Israel seems headed for a depressing election result. It looks like Netanyahu is weakened enough that his party will take a bath. But the right-wing parties are almost assured of getting at least a slim majority of the seats in the Knesset. This means that the Israelis will go vote against Netanyahu but probably won’t be able to get rid of him.
Of course, the polls are close enough that anything can happen, and even if the results come in as expected, there’s no certainty that Netanyahu would be able to cobble together a majority. The only thing that seems locked in right now is that Bibi will emerge weaker.
Not enough bad sh*t can happen to this asshole.
And, sadly, not enough bad sh*t will.
Bibi’s a slightly brighter version of W, and Cheney with a slightly less toxic sneer.
If they had a higher threshold for parliamentary participation Bibi would be toast.
what do you mean? For the parties?
Do you mean the minimum percentage of the vote for a party list to win a seat? Per Wikipedia, here is the current party composition of the Knesset:
Coalition members (43)
Likud (18)
Yisrael Beiteinu (13)
The Jewish Home (12)
Opposition (59)
Yesh Atid (19)
Labor Party (15)
Hatnuah (6)
Meretz (6)
Hadash (4)
UAL-Ta’al (4)
Balad (3)
Kadima (2)
Crossbench (18)
Shas (11)
United Torah Judaism (7)
None of the smallest parties are in the ruling coalition.
Will that really make a difference in his governing posture? I remember well the squeaker of an election in 2000 and the comments by the political cognoscenti that George W. Bush would have to (have to, dammit!) govern from the center and curry favor with moderates and even a few liberals if he was going to get anything done and maintain political viability.
We all know how that came out.
Granted, a parliamentary government is a different animal from our good old American government (just don’t ask me to explain the difference, because I’m almost totally ignorant), but would a weakened Netanyahu necessarily have to curry favor with moderate elements in the new Israeli government? Wouldn’t his prospective coalition be made up almost entirely of the most conservative and reactionary elements in the multi-party system? As long as they stand with him, can Netanyahu not do pretty much as he pleases?
the linked article is adequate to answer some of your basic questions, although a familiarity with the parties and personalities is needed, too.
It’s not out of the question that Herzog could form a unity government with Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has enemies on the right that might ally with Herzog just to crush Bibi.
So, it’s not as simple as just assembling all the right-wing members of the Knesset into a majority, especially when your margin is going to be countable on one hand.
If the Israelis return Bibi to the PM’s chair, I don’t see how the U.S. has a choice but to scale back support for Israel. Bibi’s visit removed them from our list of allies; popular sanction of that on their part leaves us no choice.
Sort of like electing Obama after W’s presidency. I think the W presidency essentially made Barack Obama’s election possible – I didn’t think it could have happened in my lifetime.
Bibi is like W that way, when he’s finally gone there will be a reckoning. He is an idiot, who seems to destroy whatever he touches.
Bibi is just such an idiot.
This is another in a long list of fights that this guys starts that he doesn’t end up winning. Look at these ridiculous wars he fired up as PM. Or attacking that flotilla completely sinking relations with Turkey – Israel’s only open Arab ally.
How he survives with a record of total failure is one for the books. Like W in a way – if you act tough enough, people will vote for you. But in the long run, people will come to detest you.
Turks are not Arabs, and Jordanians and Egyptians are Arabs. But I get your point.
point taken: how about Israel’s only muslim ally in the Middle East…
Again that would be Jordan, and to a lesser extent, Egypt.
How about this: “The only NATO member in the region.” The implication being that the United States is treaty-bound to come to Turkey’s defense whenever they are attacked.
Israel’s most important Muslim ally is Saudi Arabia, but pssst, don’t tell anybody . . .
He may wind up winning by losing. He called the election in order to rid himself of his moderate coalition partners. It’s possible that his own Likud party will lose seats and have fewer than the moderate Zionist Union but that he will be able to put a coalition together with only right and far-right parties.
I’m not saying that this will happen – the momentum is against him – but it’s a possibility.
Seems whether Bibi has already exhausted his nine political lives. “Do you feel lucky…?”
Here is another possible result,andsomething nobody here has mentioned. Herzog at the head of a unity government.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-tie-ill-advocate-for-national-unity-government-rivlin-says/