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Israel’s fifth election in less than four years
In Israel’s multi-party parliamentary system, none of the parties has ever garnered enough votes on their own to win a majority of seats. In order to obtain the 61 seats required to create a ruling government, parties must work together to form coalitions. These alliances can be unstable as well; if you lose the backing of one party, or occasionally simply one legislator, you lose the majority.
In addition, there is Benjamin Netanyahu. He was Israel’s prime minister for the longest period of time ever, is currently facing a corruption prosecution, and is generally divisive. Even though they share his fundamental views, some of the leading center-right politicians reject his work for purely political or personal reasons.
After the previous four elections, he found it challenging to establish stable governing majorities as a result, and last year, his opponents were able to put together an unprecedented coalition of parties from across the political spectrum to unseat him. But the leaders of that coalition, Yair Lapid and Naftali.
Bennett, only managed to keep it together for about a year and a half before calling for fresh elections.
If the polls are accurate, Netanyahu’s center-right Likud party will almost probably be the largest party in the Knesset following Tuesday’s vote. A compilation of polls by Haaretz, for instance, predicts they’ll likely win approximately 30 seats, or 25% of the total.
Yair Lapid, the current prime minister, will be hoping that his centrist Yesh Atid party would finish a strong second.
Naftali Bennett, the guy he worked with to put together the previous administration, is not running this time around because his party has fractured and risks losing the election.
As the leader of the National Unity party, which is the replacement for his Blue and White party and now includes former Bennett ally Gideon Saar and former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Eisenkot, who is running for office for the first time, Defense Minister Benny Gantz is hoping to do well in the elections.
The Religious Zionist Party, a far-right coalition formed by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, may be the biggest extreme right-wing party to ever hold seats in the Knesset.
Contrarily, the once-dominant Labor Party and its forerunners, which ruled Israel virtually as a one-party state for its first 30 years under David Ben-Gurion and his successors, are a shell of their former selves and are expected to win only a small number of seats.
In Israel, a parliamentary democracy, voters cast their ballots for the party they identify with. According to the percentage of the total number of votes each party received, the Knesset allots each party with at least 3.25% of the popular vote a specific number of seats.
In an effort to facilitate the formation of governing coalitions, the 3.25% threshold was established to prevent extremely minor parties from being admitted to the Knesset.
Similar to how the US elects its president and Congress separately, Israel has previously experimented with directly electing the prime minister, outside of the Knesset. It was cumbersome, therefore the nation switched back to regular legislative elections.
The drama of election night will be whether the former prime minister manages to edge above it, according to the last polls, which show that Netanyahu’s party and its possible allies are hovering exactly around the knife-edge number of 60 seats.
His route to forming a government is straightforward, and he will take back control if his bloc wins a majority.
Things get trickier if the pro-Netanyahu bloc loses more than 61 seats. If Netanyahu’s Likud party is the largest in the Knesset, he would still likely get the first opportunity to form a government, which may lead to days or weeks of fruitless haggling.
In the event that his Yesh Atid party is the second-largest, current Acting Prime Minister Lapid could then have the opportunity to try to build a government.
However, for the first time in Israel’s history, his departing cabinet contained an Arab party, which has since split into smaller groups that might not serve in another Israeli government.
That might imply that no one can form a majority government, which increases the likelihood of additional elections. Lapid continues to serve as caretaker prime minister while party talks are ongoing and until a new government is formed.
Many of the concerns shared by people around the world, including the cost of living in particular, are shared by Israelis.
They are also always concerned with security. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and backing for extremist organizations are perennial concerns for the area, while more locally, Israeli-Palestinian violence has increased this year.
The ultra-Orthodox, who demand government funding for their institutions and exemptions from military service, and religious Zionists, who want support for West Bank settlements, are two groups with their own unique issues.
The majority of the time, though, Benjamin Netanyahu and one subject dominate Israeli elections.
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