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www.jewishnews.co.uk
Jewish News 5 March 2020
News / Israeli election
Bibi’s heart still set on survival
Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu address supporters on Monday evening By Stephen Oryszczuk in Israel stepheno@thejngroup.co.uk
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party won Israel’s third election in the past 12 months on Monday, but not by enough to escape the likelihood of a fourth vote this summer. The anticipated apathy did not transpire, with the highest turnout in years, and despite the
majority of Israelis voting for parties opposed to him, Bibi still produced a proverbial rabbit from the ballot box, winning 36 out of 120 seats. Blue and White, the main opposition party jointly led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, won 33, while a last-minute surge towards the voting stations from Israeli Arabs meant that the Joint List registered 15 seats, their best results ever. The two strictly-Orthodox parties registered
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16 seats between them, with Shas picking up nine and UTJ seven, as right-wing secularist party Yisrael Beitenu, led by former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, also won seven seats. Lieberman has vowed never to enter into coalition with the strictly-Orthodox, which Netanyahu needs to form a government. Right-wing national-religious bloc Yamina, which featured former settler leader and cur-
rent defence minister Naftali Bennett, won six seats. Right-wing Jewish Power failed to win any as it was below the 3.25 percent threshold. Any coalition led by Netanyahu would include his allies Shas, UTJ and Yamina, but they won only 58 seats between them. A majority of 61 is needed to govern. Likud’s leaders will now need to sit down with Blue and White’s leaders to try to form a unity government. Similar efforts failed late last year over Netanyahu’s insistence on leading it. Israel’s combined left-wing and centre-left grouping managed only seven seats. It marks another fall from grace; less than five years ago, left-wing and centre-left parties won 29 seats. Although Netanyahu is due in court in two weeks’ time, the prime minister still reversed gains made by Blue and White last September, in part by suggesting that ex-army chief Gantz had mental health issues, was “not a leader” and would be “beholden to the Arabs”. At an election rally after exit polls suggested his unlikely win, Netanyahu said: “We stood in front of strong forces. They told us we are going to lose, that it was the end of the Netanyahu era. We turned lemons into lemonade.” Despite a difficult campaign, Gantz may end up leading the country if justice officials rule in the coming days that it would be “improper” for a prime minister to continue to serve while under indictment. Netanyahu’s refusal to resign means the situation is untested in law. Both the Supreme Court and the Attorney General were reluctant to rule on it before the election but will now have to; Israel’s longest-serving PM may soon have to bow out on the back of a victory.
President Rivlin despairs at ‘filthy tricks’ campaign Netanyahu’s victory came in a campaign of dirty tricks that the Israeli president said had “deteriorated into filth”. Reuven Rivlin said he had only ever felt celebratory about his taking part in Israeli elections, but this week felt “shame”, writes Stephen Oryszczuk. In the run-up to the ballot, news story dominating conversation in Israel was that a rabbi had secretly recorded his conversation with one of Gantz’s aides, who was badmouthing his boss. The rabbi leaked it to the media, the aide was sacked and Gantz suffered in the polls. Channel 12 then aired
another recording of the same rabbi talking to Benjamin Netanyahu about how best to entrap the aide. Netanyahu denied ever having spoken to the rabbi. That recording was then removed by Facebook. Voting in his home town, Gantz said: “We have all been exposed to lies, recordings, and a system that tries to pit us against each other,” adding: “Do not be drawn by lies.” The recordings were not the only controversy. Shas was fined for distributing kameas (charms) at polling stations in Jerusalem, telling voters that they offered “divine protection against coronavirus”.
The Jewish Power party complained that Netanyahu’s Likud sent millions of anonymous text messages to voters claiming that Jewish Power had withdrawn, urging them to vote for Likud instead. But the Central Elections Committee (CEC) said the complaint lacked evidence. In Eilat, however, the CEC did order Likudniks to remove online adverts promising free limousine rides to anyone who voted for the party, ruling that it constituted bribery. Likud said the adverts were posted by supporters, not officials. Blue and White, meanwhile, filed a petition with the CEC for removal of a doctored video posted to Netanyahu’s Facebook page in which Gantz supposedly calls on Israelis not to vote for him (in fact he said no such thing). The CEC agreed that the video violated an Israeli election law barring the publication of misleading campaign materials and ordered Netanyahu to remove it from his social media accounts, which he duly did, but not before tens of thousands had seen it.