There’s an election in Israel today
You can follow it here.
UPDATE 11:30 PM: Netanyahu projected to be the winner.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
You can follow it here.
UPDATE 11:30 PM: Netanyahu projected to be the winner.
Last I saw, Bibi was about to announce victory.
Little is clear at this hour, or settled may be better way of putting it. Looks right now as though Blue and White has out polled Likud by a few seats, but Likud has the better coalitional opportunity at gathering 61 seats — yet even that isn’t a done deal.
Looks too as though New Right won’t qualify, so Caroline Glick’s campaign will fall short.
I know next to nothing about Israeli politics except it’s complicated. Anyone willing to drop a few bread crumbs in the maze is welcome.
Not the minute-to-minute stuff, but the bigger picture.
Whatever happens Abbas – unelected for over a decade – will proclaim that the Israelis chose an anti-Peace candidate.
#IsraeliElections2019: https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/IsraelElections2019?src=hashtag_click
Earlier exit polling wasn’t accurate (ha! surprise!) so now the Israeli papers and tv networks are projecting Likud 40 seats, B&W 35. Netanyahu has his 61+ coalition in the bag (maybe 63) and claims victory. 5th term as PM, this.
Evidently 25% of the ballots have been tabulated as of now. Not clear if the right bloc and the religious bloc will sum to a value close enough to 60 that the parties at the libration point will side with them. Possible alternative would be a grand coalition. The Israel Labor Party has been definitively replaced as the alternative to Likud by an affiliation of evanescent social-liberal parties. (Sad). They will almost certainly not be able to put a center / left ministry together w/o the Arab parties. Don’t believe that’s ever been done before. IIRC, the only Arabs who’ve ever served in the cabinet have been from the Druze confession.
Doesn’t matter if any given political party endorses a ‘two-state’ solution. The bulk of the Arab public will accept that only if a 7-digit population of Arabs has a license to settle in Israel at their discretion.
Yeah. The “two state” solution died when Arafat walked away in 2000. You can probably still find Dennis Ross’s column about it. The Palestinians would be rich now if they had taken the deal. Anybody done a Bell Curve on Arabs ?
Mike K
Yeah. The “two state” solution died when Arafat walked away in 2000. You can probably still find Dennis Ross’s column about it. The Palestinians would be rich now if they had taken the deal…
Which reminds me of Abba Eban’s quip that “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
I wonder what “Beto” O’Rourke is thinking right now. When it comes to Beto, I am right now thinking Schadenfreude, which will definitely not Beto’s response to Netanyahu’s victory. 🙂
As of now, 94% of the ballots are counted. The Gantz-Lapid combine have taken 35 seats, Labor and Meretz 10 seats, the Arab parties 10 seats. Likud has 35 seats, the religious parties 16 seats, the rest of the right bloc 10 seats. The non-aligned social-liberal outfit has 4 seats.
What’s interesting about this is that Israel’s political spectrum now has features in common with those of Poland and some other Eastern European countries. In 1974, we’d have defined the left as derived from the trade unions and commonly animated by Marxist strands of thought. This was later supplemented with a non-doctrinaire strain devoted to nature walks and ethnic minorities. The reds and the greens in tandem don’t poll 10% in Poland and they didn’t poll 10% in Israel today.
The most glaring paradox of Israeli politics is that few in non-Arab sector openly declare themselves Left – about 7%, but the real political clout of the leftist actors is much stronger than that. This is because the upper echelon of Israeli bureaucracy (the permanent Deep State) and judiciary are definitely Leftists, and most of academy and media are leftist too. This also includes senior positions in Army, which by tradition are filled by the heirs of Kibbutzim movement and Ben-Gurion appointees. There is no clear separation of powers in Israel and no written Constitution, which allows leftist judges to block decisions of the cabinet ministers or the laws issued by Knesset.
There is no clear separation of powers in Israel and no written Constitution, which allows leftist judges to block decisions of the cabinet ministers or the laws issued by Knesset.
The judiciary can be disciplined by the Knesset when they can muster a majority. Never happens o’er here at any level. ‘Written constitutions’ and ‘separation of powers’ are over-rated.
Last night before I went to bed, I saw that Likud was in the lead and it seemed Netanyahu had a lock on remaining PM. I’m glad it worked out that way.
Also, I wanted to post a link for Neo, in case she hasn’t seen it, since it’s related to dance, Audrey Hepburn and World War II:
https://nypost.com/2019/04/09/hollywood-legend-audrey-hepburn-was-a-wwii-resistance-spy/
Rick, a.k.a. ConceptJunkie
Any chance we could get someone to make a “what if Hedy Lamarr met Audrey Hepburn” flick?
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/249620/actress-hedy-lamarr-bombshell