By Michael Regenstreif
As I write, on January 25 just before this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press, the negotiations to form a governing coalition following Israel’s January 22 election are in their earliest stage.
The process is expected to take as long as six weeks after President Shimon Peres receives the formal results on January 30. By then, the emerging coalition will need to prove it has the confidence of the Knesset.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all but certain to continue in office, his cabinet is likely to be very different given the weakened position of the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu alliance and the surprising success of the new, centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party under leader Yair Lapid.
Conventional wisdom over the past several years, and during the campaign leading to the election, told us that Israeli society was continuing to move further to the right.
If anything, the results indicated a move to the political centre – not just in the surprising strength of Yesh Atid, but on the centre-left with the somewhat stronger than expected showing of the Labor Party under Shelly Yachimovich and the survival of former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni as leader of the new Hatunah Party.
And, with the emergence of Naftali Bennett’s new Jewish Home party sharply to Likud’s right – a party whose key plank is rejection of the two-state solution and annexation of much of the West Bank – Likud itself would be on the centre-right in comparison.
With the election results in, it will be fascinating to see what kind of coalition will emerge. Most likely, Yesh Atid will be Netanyahu’s main coalition partner.
By this writing, Netanyahu and Lapid have already begun talking. Both indicated they will work together to form a coalition and have started informal talks. But, with Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu’s 31 seats and Yesh Atid’s 19 combining for 50 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, another coalition partner, if not partners, will be necessary to form a government.
And this is where the really interesting horse-trading begins. All kinds of scenarios quickly emerged, some more plausible than others.
Does Netanyahu look to the right, to Bennett’s Jewish Home party with its 12 seats and/or one or both of the ultra-Orthodox religious parties, Shas with 11 seats and United Torah Judaism with its seven?
Or does he look to the centre-left, to Labor with 15 seats (despite Yachimovich’s pre-election insistence she would not participate in a coalition with Netanyahu), and possibly Livni’s Hatunah with six, and Kadima hanging in with two seats?
Or does he look in all directions at the same time?
What will make the negotiations so interesting are the seemingly common and seemingly incompatible positions of the different parties on some of the key issues Israel’s next government will face.
Reports following a two-hour meeting between Netanyahu and Lapid on January 24 suggested Lapid has advanced two basic conditions: legislation implementing national service requirements for haredi Jews and Israeli Arabs; and resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
Looking to the right, Bennett’s Jewish Home party would be supportive of the first condition, but would reject the second. If both conditions are ultimately make-or-break conditions, it’s hard to imagine Lapid and Bennett sitting together at Netanyahu’s cabinet table. And the religious parties would almost certainly fight the first condition.
The strongest possible coalition would embrace a centre-right to centre-left combination of Likud, Yesh Atid and Labor. The three parties together would have 65 seats. Bringing Hatunah and Kadima into the coalition would bring it to 73.
Such a coalition, without the religious parties in cabinet, would be in a much better position to settle the national service issue. Such a coalition would also be a strong signal to the world that Israel is serious about peace with the Palestinians (and would, hopefully, force the Palestinian leadership to stop looking for reasons not to negotiate).
The question for this possible scenario, at least as of this writing, is whether Yachimovich can be lured into the coalition following her campaign promise that she wouldn’t be.
Without Yachimovich, would Lapid be willing to give up one or the other of his two conditions to remain in the coalition?
If not, Netanyahu could move sharply right with a 61-seat coalition of Likud, Jewish Home and the two religious parties. Such a scenario would suggest no imminent progress on the peace front, on the religious-secular divide, and on the social issues which drove the success of the centrist parties.
The next few weeks will be most interesting.
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