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How will this election differ from all the others?

Well, now that it’s finally upon us… maybe it won’t.

March 23 will mark Israel’s fourth attempt at breaking a 24-month
political stalemate. The final polls predict more of the same -- but as
always, small shifts could make a major difference.

Across almost a dozen parties, Israelis remain tightly divided across
religious, ethnic and economic divides. Over the past two years, few
voters seem to have budged, except for an anti-Netanyahu demographic
which appears to lock itself in behind whomever polls indicate is most
likely to end the Prime Minister’s 12-year premiership.

At the moment, that’s left-of-center Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party.
Lapid himself is continuing to be coy about his ambitions, repeatedly
saying his top priority isn’t to become Prime Minister but to oust
Netanyahu (a disposition which may match the motivations of many of his
voters).

On current trends, however, it’s difficult to see how exactly a large
enough anti-Netanyahu block could form. For Lapid to become Prime
Minister -- at least as part of a rotation agreement with Bennett or
Saar -- it would demand both a favorable election result and either
defections from Netanyahu’s camp or extremely skilled negotiators who
can bring together the left, the right and the majority-Arab parties
into a broad, nearly unprecedented coalition. It seems that two parties
are not committed to either camp and they might be the wild card --
Bennett’s Yemina and Abbas' Raam.

[ [link removed] ]To help process the initial results and analyze what the intense
coalition formation process is going to look like, please join J Street
for a post-election webinar with veteran Israeli political journalist
Neri Zilber on Wednesday, March 24 at 3pm ET. Click here to register >>
It’s the vaccination program, stupid
[2]Netanyahu campaign poster touting vaccine drive success
In the final polls published before Tuesday’s vote, Prime Minister
Netanyahu appeared to enjoy a late-race boost. If the polls are to be
believed, Likud is now on track for roughly 30 seats. Yair Lapid, his
top challenger, is polling at roughly 19 seats with his Yesh Atid
party.

After enduring a series of tight lockdowns over the past 12 months,
pundits are putting the surge in support down to the Netanyahu
government’s world-class vaccination rollout. As of now, roughly 60% of
Israeli adults have received at least one dose of the vaccination --
one of the fastest public vaccination campaigns in the world.

The drop in positive cases and eased restrictions comes at a perfect
moment for Netanyahu, who has made the COVID-19 response a centerpiece
of his campaign. His rivals have been trying much the same thing, but
with their focus on the 6,000 person death toll and the series of
lockdowns Israelis have endured over the past year.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are faced with a desperate situation as
COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the occupied territories at an
alarming rate, with the distribution of vaccines still highly limited.
While international pressure has mounted on Israel to act on its
responsibility as the occupying power to ensure Palestinians can be
vaccinated, the issue of vaccines for Palestinians is barely featured
in the campaign – as is mostly the case with the broader
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole.
Massive anti-Netanyahu protests
[3]Anti-Netanyahu protest
Although Prime Minister Netanyahu has much to be happy about when he
looks at the latest polling, the same can’t be said when he looks out
the window.

Loud, regular anti-Netanyahu protests sparked early on in the pandemic
have been a near-constant feature in Jerusalem’s Paris Square, just
outside the Prime Minister’s residence. While crowds had dwindled in
recent months, this past weekend saw a significant rise in attendance.
Over 20,000 protestors from across the political spectrum joined on
Saturday, unified by their call for the Prime Minister to resign.

The question of whether the energy of those protests will translate
into votes and political power -- a common critique of the loosely
organized movement -- remains to be seen. One challenge for the
anti-Netanyahu parties will be, in the event of a split Knesset, to
prevent right-wing members of their own lists from defecting to support
the prime minister during the coalition formation period. Following the
last election, Benny Gantz was hamstrung by defections from former
Likud MKs who had run on his Blue and White list.
Disunity is death
It’s an axiom in politics that disunity is death. That may very well be
the case for any number of minor parties which have chosen to run
separately, rather than on unified ideological tickets. Several are now
flirting with electoral oblivion (and wasted votes) if they fall below
the 3.25% Knesset entry threshold.

Currently, those parties include the progressive Meretz party, the Arab
Raam party, the centrist Blue and White party and the far-right Jewish
Home party. The failure of any one of those parties could tip the
overall balance of power in a tight seat-count.
Pandemic precautions
[4]Drive through voting and vaccine station in Israel
The March 2021 elections may go down as the most expensive and
logistically challenging in Israel’s history. Polling stations will be
popping up almost everywhere, from Ben Gurion Airport to nursing homes.

Mobile polling stations in buses will be deployed to keep crowding down
and many regular polling stations have been duplicated to halve
attendance at any particular location. Drones will hover overhead to
monitor traffic and detect overcrowding at particular locations.

With so many precautionary measures, election officials are warning
that it could take much longer to count ballots than usual. Some
observers fear Netanyahu will exploit such delays similarly to
President Trump, weaponizing the uncertainty to cast doubts over the
legitimacy of the whole process if it results in an unfavorable outcome
for him.

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J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who
want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the
Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community,
we advocate policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as
well as Jewish and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



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