Third time’s the charm? Another Israeli election fails to break the impasse

Here we go again. Israel has held its third election in less than a year, and with 97% of votes counted it looks like another deadlock. Sixty-one seats are needed for a majority but the right-wing coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has held led Israel since 2009, looks set to fall short at fifty-nine.

Netanyahu would have 66 seats if he could only convince Yisrael Beiteinu to rejoin his coalition. But the party is firmly under the control of Avigdor Lieberman who has vowed he will not work with Netanyahu or the religious parties that form a key part of Netanyahu’s coalition. This is due to the corruption allegations that surround the former and the latter’s blocking of moves to end ultra-Orthodox Jews’ exemption from national service.

Opposition to Nethanyahu is about all Lieberman has in common with the other opposition parties. Blue and White, the largest opposition party with 32 seats, while opposed to land concessions to Palestinians holds much more liberal views on Palestine and Arab-Israeli citizens than Lieberman who has called for all Arab Israelis to be made to swear a loyalty oath to the nation or be expelled.

The third largest party is the Joint List, with 15 seats, a coalition of Arab-Israeli parties who have traditionally been kept out of government by Israel’s dominant Jewish parties. Cooperation between the Joint List and Lieberman is inconceivable, and would not be much easier for Blue and White.

With another deadlock looming there are three possible options. One, some members of the opposition could defect to join Netanyahu’s coalition giving it a majority. However, all have resisted this temptation in the past two deadlocks.

Two, Netanyahu could be got rid of by his party, Likud, if it judges he has become too much of a political liability. Facing a corruption trial in two weeks Netanyahu is vocally despised by many voters and the opposition parties, undermining Likud’s ability to form coalitions and its voter share.

This would be difficult as well. Netanyahu is fighting tooth and nail for his political life and has proved to have an iron grip on Likud. He also retains the vocal support of a large section of the public who see him as a leader uniquely able to negotiate Israel’s tricky place in the world, and who has also presided over a booming economy.

Three, a fourth general election could be thrust on an exhausted Israeli public a few months down the line. While the kingmaker Lieberman has declared this won’t happen it is hard to see what else will give.

As things stand, Israel is a particularly extreme example of a key trend in politics, multi-polarisation. The disintegration of parties which have traditionally dominated politics has created political systems dominated by political groupings too small to govern on their own. However, culture wars – which cast politics in existential terms about the nations’ character and even its existence – fuels visceral hostilities which impede natural alliances. The result is usually a long period of political deadlock.

Other examples abound. Spain also had two elections in 2019 which barely shifted the needle. The current left-wing government eventually gained a majority of just two votes in parliament by allying with the radical left Podemos, and convincing Catalan and Basque separatist parties to abstain.

Belgium has still not formed a government since its elections in May 2019. The parliament is hopelessly divided not just along left vs right lines but also French vs Flemish lines, a substantial proportion of the latter advocating secession in the long run. Matters are made even more complicated by mainstream parties’ pact to quarantine the second largest party in parliament, the far-right Vlaams Belang.

Germany may soon be heading the same way. The grand coalition of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and centre-left Social Democratic Party which has so far staved this off is fraying. Angela Merkel is set to retire and her chosen successor in the CDU has been discredited potentially heralding a leader less inclined to compromise. Many in the SPD also feel they should abandon centrist moderation. However, both are also maintaining their resolution to not cooperate with extremist parties on the left and right – Die Linke and the AfD – despite their growing vote share.

This multi-polarisation is also being enabled by electoral systems based on proportional representation which makes room for smaller parties and splinter movements. Yet even the UK, despite its first-past-the-post system, flirted with a similar deadlock under Theresa May when Brexit posed its own apparently existential question.

If it were not for FTTP we would probably be facing multi-polarisation of our own. While parts of the left pushing for PR fondly imagine that under this there would be some sort of Lab-Lib Dem-SNP-Other coalition the likely result would have been both Labour and the Conservatives competing with mutually despised splinter parties and a substantial contingent of UKIP and Brexit Party MPs.

Indeed, hauntingly, just as the last election produced a reversed 52%-48% split between pro-Remain and pro-Brexit parties Israel’s election has produced 52%-48% right vs left split. But, unless Lieberman budges nothing will come of it.