Netanyahu is going hard on the Stolen Election strat. I hope this means that he doesn’t think he can form a coalition.
After the Knesset passes a law, it publishes it in the Official Gazette and the law comes into effect. No further ceremony is required.
Unlike in the past, the longer the process takes, the more risk of U.S. interference.
I don’t usually like watching what amounts to a TV show, but I found this discussion filmed today unusually informative:
It was depressing. While the opposition won a solid majority, it seems highly likely unable to unite. This is primarily because, ever since Oct. 7, Israeli Jewish public opinion is strongly against coalitions that include predominantly Arab parties. From my outside perspective this is irrational, because the coalition demands of the Arab parties are modest, with their biggest complaint being lack of police presence during a crime wave in their communities. From the inside perspective, it is intolerable that the Arab parties, especially the larger one, won’t denounce Hamas with sufficient clarity and consistency. This is true even though there have been Arab parties in coalitions before (and Arab parties that supported the coalition from outside).
Of course, coalition between opposition and ruling parties also seems impossible, mainly because of the person of Netanyahu. As with Trump, you cannot make a deal with him because he’ll break it. But some part of the current opposition may do it anyway.
As for new elections, the opinion polling/focus group expert on the video said that the opposition would probably do worse next time, and they apparently know it.
So all options are impossible, although one must be taken. Maybe this is close to true after every Israeli election, since no party has ever won a parliamentary majority. But it is worse this time.
Is it actually illegal for a convicted criminal to participate in Israeli politics? If not, what would it matter if someone has been indicted for a bunch of crimes?
You know all that about him, but so does everybody else.
That’s precisely the point - the Knesset can act once sworn in regardless of who the PM is, and they can MAKE IT illegal for someone who has been indicted to run. This would be relevant if no one can form a government and we go to another round pool of elections.
Even though Netanyahu would be the PM until a new one is selected, he wouldn’t be able to stop such a law from passing. His only recourse would be to get the court to rule such a law to be invalid.
Yes.it is illegal, and after serving jail time, the person is prohibited from running in elections for 6 years. This happened to Arieh Deri, head of the Shas party
Well, nobody saw this coming: The United Torah Judaism party, which everyone assumed was firmly in the Netanyahu bloc, is signaling that it is open to taking its seven seats into the Eisenkot coalition, or at least abstaining to allow him to form a minority government.
This will be tricky, as the only issue they really care about is preserving the Haredi draft exemption, which Eisenkot campaigned hard against. But apparently there is hope that they can work out some sort of compromise, perhaps writing a law that can pass with the Haredim abstaining.
Their reasoning seems to basically be that since this Knesset is absolutely not going to give them what they actually want, they might as well join the side that a) is winning and b) does not contain Netanyahu, who they hate because he has repeatedly broken promises to them.
I suspect they may also hope to weaken the negotiating position of the Arab parties by making it possible for Eisenkot to form a minority government with no Arab votes. (By my math, Eisenkot beats Netanyahu if UTJ and the Arabs abstain, but if UTJ supports Netanyahu, Eisenkot needs at least a few Arabs to actively vote for him)
It’s possible that they’re just trying to pressure Netanyahu - they might be worried that he would fuck them over to please some right wing allies of Eisenkot who might be incentivised to jump ship - but it’s also possible that they really do just hate Netanyahu that much.
ISTM that at some point in the future, Netanyahu will actually be out of the picture and the votes that currently go to Likud, Yashar, Yisrael Beiteinu and Bennet’s party will have a dominant bloc of basically aligned ideologies that will need little to no support from the center-left, Kahanists, Arabs or ultra-orthodox parties.
It seems like if this really is the hill they’d die on it won’t work out that well for them to accept any compromise rather than try and prolong the inertia. Would probably be great for pretty much everyone else however.
Yes,its a pressure tactic.
Everything announced for the next 4 weeks will be posturing, threats and scare tactics right now— from all 11 parties.
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to anybody’s declarations, from any party, right or left.
Then, 1 day before the deadline, we’ll get some real news, based on deals that were made in backrooms and kept secret till the last minute.
Till then, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to all the surprises. There will be a lot of them, and most of them will be irrelevant.
Maybe some sort of alternative service for Haredi men? Like Chevra kadisha or ZAKA?
Eisenkot’s latest communique lists four principles that anyone wanting to join his coalition must agree to: a State inquiry into the 10/7 attacks, national service for all, increased IDF manpower, and repeal of Netanyahu’s anti-judiciary laws. Especially notable is that he is saying that “every member of the Knesset” who agrees to these points is welcome in his coalition, where previously he had said “every Zionist member”.
Maybe. I can’t imagine anyone actually thinks a bunch of guys who have spent their entire lives hunched over a Talmud are going to be particularly effective combat soldiers.
One of the points he wants people to agree to is the definition of Zionism, so I’m not sure that’s much of a distinction. If they weren’t a Zionist before agreeing that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic, and Egalitarian state, then they certainly become Zionist the moment they do.
That’s the smallest problem with drafting them. A much larger problem is the cultural damage that integrating people who don’t share the values the IDF is built upon will cause. Already, the accomodations that get made for Orthodox people who are serving - draconian enforcement of kashrut and shabbat rules at public kitchens, giving in to demands from ultra Orthodox soldiers about separating male and female soldiers, etc - are causing huge damage to both morale and efficiency.
Like Lior Schlein likes to say, before we draft them to join the army at age 18, we need to draft them to join modern society at age 3.
“Zionist” has a clearer definition in Israeli parliamentary politics - it means all the parties that define themselves as Zionists, from the progressives and socialists on the left, to the Jewish nationalists on the far right. In short, everybody besides the two Arab parties and the two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, who do not call themselves Zionists.
One assumes there are some non-Orthodox-Jewish, non-Arab (or at least non-ethnic), non-calling-themselves-Zionist parties, but if nobody voted for them, for political purposes right now they do not matter.
Bear in mind that to Israelis who are not part of those two groups, “Zionist” means the same thing “Patriot” does in other countries, and what politician doesn’t call themselves a patriot?
It occurs to me that this wildly different understanding about the meaning of the term Zionist may cause nearly as many problems with international (and perhaps most importantly, American) public opinions of Israel as the disagreements about the most contentious issues like Gaza, WB, war, etc.
That, and the term “Palestine”.
But yes, if you’d bothered to ask us what Zionist means, we’d tell you, but you’re mostly busy arguing among yourselves.