Israelis make it hard for Netanyahu

Israeli voters have failed to deliver a clear mandate yet again. No party or alliance has won enough seats to form the government. Political instability will therefore persist. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliance of right-wing and religious parties has secured the largest number of seats, but its tally of 30 is still only half the number required for simple majority, 61. Netanyahu will therefore need to get the support of other parties to form a government. Tuesday’s election was the fourth time in two years that Israelis voted in general elections without a clear winner.

The result underscores how deeply divided Israeli politics and society are. The Knesset’s 120 seats are divided between 13 parties. The coming weeks will once again see Netanyahu and other leaders engage in discussions and much wheeling and dealing to form a government. The possibility of Israelis having to vote again, should a government not emerge out of the coalition talks, cannot be ruled out.

The election has thrown up an unlikely kingmaker: an Israeli Arab party, the United Arab List, known by its Hebrew acronym, Ra’am. The coming weeks will see Netanyahu and Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, wooing Mansour Abbas, Ra’am’s leader. An Arab party has never been a part of a government in Israel, although independent Arab politicians did provide outside support to the Yitzhak Rabin government in the late 1990s.

It remains to be seen whether Ra’am will create history now by extending support to the government. Neither the ruling alliance nor the opposition have adopted an inclusive approach toward Israeli Arabs in the past. So, there is little reason for Abbas to support either. Still, this is an opportunity for a marginalised people – although Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s population -- to set and influence the agenda of the government. Abbas, with four seats in hand, will be looking to secure guarantees from whichever coalition Ra’am supports on the treatment of Israeli Arabs as well as the Palestinian question.

Netanyahu’s return to power will not be easy. Among his coalition partners are hardliners who will not agree to sit on the same side as Ra’am parliamentarians. Some of these, such as the Religious Zionist Party, are extremely racist and Islamophobic. The opposition coalition, meanwhile, is a disparate group, united by the constituents’ determination to remove Netanyahu from power. While a Netanyahu-led coalition with Ra’am in it and minus Religious Zionists is one possibility, the opposition coalition could also seek Ra’am’s support to keep Netanyahu out of power.