JERUSALEM (AP) – Israelis began voting on Tuesday on the country’s fourth parliamentary election in two years, a busy referendum on the divisive government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Opinion polls predict a narrow race between those who support Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and those who want “anyone other than Bibi,” as he is known.
“This is the moment of truth for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu’s rival Yair Lapid said as he voted in Tel Aviv.
One truth: Israelis are tired of defeats. Voting, like the leading vaccination campaign in Israel around the world, garnered good reviews for the organization, if only because everyone involved has had a lot of practice, with even greater potential if the results don’t work out. a government majority. This answer may not be clear for weeks.
“It would be better if we didn’t have to vote, you know, four times in two years,” Jerusalem resident Bruse Rosen said after voting. “He’s a little tired.”
Candidates made their final push in recent days with a series of television interviews and public appearances at malls and outdoor markets. Campaigns increasingly reached the personal space of people with a wide range of voting and voting texts that made mobile phones stay on at all times.
At issue, more than ideology, is Netanyahu. He has been portrayed as a uniquely qualified world statesman to lead the country through his numerous security and diplomatic challenges. He has made the success of the coronavirus vaccination campaign in Israel the center of his candidacy for re-election and noted last year’s diplomatic agreements with four Arab states.
The reality is more nuanced. About 80% of the country’s 9.3 million people are vaccinated and Israel reopens, but more than 6,000 have died from COVID-19. Israel received international criticism for failing to quickly send large quantities of vaccines to the Palestinians to combat the rising virus in the West Bank and Gaza.
And one of the four Arab nations, the UAE, recently poured cold water on the relationship with Israel because its leaders did not want Netanyahu to lure them to the election. The new administration of President Joe Biden has also given Netanyahu a warm welcome.
Opponents accuse Netanyahu of baffling the management of the coronavirus pandemic for most of last year. They say he did not apply the blocking restrictions to his ultra-Orthodox political allies, which allowed the virus to spread, and pointed to the still dire state of the economy and its double-digit unemployment rate. They also say Netanyahu is unfit to rule at a time when he is being prosecuted on multiple corruption charges, a case he dismisses as a witch hunt.
Up to 15% of the electorate is expected to vote outside their home districts, a larger-than-usual absentee ballot to accommodate those with coronavirus or quarantined. The government dispatches special polling stations, including ballot boxes into patients ’beds, to provide them with ways to vote safely.
These votes are counted separately in Jerusalem, i.e. the final results may not be known for days. Given the tough run, the large number of undecided voters and several small parties struggling to surpass the 3.25% threshold to enter parliament, it could be difficult to predict the outcome before the final count is over.
Israelis vote by party, not by individual candidates. No list of party candidates has been able to form a governing majority in Israel’s 72-year history.
Netanyahu’s Likud party and those led by its rivals will look for smaller allied parties as possible coalition partners. The party that can form a majority coalition comes to form the next government, a process that is expected to take weeks.
Tuesday’s election was triggered by the disintegration of an emergency government formed last May between Netanyahu and his main rival to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The alliance was hit by fights and elections were sparked by the government’s failure in December to agree on a budget.
Netanyahu hopes to form a government with his traditional hard-line religious and nationalist allies. These include a couple of ultra-Orthodox parties and a small religious party that includes openly racist and homophobic candidates.
Netanyahu’s rivals have accused him of causing the last two years of paralysis in hopes of forming a more favorable government that would grant him immunity or protect him from trials.
Among his challenges is Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, whose Yesh Atid party has become the main centrist alternative to Netanyahu.
Lapid reflected the raw rhetoric of race on Tuesday when he offered himself as an alternative to a “government of darkness and racism.”
Netanyahu also faces challenges from some allies who have formed their own parties after strong ruptures with the prime minister.
They include former protégé Gideon Saar, who split from Likud to form “New Hope.” He says the party is a nationalist alternative with no charges of corruption and what he says is a cult of personality that keeps Likud in power.
Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, another former Netanyahu aide, could emerge as king. Bennett, a hardline nationalist politician who was Netanyahu’s education and defense minister, has not ruled out joining a coalition with the opposing prime minister, which will allow him to prosecute both sides in future coalition talks.
Personality politics has overtaken the race so that almost no Palestinians have been mentioned after years of frozen peace negotiations.
Analysts expect voter fatigue to contribute to declining turnout, which had been 71% in the last election a year ago.
Netanyahu’s religious and nationalist allies tend to be highly motivated voters. Instead, Arab voters, disappointed with the disintegration of the umbrella from the “joint list,” are expected to stay home more numerous this time. Voters in the more liberal and secular areas around Tel Aviv also tend to have lower turnout rates.
Netanyahu could benefit if these trends materialize. But unlike last year’s election, the prime minister has no key allies: former President Donald Trump, whose support he took advantage of in previous elections with massive billboards on highways and at high altitudes showing them together .
Instead, Netanyahu has barely mentioned Biden. The new US president called the prime minister only after contacting leaders from several other countries and Israeli supporters began to complain that the delay seemed scrupulous. The two men insist that their alliance remains close.
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