Last summer, a broad coalition succeeded in their mutual desire to oust Likud leader Netanyahu from office. He is currently on trial on corruption charges. The “government of change”, made up of right, left and centrist parties and led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, made history because it included an independent Arab party for the first time. The ambitious experiment, however, was hampered from the start by internal strife. After losing its slim majority, the Lapid/Bennett government collapsed shortly after celebrating its first birthday, triggering Israel’s fifth election in less than four years. When exit polls predicted a landslide victory for the right-wing camp on Tuesday night, with the extremist Religious Zionists more than doubling their number of seats in the Knesset, Israel’s small left wing tried to remain optimistic. But as Netanyahu’s bloc widened its lead, those hopes faded and the mood turned to despair. “The third largest party in the Knesset is racist, Kahanist, [referring to a banned rightwing terrorist group], violent party that doesn’t want me or my children here,” Issawi Frej, the country’s second-ranking Muslim cabinet minister, tweeted. “It’s no longer a slippery slope. This is the abyss itself.” Members of the outgoing coalition have already begun trading blame for their poor showing this week. Pre-election polls consistently suggested it would again be a close call, with the two blocs holding around 60 seats. However, despite winning 49.95% of the vote overall, the anti-Netanyahu camp will hold just 50 seats in the 120-seat parliament. Refusals by smaller parties to merge, despite polls showing they were in danger of missing the electoral threshold, and a last-minute split in the Arab Joint List are just two of the reasons why votes for the ruling camp did not translate into seats. Coalition building is essential to governing Israel’s fragmented political spectrum: a more united strategy, or even tiny changes in voter turnout, could have yielded an entirely different result. Tamar Hermann, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), said the government, led first by the right-wing Bennett and then by the centrist Lapid, had also alienated voters fed up with political instability during the chaotic 18 months old. at the office. “It was clear that public opinion was not with the government. Sixty percent of this country identifies as right-wing, and that reaches 70% among young people,” he said, citing research by the IDI. “They [the government] showed hubris in this election. But the writing was on the wall.” Many voters who went to the polls on Tuesday expressed reluctance to vote for the ruling coalition, but said they would prefer that familiar entity to Netanyahu’s new alliance with the far right. “I cast my vote, although it’s for a party I’m not sure about. Bennett and Lapid did nothing about the rising cost of living. They seem out of touch with normal people and what they care about,” said Ori, a 44-year-old health worker who did not give his last name. “I guess when the time comes, I’d prefer their block over the other.” Israel’s already small left wing has suffered the most from Netanyahu’s victory. Meretz, a small social democratic party that was part of the last government, appears to have just missed the electoral threshold of 3.25%, meaning its voice will be completely out of the next Knesset. Balad, which advocates for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, also lost its only seat. Hadash-Ta’al, the other pro-Arab party, will have just four seats, down from six, and the once-powerful Israeli Labor party will lose three seats, also putting it on four. In Jerusalem’s Beit Safafa neighborhood, a group of friends, who all voted for different Arab parties, said the split of the Arab list into three factions ahead of the highly contested election did not inspire confidence in decision-making ability. The political mainstream counted on the votes of Arab Israelis, who make up 20% of the population, as the main obstacle against Netanyahu’s victory, but many of their ballots were lost because of the split. “The Arabs are just like Bibi,” said Mouawiye Salman, using Netanyahu’s well-known nickname. “They promise to do a lot and then change everything they said.” A teenager outside a polling station holding a flag with the logo of the Islamic United Arab List said he did not actually support the party and would turn to campaigning for Hadash-Ta’al later in the day. “That way I’ll get paid twice,” he said, to laughter from the group. The failure of the “government of change” to be re-elected is not entirely her own. Netanyahu, a consummate politician, mounted a sophisticated campaign to increase the participation of disillusioned Likud supporters. The far-right Religious Zionists attracted a new, young, demographic and were able to garner votes that would previously have gone to the Yamina alliance, which fell apart before this election. Several right-wing voters the Guardian spoke to in recent weeks said their main reason for voting for Likud, the Religious Zionists and two ultra-Orthodox parties, was to finally end the political crisis of the past four years by bringing back Netanyahu. Shas, a Haredi religious party, fared particularly well, picking up two additional seats. Miri, 29, from the ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, said the lack of Haredi parties in the last government “made it very difficult for us last year.” “I don’t like some of these right-wing ideas … that create more friction with the Arabs. We are simply looking for politicians who respect tradition. Likud does that, but if they didn’t we would be in a coalition with someone else. The last government made us realize how important it was for everyone to get out and vote,” he said.
