Why Israeli opposition’s soft approach could backfire

It took the leaders of Israel’s opposition only a few weeks of declining support in the opinion polls to call for an emergency meeting last Saturday at the home of Yair Lapid, the current leader of the opposition and former prime minister. In addition to Lapid, those present included key opposition figures Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Lieberman. A month before the Oct. 27 election, their meeting was aimed at shoring up a campaign that, instead of focusing on the failures of the current government and presenting a convincing alternative, had become sidetracked by internal wrangling over who should lead the next government, and who should not be part of it. Spoiler alert — it is the Arab parties.

The agreement they reached showed political maturity, albeit too close to polling day. Nevertheless, one can expect these political skirmishes to resume soon after the election results are announced. This reflects a fundamental and deep-rooted weakness in Israel’s political and electoral system, compounded by an ingrained social polarization that for decades has prevented clear and decisive results at the ballot box.

Consequently, too many politicians and parties believe they can form coalitions and maintain them for a full term, despite receiving only limited mandates from the public. In recent times, only Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to do so, but at considerable cost to the country and for much longer than might have been desirable.

No single party has ever won an absolute majority in an Israeli election — the 61 seats needed in the 120-member Knesset — and the trend has been toward smaller factions. The most optimistic forecast is that the largest party in the next Knesset will have no more than 23 seats. That party is the newly formed Yashar, led by Eisenkot, which would hold less than one-fifth of the available seats and remain 38 seats short of a majority, according to the latest polls.

Hence the crucial importance of maintaining the “bloc,” in other words, potential future coalition partners, even while those parties compete against one another during a bitter election campaign. This means treading a fine line between maximizing one’s own party gains and avoiding causing too much damage to prospective coalition partners, to the point where voters might move to parties belonging to the opposing bloc. Seemingly, this results in an inevitable process of self-censorship, with parties unwilling to tell the electorate what they really think of their current rivals, who may soon become coalition partners. It also limits how far they are prepared to push their messages, so as not to upset other parties within the bloc, or risk votes leaking to the opposing side.

An election campaign strategy of revealing as little as possible about what a new and different Israeli government would do is hardly an approach that will build trust with the public.
Yossi Mekelberg

The result is an uninspiring election campaign that offers few clear policy alternatives, precisely when voters need distinct choices on almost every issue. If parties cannot distinguish themselves on ideological, policy or values-based grounds, they inevitably resort to campaigning around personalities and their perceived competence to implement policies that are, in many cases, remarkably similar.

When the heads of the opposition met to try to halt the damaging decline in their support, their first task was to stop claiming, as at least three of them had been doing, that they would demand the opportunity to form the next government if they performed well at the ballot box, even if they did not win the most seats. Needless to say, each sees himself as the most suitable candidate for the top job.

Since Israeli law does not require the country’s president to task the leader of the largest party with forming a government and becoming prime minister, the question of who should lead the government can wait until after all Israelis have expressed their preference on Oct. 27.

In the previous government, Bennett became prime minister despite his party winning a mere seven seats. In contrast, Netanyahu’s Likud won 30 and remained in opposition, and his eventual coalition partner, Lapid, won 17. Bennett was nevertheless deemed the only candidate with a realistic chance of forming a coalition. Admittedly, that arrangement proved short-lived, and it would be best for it not to be repeated.

The decision by the five leaders — as part of an election “ceasefire” — to avoid discussing publicly who their candidate for prime minister is likely to be might help lower the temperature of the contest. While voters supporting the right-wing bloc know in advance that their candidate to lead the country will be Netanyahu, supporters of the other bloc do not know who they will get.

This may not only discourage voters within the bloc from supporting one party over another but also make it harder to attract voters from the opposing bloc. It may be the case that agreeing to stop the infighting and work together ensure the integrity of the election, cooperating to counter the spread of fake news and smear campaigns, will increase their support among the public. However, this is a relatively low bar, albeit a necessary one.

When it came to substantive issues, the best they could come up with was an agreement to work toward, first, creating a written constitution for the country, which would probably be impossible to achieve in a single term, particularly with only a narrow majority in the Knesset; second, to limit the period of a prime minister’s term in office; and third, to establish an independent commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7, 2023 catastrophe and its aftermath.

The emergency meeting’s communique made no mention of forming a government with any of the Arab parties, an arrangement which might prove essential to forming and maintaining a coalition for the next four years. Nor was there any discussion of the major strategic and domestic issues facing the country: from the Palestinian question to Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, or from the deterioration in school attainment compared with other OECD countries, to crime levels that have reached troubling heights.

An election campaign strategy of revealing as little as possible about what a new and different government would actually do could backfire badly at the ballot box, and even more so should the opposition eventually come to power. It may create suspicion that parties are trying to hide their policies, creating an inevitable expectation that promises will be broken and previously hidden policies will suddenly be imposed on the electorate.

All this is hardly a strategy for building trust with a public that already has very little left for its politicians.