Voting for security, against religious fringe
It was better for the right in 2013: Naftali Bennett, head of the religious zionist HaBayit HaYehudi Party, The Jewish Home Party, at a post election rally January 22, 2013. HaBayit HaYehudi won 12 mandates in the elections. Naftali Bennett told the crowd that the Jewish Spring had arrived in Israel with the success in the elections of his party.* Photo by Debbie Hill / UPI
There was no swing to the right in Israel
Letters, The Guardian
March 20, 2015
Behind the hype, the figures show that far from moving to the right in the recent election, Israeli voters shifted in the opposite direction (Editorial, 19 March). The right-religious bloc lost four seats overall to the left-Arab list combination, continuing a trend in the 2013 election. The centre parties hold the balance of power. Netanyahu’s final-day alarmist appeals did not sway voters outside his bloc. Likud’s 10-seat gain was entirely at the expense of its religious allies and parties further to its right. What his pronouncements did do is clarify that he has no interest in concluding a fair deal with the Palestinians that would accommodate the minimum aspirations of both peoples. This has been obvious to many people for many years, while sham negotiations blocked out alternative approaches. The way is now clear for other, more promising, initiatives.
One such proposal is for the international community promptly to require the principal parties to submit their visions of the endgame, based on the international consensus of two states, and then produce its own definitive vision, offering strong incentives and robust penalties to each party for achieving or failing to achieve specified targets en route to a time-limited destination.
Dr Tony Klug
London
• You lament the implications for Israel’s political landscape and foreign policy. Yet this analysis overstates the scale of what occurred. Likud in fact achieved just 23% of the vote. Add to this the votes of the more extreme, anti-peace parties of the right (Jewish Home, Yisrael Beitenu, United Torah Judaism and Yachad), and you get about 43% of Israeli voters. Political parties supporting a two-state settlement and negotiations with the Palestinians actually did quite well. Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s Zionist Union together with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Meretz, Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu and Shas, together polled about 45% of the vote.
These results suggest that Israeli society is divided and fearful about the future, and in such circumstances political parties promising security and safety first have an obvious appeal. But to suggest that Israelis have rejected the hope of peace is overstating the case. Dark mutterings about Israel’s future as a democratic state are also misplaced, not least since what happened on Tuesday was a free, fair and open election – in which Arab parties performed strongly – of an integrity unknown anywhere else in the Middle East.
Simon Kovar
Barnet, Hertfordshire
Link
*For the strategy of seducing religious right-wingers into Likud, and thus blocking Jewish Home’s ambitions, see The Telegraph’s article on why Aron Shaviv, the prime minister’s chief strategist and a veteran of election campaigns everywhere from Thailand to Kenya, decided on a high risk approach.