, especially among those who worked with him (Liberman for one, famously). But his indictment is a bridge too many, and Gantz’s party has unambiguously stated that they will not partner with an indicted prime minister, whose main political aim is to keep himself out of court and in power indefinitely.
If Netanyahu fails to assemble a coalition by the deadline of midnight on Wednesday (2pm PDT), President Rivlin has the option of asking another MK to try and assemble a coalition. He could ask Gantz of Blue-and-White to try and do that, or even ask another Likud MK. Either way, there will be pressure on the Likud to jettison and replace Netanyahu, a formidable but increasingly damaged politician. That would end his political career, and without any sort of parliamentary immunity, would put him on the fast track to trial and jail.
To forestall that, Likud has moved to disband the Knesset. That is likely to pass. In that case, new elections will be called, and will take place at a date to be determined, probably in mid-September.
The winner of this game will no doubt be Liberman. In the last election campaign, he was pushed off the news by the constant drama of parties splitting and merging, disappearing and coming out of the shadows. Yisrael Beiteinu was old news, and lost a seat. In these new elections he will be remembered as the one politician who didn’t blink and didn’t compromise. Of course, some Netanyahu fanciers hate him now more than ever, but they weren’t going to vote for him anyway.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, is weakened. Rightly or wrongly, he is taking the blame for failing to put together a coalition, and is seen as one who turned a victory against difficult odds into a failure. More significantly, his legal risk is greater. This is how it works:
An indictment happens in two stages. After the initial indictment, the accused is allowed a hearing in which to challenge the basic evidence underlying the indictment. The hearing was originally scheduled for July 10th, and Netanyahu’s lawyers won an extension until October 10th (that is a separate repellent story.)
The future hearing has given cover to those members of the Likud and potential coalition members who want to appear to respect the rule of law. Once the initial indictment happened, they argued that the indictment isn’t final unless it stands after the hearing, and until then they are with him.
Netanyahu had hoped to pass one or both of two laws in the Knesset before his hearing. One would outright give a sitting prime minister immunity from criminal prosecution. There is some support for this law, within his party and some of its coalition partners. Another proposal would allow the Knesset to reverse Supreme Court decisions which overturn its votes. In other words, if the Supreme Court found that the Knesset can’t immunize Netanyahu to prosecution, the Knesset could overturn its decision. (That law would also take away the Supreme Court’s power to prevent illegal actions against Palestinians, which makes it especially popular among the right wingers.) Netanyahu had hoped to assemble a coalition which would commit to passing these laws, and thus get him his Get Out Of Jail Free card before his hearing.
But now, if the Knesset is disbanded, it cannot pass any new laws, and the new elections will happen uncomfortably close to the new hearing. Netanyahu, more than ever before, is looking cornered and weakened.
It seems ages since the beginning of the last elections, five months ago. A lot of twists and turns are coming up in the next four months or so. Stay tuned.