On Tuesday, Israel holds its fifth election in less than four years. Four of them have been almost entirely about the single issue of whether 73-year-old former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “Bibi”, is fit for office. And as they go to the ballot boxes, voters are being told by pollsters that his bloc of right-wing and religious parties, led by Likud, is poised within one seat or two of another return to office. If it succeeds the country will be electing the most far-right government in its history.
For Netanyahu, mired in three corruption trials, the opportunity of a return to power which he so relishes is also the easiest way to escape the consequences of those trials. His 12-year rule as prime minister was ended in June of 2021 when exasperated voters gave a slim majority to a bizarre alliance of eight wildly divergent parties, and for the first time an Arab party, united solely to displace the Netanyahu government..
That this government, first led by right-winger Naftali Bennett and latterly by centrist Yair Lapid, survived even a year was remarkable.
The election on Tuesday differs in two important respects from those that went before. The rise of far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Religious Zionist ticket, on whom Netanyahu will depend for a majority, has alarmed even strong supporters of Israel in the US. Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Arab Israelis who are “disloyal” to the state to be expelled.
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There are reports that sympathetic congressmen have warned Netanyahu that his inclusion in cabinet could damage relations with the US.
And there is evidence that many Arab voters, 20 per cent of the Israeli electorate, fed up with being presumed upon as anti-Netanyahu voting fodder and disillusioned with the failure of the outgoing government to produce any reform, may well refuse to vote.
Any dilution of the Arab contingent in the Knesset may help Netanyahu and his extremist allies scrape through to victory. Bibi could be back. And either way the election looks like a very close run thing.