Defying pre-poll predictions and opinions of political pundits, the incumbent prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, sprung a surprise in the recent Israeli elections in March, 2015. He led his right-wing Likud Party to "victory", which basically means that his party got the maximum number of seats. The unexpected result gave Netanyahu's Likud party 30 seats in the 120 seat Parliament, the Knesset. Exit polls had consistently predicted a tie between the two contesting coalition blocs. The elections to the 20th Knesset were held earlier than scheduled because of fissures within the Netanyahu-led coalition government, mainly over the budget and the proposal for a 'Jewish state'. The final voter turnout was around 72 per cent, which was higher than the turnout in the previous election but lower than the turnout of 78 per cent in the 1999 election. With a record number of 29 women elected to the Knesset, this was the best ever election for women candidates. Netanyahu will have to cobble together a coalition if he hopes to become prime minister of Israel for the fourth time and equal the record of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
The president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, has formally asked Netanyahu to form Israel's 34th government since the birth of Israel as a result of the United Nations-approved partition plan of the Mandate of Palestine in 1948. There is a 28-day time frame set by Israeli law and Netanyahu has till April 22 to form the government. Thereafter, the president can sanction another 14 days if Netanyahu asks for it, although the president has the right to refuse, an unlikely possibility, given the potential threat of political instability. During this period there will be intense horse trading, with various allies demanding portfolios of their choice. Netanyahu's task is unenviable in the fractious and deeply ideological relations, even among the right wing allied parties.
President Rivlin has said the next government and the Knesset will have to take on the crucial tasks of healing relations with the United States of America, returning stability to the political system, and mending rifts inside Israeli society, a task that seemingly is never ending. Rivlin said:
"We have endured a difficult election period.... From every direction, things were said which ought not to have been said. Not in a Jewish state, and not in a democratic state. Fanning the flames serves no one. The fire does not only heat, it threatens to engulf in flames. Today is the time to begin to heal these wounds."
While playing the elder statesman, the president was clearly rapping Netanyahu on his knuckles for the visceral electoral campaign that he and his party conducted, the likes of which Israel had not seen before. In his post-election remarks, Netanyahu has spoken of seeking peace with the Palestinians and promised to put election rhetoric behind. He emphasized good relations with the US but also asserted that he would work to prevent a bad nuclear deal with Iran. On the economic front, Netanyahu promised a budget that will lower prices and put controls on monopolies that undermine competition.
Elections for the Israeli Knesset are conducted on the basis of a list system which is similar to proportional representation. A registered party prepares a list of candidates and seats are allotted to it on the basis of the percentage of votes polled in its favour. Candidates on the list of a party are elected members of the Knesset. Israel has traditionally had coalition governments because the voters' mandate has generally been fractured. The proportional representation system has also been held responsible for the recurrence of fractured mandates in Israeli elections.
The main challenge to the Likud was mounted by the centre-Left Zionist Union party led by Isaac Herzog which was formed as a coalition between the Labour Party and Hatnuah. They came in second with 24 seats. The Labour Party has led the country for three decades after its founding in 1948. It has not been able to win elections since 1999 when its leader, Ehud Barak, a former army chief, became the first Israeli prime minister to offer the Palestinians an independent state, albeit with some conditions, on most of the occupied territories. Barak failed in this effort and a violent Palestinian uprising, the intifada, ensued, sending the Labour Party into political wilderness. The party did not recover from this failure and has been rudderless since then. Third was the Joint Arab Coalition, an electoral alliance of four Arab majority parties which clocked up 14 seats. Yesh Atid, the party led by the former finance minister, Yair Lapid, came in fourth with 11 seats and Kulanu, a right-wing party led by a former Likud party member, Moshe Kahlon, came fifth with 10 seats. A number of small right-wing parties won seats below 10. Among them are the Jewish Home Party with eight seats, the religious party Shaas, and the United Torah Party, both took seven seats, the Ultra Nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu got six seats and the left-wing Meretz Party got four seats.
While Rivlin has called for a government of national unity, this is an unlikely prospect. Netanyahu can garner 57 seats among the right-wing and religious parties that are allied to Likud. To put together a majority, he will have to woo the Kulanu leader, Moshe Kahlon, who broke away from Likud two years ago over differences with Netanyahu. Ideologically, Kulanu has displayed centrist tendencies and has hobnobbed with the centre-Left and moderate Zionist Union party. Kulanu is the swing factor and holds the balance of power between the two traditional Right and Left wing blocs in Israel's politics. It is expected that Kulanu may gravitate towards the Likud and give Netanyahu the majority he needs to form the next government.
Netanyahu's re-election and his alliance with the ultra-nationalist parties will ensure that prospects for peace and a permanent settlement with the Palestinians is unlikely to be reached during his tenure. Israel has, so far got a breather in the region with most Arab countries grappling with jihadi extremism, state failure and the Islamic State. In this scenario the Palestinian issue has receded somewhat and no longer gets the highest priority among Arab states. This is in spite of Netanyahu's policy on creating new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and transplanting the Jewish population into such settlements, pushing up this population to over 600,000, including those living in East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel.
During Netanyahu's tenure, Israel's traditionally close relations with the US have taken a beating over the issue of the nuclear deal with Iran that has been negotiated with the P5+ Germany. The slide began in 2009 with the spat over the Barack Obama administration's démarche to Israel that it should stop construction of illegal Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Israel-US bilateral relations became a partisan issue in domestic American politics, reaching the bizarre nadir when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, invited Netanyahu to address the US Congress against the wishes of the Obama administration. This event was a remarkable breach of protocol apart from being unprecedented in international diplomacy. Netanyahu told a joint session of Congress that Obama's nuclear deal with Iran was stupid and dangerous and must be rejected. The Congress, minus many Democrats who boycotted Netanyahu's speech, gave him several standing ovations making the event a visceral partisan affair in American political history. Adding insult to injury, Netanyahu also proclaimed during his election campaign that there will be no Palestinian State while he was in power. His electoral victory has made many believe that his tactics of scaring Israeli voters and opposing the US-led Iran nuclear deal have worked in his favour, in so far as the Israeli electoral verdict is concerned.
The Obama administration was left with little choice but to retaliate in various ways, both subtle and direct. The White House has cast serious doubts on the trustworthiness of Israel as an ally and put limits on intelligence sharing with Israel on the Iran nuclear negotiations. It has also leaked stories of Israeli snooping on the US delegation at the nuclear talks. The White House chief of staff countered Netanyahu by asserting that a separate Palestinian state is the best guarantee for Israel's long-term security with the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with mutual adjustments of territorial swaps. An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians are Israeli citizens and live in cities, towns and villages across the country.
The US has long supported a two-state solution, and Netanyahu's remarks have led to statements that the US will have to re-evaluate its position on this issue. The Obama administration clearly intends to push Netanyahu on the two-state solution and will not be deterred from going ahead with the Iran nuclear deal. In an apparent snub to Netanyahu, Obama waited more than two days before making the customary congratulatory call to Netanyahu and conveyed that the White House would re-assess its options in the light of Netanyahu's backtracking on the two-state issue.
The US should hardly be surprised by Netanyahu's posturing. He had opposed the Oslo Accords in 1994 and had even called then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, a "traitor". Netanyahu had also opposed the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza. Netanyahu may have handed the Iranians some extra leverage and in the process undermined his goal of scuttling the Iranian nuclear deal. The incentive for concluding the deal will now be a factor in American calculations which has to now weigh the Iranian assessment of the open letter sent by 47 Republican senators to the Iranian leadership, warning Iran that a Republican administration will disavow any agreement. As a sabotage technique, such a move is unprecedented in international relations.
The relationship between Obama and Netanyahu has undergone severe strain with the most recent collapse of the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in April last year. Israel's seven-week long bombing of Gaza further strained relations as Palestinian civilian casualties with the White House, which backed its traditional ally while expressing growing unease over the deaths of Palestinian civilians. John Kerry's attempts to broker a ceasefire in the conflict also ended in embarrassing failure - and hostile briefing against the US secretary of state from Israeli sources further infuriated the White House. Yet it was Netanyahu's decision to deliver his speech against an Iran nuclear deal before the Republican-controlled Congress that really riled the Obama administration. In damage control mode, senior White House figures have publicly downplayed the damage to relations, but the consequences of Netanyahu's speech will be far reaching and Israel can expect unfavourable decisions and unfriendly moves by the Obama administration in the months to come. The Iran nuclear deal that Netanyahu had opposed so strongly is almost done. Israel will have to grin and bear it and deal with a chastened but resurgent Iran. Israel is unlikely to take unilateral action in bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel's dilemma will, therefore, continue but the threat to Israel's security stands diminished with the Arab world in turmoil and Iran's nuclear threat boxed in for several years.
India's relations with Israel under a Netanyahu government will remain unaffected. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi met Netanyahu at New York during the UN general assembly sessions. The Israeli defence minister has visited India recently, the first such visit. India-Israel relations have matured and stabilized over the past 24 years since India opened its diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv. Israel is today India's preferred partner for defence technologies and cooperation in various other technology related sectors. Israel accepts India's position on the Palestinian issue and India too has moved away from the stridency of the past as relations with Israel grew. The Iran nuclear deal will pose challenges for Israel as well as for the Arab countries as Iran re-integrates as a normal member of the international community when sanctions are lifted. The Middle East is poised for some seminal changes if the Iran nuclear deal is brought to fruition. For India, Iran's transition as non-nuclear weapon state, post a successful nuclear deal, will open up avenues for greater economic and strategic cooperation with Iran. In the context of Afghanistan, this will be a stabilizing factor and Iran's traditional role as a supplier of oil and gas to India will be restored, supplementing India's energy security.
This article was written prior to the formation of the government in Israel
The author is former secretary in the ministry of external affairs and is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi
