ISRAEL POLITICS -

— Bennett: “I won’t rule out being part of a Netanyahu led coalition.”  Being “not-Bibi” is so last election.

— Ra’am party members:  “We are trying to re-merge with the Joint (Arab) List.”  Which is the opposite of a previous comment that Ra’am was open to creating a new coalition (without election) with Netanyahu, but (rumor) Netanyahu said no.  Which way are they headed?

— The “Future of the Negev”, a new pop-up party, aims to break up Ra'am and Joint List's authority over the Arab vote.  The new supra-tribal party is made up of public figures, economic and social entrepreneurs, heads of councils and social activists from unrecognized towns and villages in the Negev. At least 20% of party's officials are women which is out of pattern for an Arab party.  Will the party run in the election, drawing off votes from Ra’am and/or the Joint (Arab) List?  Or merge for a slot with Ra’am or the Joint List?

— The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Sunday began a debate over the so-called defendant bill which would prevent opposition leader Netanyahu from running in the elections.  The defendant bill, proposed by coalition lawmakers, states that a person facing charges for crimes punishable by more than three years in prison, cannot serve as prime minister. (Not convicted, just charged.)  In a bid to leave the door open for a future government to introduce the bill for a vote, the Labor party and others attempted to push the legislation through a preliminary reading before the Knesset dissolves. (Meaning it cannot pass before the Knesset dissolves, but they’re lining it up for next time.)

— The dissolution vote is moving forward in committee today, with many loud arguments predicted.

— Most of the media is posting daily articles (maybe you’ll notice they are opinion pieces) against Netanyahu, but this is similar to the US Biden administration railing against Trump… as they say in the States, ‘you bought it, you own it’.  For example, today both YNet and JPost have top-page articles against Netanyahu.  Ynet:  ‘change from the trauma of Netanyahu’s time in power’.  JPost:  ‘Netanyahu is standing in the way of stable government’.   I don’t think people are buying it - the “not-Bibi” crowd is the past, now everyone has a year+ of this government to look at and approve/vote for or be upset with/vote against.

——-> Political life is all a party…

LABOR, coalition, 7 seats - Labor ruled Israel for the majority of its history, but started to decline in 2001 and basically fell apart around 2011 with leader after leader breaking away into their own personal parties.  Today they are a niche party focused on socialism, equity (by taxing everyone to the max), and liberal social issues such as surrogacy rights for same gender couples.  Their decline seems to have stabilized with a core constituency of 5-7 seats, but neither have the inspirational leaders or positions to draw more voters.  This is unfortunate as Labor has the full structure of a well governed party, with primaries, governing council, city or regional committees putting up candidates in local elections - which almost none of the other parties (except for Likud) have.

YAMINA, the RIGHTISTS or RIGHTWARD, coalition, 7 seats - PM Bennett joined the National Religious party (right wing, moderately religious, West Bank supporting) and grew it to 13 seats in an election.  But to grow it to greater strength he wanted to focus on a more centrist and secular general message.  This resulted in a split, merge, split, split… resulting in Yamina together with Shaked, with a focus on reigning in the justice system (for example the council of judges holds a majority on the committee that appoints new judges - removing any public control), a strong defense, and improving the balance in religion/state issues (which tend to go extreme, in both directions).  However with the splits the core constituency moved to the Religious Zionism party, leaving Yamina with “those who think Bennett did well as PM and want to reward him”.  As a right winger he lost most of his right wing support making a government with the leftists and doesn’t seem to be picking up any leftists - leaving Yamina with a minimal base.  Will they run independent?  Attempt to merge maybe with Blue and White?  Will individual party MK’s jump ship and attempt to run with other parties?  Will PM Bennett retire from politics?  

SHAS, opposition, 9 seats - Shas represents the sephardic sector of ultra-orthodox Jews, and attempts to present themselves as a champion of the poor and a champion of all sephardic (Jewish) Israelis (who traditionally faced some ethnic discrimination).  It has been around since 1984, and hit a high of 17 seats but has been averaging 7-11 through the last 20 years.  They have their own religious education network of schools focused in poor towns and neighborhoods (sephardi areas) - and making sure that network has government support and funding is very important to the party.  The party has a senior rabbi, and final decisions on some party moves are signed off on from the rabbi.  They’ve been part of both left and right governments and only focus on their core issues of religious school funding, religion-and-state issues, and certain morality issues that do put them at odds with very liberal parties.  They have a solid constituency of 7-9 seats and seem to be growing with their sector demographics.