As the election campaign for the 26th Knesset gets started, one is impressed that it is going to be a pretty complicated and possibly nasty affair.
It will not only be a struggle between today’s coalition and opposition parties. Sub-struggles within various sectors – national religious, Arab, ultra-Orthodox (a new modern haredi party is apparently in the making), the division of the liberal Right/Center/Left bloc, the Likud, and anti-Bibi former Likudniks are also to be expected.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that lists can continue registering with the Central Elections Committee for participation in the elections until September 7.
Currently, there are quite a few new political groups that are considering running in the elections. They will presumably decide whether to run on the basis of their feelings when the time comes, and on whether they are likely to pass the 3.25% qualifying threshold.
Decisions by existing parties on whether to run on their own or unite with other existing parties must also be made by September 7.
At the moment, the two main contenders for the premiership are former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot from Yashar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the Likud.
Most current opinion polls indicate that Eisenkot is favored as the more suitable candidate for the premiership over Netanyahu, and that Yashar and the Likud are around equal in terms of the seats they are predicted to receive (21-23). This reality has led the Likud to concentrate on besmirching Eisenkot for the time being.
Yashar heading straight to collision course with Likud
In terms of his personality, Eisenkot appears to be the exact opposite of Netanyahu in that he is perceived as modest, honest, lacking in charisma, sticks to the best of his knowledge to the truth, is not impressed by billionaires, and is not drawn to luxuries – characteristics and qualities that appear to work to his benefit among voters who are tired of Netanyahu and his style.
Therefore, the Likud is trying to attack him on other grounds. As I wrote several weeks ago, the Likud started off by attacking Eisenkot for his allegedly poor English. When that backfired, they moved on to tagging him as “a left-winger.”
Apparently, large sections of the Jewish population in Israel today are not aware of the fact that left-wingers created the foundations for the state and its actual establishment – social democratic, labor, left-wingers – with the support of the liberal and national religious parties, and with some mild haredi cooperation.
It is very sad that today, the notion “Left” is used as a curse word in right-wing circles, just as in the early days of the state, “Right” was viewed as a synonym for “fascist” (or worse) among labor circles.
As for Eisenkot personally, he is a moderate, a liberal in most of his positions, but I doubt whether, if he didn’t have his own party, he would be supporting the Democrats instead – the only Jewish left-wing party in Israel today – rather than Naftali Bennett’s and Yair Lapid’s Together.
Eisenkot began his political career in Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, which, from the start, was a centrist party.
Though not everyone in the Likud belittles Eisenkot’s military career or his performance as IDF chief of staff between 2015 and 2019, I did hear at least one reporter on Channel 14 refer to him as a “jobnik,” a Hebrew derogatory slang term for those who appear to shirk combatant military service.
However, the lowest the Likud went regarding Eisenkot was an AI clip last week. It depicted him running toward a young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words, “Ahdut Yisrael” (Israeli unity), then bypassing the youngster and running into the arms of Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas.
Some believe that the young man was meant to represent Eisenkot’s son Gal, who was killed in Jabalya in December 2023. I don’t think that this was the Likud’s intention, despite Netanyahu’s problematic relations with the bereaved families of those who were killed in the last 33 months.
Rather, the clip suggested that Eisenkot prefers establishing a government with Arabs over Israeli unity.
It is known, however, that Eisenkot’s preference is a government based on a Zionist-Jewish majority, but that he is not opposed to Arab parties joining the government as well, as long as they are willing to accept certain principles that the Jewish parties who will join his government will also be required to accept.
These pertain to the principle of Israel being a Jewish and democratic state; a commitment to mandatory military or civilian national service; and the acceptance of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence – including equality.
Netanyahu once entertained idea of joining forces with Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas
Given that Netanyahu himself negotiated with Abbas before forming his all-Right/religious government at the end of 2022, this demonstrates Likud’s hypocrisy on this issue.
In fact, back in 2022, Netanyahu did not reach an agreement with Abbas only because of the adamant objection of Bezalel Smotrich (the Religious Zionist Party).
How exactly Yashar and the other opposition parties will react to the Likud’s current onslaught is yet to be seen.
Hopefully, they will all stick to facts and avoid going down to the sewers with the help of AI.
There is plenty they can focus on: Netanyahu’s flimsiness with facts; his refusal to take responsibility, as prime minister, for October 7; the government’s failure to attain all the main goals of the unending fighting since October 8 – obliterating Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic; its failure to appoint a national commission of inquiry to investigate what led to the catastrophe of October 7 and who was responsible; and Netanyahu’s own dissatisfaction with the human makeup of the current Likud parliamentary group.
The last point is interesting because it has led the prime minister to try to do away – partially or completely – with the primaries for the election of Likud candidates for the approaching elections.
Netanyahu’s disgust with his serving MKs could give rise not only to a complete removal of primaries in the Likud, but also to a hate campaign vis-à-vis the Democrats, who eight days ago held impressive primaries for their own candidates.
The elections to the 26th Knesset could lead to an eventual reversal in the power balance between the two parties.
It is possible that the Likud may object ideologically to the positions held by those elected for the Democrats Party – all left-wingers, equally divided between genders, and including at least one Arab (woman) in a realistic place on the list.
However, it must admit that the Democrats’ list is a much more impressive one than that which the Likud elected in its last primaries held back in August 2022.
Primaries were introduced by both the Labor Party and the Likud in the 1990s: Labor before the elections to the 13th Knesset in 1992, when, led by Yitzhak Rabin, it won the elections; and the Likud, before the elections to the 14th Knesset in 1996, in which Netanyahu was first elected as prime minister in direct elections.
The two parties were the largest parties in those days, and much larger than the Likud and the Democrats (which can be viewed as an offspring of the Labor Party) are today.
Food for thought.
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.