Photo By Haim Zach / GPO
It can now be acknowledged that Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing block will form the next government of the State of Israel. The block came away with what is likely to be 65 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset in Tuesday’s elections, but this is not the whole story.
Israel’s national elections bureau reported that a total of 4,843,023 Israelis cast their ballots or 71.3% of all eligible voters, an increase of almost 4% from the 2021 elections.
This means that each seat in the Knesset is now equal to more than 40,000 Israeli voters. With a 3.25% minimum threshold needed to enter the Knesset, almost 160,000 votes were needed to gain election this year.
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Ostensibly, Benjamin Netanyahu should have an easy time forming a government. His natural allies in the ultra-orthodox parties will likely receive the same cabinet posts that they usually take and get their guarantees of continued financial support for their communities and no changes in Israel’s religious status quo, such as liberalization of laws prohibiting work on the Sabbath and so forth.
They can also be expected to undo any policies imposed in the last year and a half that they did not like.
But Benjamin Netanyahu may have a problem with the Religious Zionism Party led by right-wing firebrand Bezalel Smotrich. The party was also a joint list with the extreme right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish strength) party which is led by the controversial Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir got his start in politics the 1990s as an activists for a Meir Kahane movement.
Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his lack of respect for Ben-Gvir and reports indicate that he would like to keep Ben-Gvir at arm’s length. But during the campaign, Itamar Ben-Gvir stated that he expected to be Israel’s next minister of internal security.
Netanyahu is expected to keep the major cabinet posts – justice, foreign affairs, defense and finance – for his Likud party. So the question is – what cabinet posts will he give Religious Zionism which will have 15 seats in the new Knesset?
On the other side of Israel’s political spectrum, the Meretz party failed to pass the threshold for getting into the Knesset by about 20,000 votes, with around 140,000 votes. Just 18 months ago, in the last Knesset elections, Meretz earned 202,218 votes, or 4.59% of the total and 6 seats in the Knesset So the increase in voter turnout – even if none of the extra voters voted for Meretz – cannot explain why the party fell from 6 seats to none in one election.
As a party, Meretz was in the Knesset for 30 years with a high of 12 seats when it was first formed as an amalgam of 3 left-wing parties in 1992. Its main party was Ratz, also known as the Citizens’ Rights Movement. With Ratz, the party was in the Knesset for 50 years.
Meretz and Ratz both stood for separation of church and state in Israel and a withdrawal of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.
The question being asked by people in Israel today is what happened to its Left? Meretz is gone and the Labor Party has only 5 seats now in the Knesset. The party of David Ben-Gurion is in danger of dying out.
