Israelis are voting on Tuesday for the fifth time in four years. Ousted from power in the previous election, the former Prime Minister could return.
SourceAFP
© MOSTAFA ALKHAROUF / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP
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BWill Enyamin Netanyahu return to power? Will the centrist Yaïr Lapid keep his young title of Prime Minister? The Israelis vote Tuesday for the fifth legislative in less than four years and whose outcome holds the country in suspense. Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. across the country and in the disputed city of Jerusalem and are due to close at 10 p.m. Then will fall exit polls, followed by the first official results which could keep the Jewish state in suspense until a final count on Thursday, as this election seems so uncertain.
For this proportional ballot, the 6.8 million registered voters have the choice between some forty lists which are mainly divided into two camps: that favorable to a return to power of the right-wing Benyamin Netanyahu, tried for corruption in a series of business, and the one wanting to maintain in business a young heterogeneous coalition led by the centrist Yair Lapid.
The “coalition of change”
At 73, Benyamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving head of government in Israel’s history, is trying to rally a majority of 61 deputies, out of the 120 in Parliament, with his allies from the ultra-Orthodox parties and the far right, led by Itamar Ben Gvir, who is on the rise. “Those who vote for us will have Netanyahu as prime minister and a real right-wing government,” said Itamar Ben Gvir, who voted in a settlement near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
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Faced with this “right-wing bloc”, Yaïr Lapid, 58, Prime Minister since July, leader of the Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party and leader of a coalition unique in the history of Israel because it brings together parties from the left, from the centre, from the right and an Arab party, is trying to convince that the course given in recent months must be maintained. “Go vote today for the future of our children, for the future of our country. Vote well! said Tuesday Yesh Lapid who voted in his stronghold of Tel Aviv after visiting the grave of his father, former minister and journalist Tommy Lapid. “My father told me all his life: Remember that the greatest miracle that has happened to us is that the Jews have their own country. I promised him this morning that we will continue to work hard to secure the future of this miracle,” added Yesh Lapid.
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The “coalition of change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yaïr Lapid ousted Benyamin Netanyahu from power in June 2021 before losing his majority in the chamber a year later, rushing Tuesday’s poll, the fifth since spring 2019 in a divided country politically which is struggling to give birth to coalitions or to maintain them. “It’s terrible that the parties can’t form a coalition, a government that works for 4 years (…) I hope these elections will be the last for the next four years,” Shai told AFP. Barkan, a 66-year-old industrial designer, who fears the victory of an “extremist, radical” right. Proof of the ambient suspense, the latest polls credited Netanyahu’s “right bloc” with 60 seats, just one from the majority threshold, against 56 for Yair Lapid and his allies.
The 3.25% threshold
Mr. Lapid’s coalition lost its majority in Parliament with the departure of right-wing elected officials, prompting the government to call new elections. If the campaign started slowly, it has accelerated in recent days with the parties trying everything to convince the last undecided and especially their base to go to the polls, especially in Arab cities.
In 2020, Arab Israeli parties reaped a record 15 seats after a vigorous campaign under one banner. But this time, they are running in dispersed order under three lists: Raam (moderate Islamist), Hadash-Taal (secular) and Balad (nationalist). In the Israeli proportional system, an electoral list must obtain at least 3.25% of the votes to enter Parliament with a minimum of four seats. Below this threshold, the parties have no MPs. Divided, the Arab parties are therefore more at risk of not reaching this threshold and thus favoring the victory of the Netanyahu camp and its allies.
West Bank closed
This election comes in a climate of tension in the occupied West Bank with two attacks carried out in recent days by Palestinians, one of which killed an Israeli civilian on Saturday evening in Hebron (South), a city hotbed of tensions around which and in which Israeli settlers live. In the wake of a series of anti-Israeli attacks in the spring, the army carried out more than 2,000 raids in the West Bank, a territory occupied since 1967, notably in Jenin or Nablus (North). These operations, often interspersed with clashes, left more than 120 dead on the Palestinian side, the heaviest toll in seven years. The Israeli army on Tuesday closed access points to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, except for “humanitarian” emergencies.