Two Likely Coalitions for Netanyahu

With the final results of the Israeli election to the 19th Knesset in  two possible coalition choices for Netanyahu appear likely.  The first would be a Center-Right coalition with Yesh Atid:

Likud Beitenu      31

Yesh Atid             19

Jewish Home       11

________________

Total                    61

Kadima with two seats could be added to provide a little safety margin. In this scenario, Netanyahu would agree to a draft of the ultra-Orthodox Haredim and Yesh Atid would go along with continued settlement. As Yesh Atid appears to put more emphasis on ending religious privilege and coercion and the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption than on achieving peace, this is possible. Certainly, if Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is anything like his father, Tommy Lapid, leader of the Shinui party of the 1990s-2006, he is closer to the Likud when it comes to borders than he is to Labor. Here is an article from Foreign Affairs that indicates that on territorial issues Lapid is very compatible with Netanyahu.

The second coalition, would be more Centrist:

Likud Beitenu    31

Yesh Atid          19

Labor                15

--------------------------

Total                65

Under this scenario, there would be a religious draft, an end to subsidies to the ultra-Orthodox, and settlement construction would probably be defined by some formula or committee that would allow for "natural expansion" within settlements but not much in the way of new settlements outside of Jerusalem.  There would also probably not be any renewed peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. Labor leader Shelli Yakhimovich campaigned on socio-economic issues, so as long as there was a change in budget priorities towards helping out the secular poor it would probably be happy.

This Jerusalem Post article discusses various coalition possibilities and graphically illustrates four of them. And here Ben Birnbaum of The New Republic discusses the winners and losers of the latest Israeli election in terms both of parties and individuals.

The Center-Left lacks the sufficient Knesset votes to construct a stable coalition of its own without the Likud, even if it was inclined to include the Arabs--which they have not been willing to do in the past.

A return to 1965? Is this the year of the blocs in Israel?

It was announced this weekend that the two main parties of the Israeli Right, the Likud and Israel Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) have formed a joint list to run in the Israeli election on January 22, 2013. The new list is named Likud Beitenu (Likud is Our Home). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will head the list and Israel Beitenu leader Avigdor Lieberman will be the number two man on the list and will have his pick of ministries after the coalition is formed: foreign minister, defense minister, or finance minister. Last night the Likud by a large majority approved the merger, without Netanyahu having revealed the number of seats that each party would receive on the joint list. To see Netanyahu's acceptance speech (in Hebrew) go here.

The immediate reaction on the Center-Left was one of shock. Everyone in Israel was pretty much resigned to Netanyahu continuing as prime minister after the election, but the thought that the merger might become permanent and leave Lieberman as Netanyahu's successor as the new party leader has people in shock. Many in Israel claim that Lieberman's role model is not any of the figures on the secular Right such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Menahem Begin, or Yitzhak Shamir but rather Vladimir Putin, the semi-democratic and semi-authoritarian leader of Russia. Leiberman immigrated to Israel from Moldova--Soviet Romania--in 1978 at age 20. After serving in the army, he worked as a bouncer and entered politics as an aide to Netanyahu during the latter's first term as prime minister. He then left the Likud to found his own party of Russian immigrants to compete with Natan Sharansky's Israel B'Aliya (Israel on the Rise/Israel in Immigration) party. Lieberman has taken his party through a series of mergers and splits on the Right as he searched for a winning formula. This formula was eventually to attack Israel's Arab minority as disloyal and demand a loyalty oath.

Israel's leading columnist declares that a two-state solution impossible

Last month, Nahum Barnea, Israel's leading columnist for the most-circulated newspaper Yediot Aharanot, announced that the settlers had won by making the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank irreversible. He is only the latest in a series of Palestinian and Israeli figures who have recently come to this conclusion. First, Sari Nusseibeh, who was one of the top organizers of the first Intifada in the late 1980s and a philosophy professor, announced this conclusion in a 2011 book entitled What is a Palestinian State Worth? Then taking his cue from this, Ha'Aretz blogger Carlos Stenger, a psychoanalyst by profession, concurred in Nusseibeh's judgement.  This is to be expected from a liberal like Strenger, but Barnea has a reputation as a centrist and a solid journalist who has received a number of journalism awards. Just google him.

Their argument is that the settlement grid has advanced so much and that Israel and the settlements are so intertwined that separation will be impossible. Israeli-American academic Ami Pehazur has a book out this month, The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, in which he argues that the Radical Right is now mainstream and a two-state settlement is no longer possible. I agree with their conclusion but come at it from a different angle. The Al-Aksa Intifada in October 2000 was the tipping point in making the two main Center-Left parties of the Oslo era of the 1990s unviable as a governing coalition. Since 1992 these two parties have lost over three-fourths of their Knesset representation. This made champions of the two-state solution pin their hopes on the Kadima Party, created in November 2005 by Ariel Sharon. The party led a Center-Left coalition from 2006 to 2009, which failed to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and was involved in two wars. The party is now in the process of contracting significantly. The Likud has finally replaced Mapai/Labor as the dominant party.