Israel election results mildly surprising

Puppycow

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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4335746,00.html

Exit polls marking the conclusion of the 2013 general elections are predicting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reelected, but the vote's biggest surprised was the success noted by Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party, which according to the polls won 19 mandates.

Israel's news networks projected the joint Likud-Yisrael Beteinu ticket to have won 33 Knesset seats – a sharp drop from the 42 mandates that two parties currently hold.

With 66% of the votes counted, the Likud has garnered 24.3% of the votes, Yesh Atid 14.2%, Labor 12.1%, Shas 9%, Habayit Hayehudi 8.4%, United Torah Judaism 5.7%, Hatnua 5.3%, Meretz 4.7%, United Arab List-Ta'al 2.9%, Hadash 2.4%, Kadima 2%, Balad 1.9% and Otzma LeYisrael won 1.6%.

The winner of the day was the centrist Yesh Atid, whose projected number of mandates was almost double what the final pre-election polls predicted.
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Anyone heard of this party Yesh Atid? The article says centrist, so I guess that they are left of Likud-Yisrael Beteinu.

Also, did Obama figure into this somehow? I remember reading some speculation that Netanyahu would be propelled to victory by a backlash against some Obama comments critical of Israel or Netanyahu.
 
No, I never heard of that party. I heard of some ultra-right wing billionaire recently forming a new party out-bibiing Bibi, but that's not it. The guy sounds "centrist" as in "sane". Good.
 
He is a handsome man, and I guess that helps quite a bit in politics. The wiki article doesn't say very much about his political philosophy or specific policy positions though.
 
Uhm, I based that statement on what the German wikipedia entry says (based on this source).

Jerusalem Post said:
In a June 2010 speech in Herzliya, Lapid expressed support for writing a constitution, changing the electoral system, drafting yeshiva students, requiring haredim (ultra-Orthodox) to study the core curriculum, transferring a quarter of the defense budget to education, returning the Golan Heights to Syria, closing Army Radio and limiting the number of cabinet ministers. He also pushed for a large West Bank withdrawal.
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The English one links to this which paints a less pleasant but maybe not less realistic picture of "centrist" in today's Israel:

Israel National News said:
Lapid said that he does not care what the Arabs want. "What I want is not a new Middle East, but to be rid of them and put a tall fence between us and them." The important thing, he added, is "to maintain a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel."
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This article gives a little more information.

Lapid devoted his speech to unveiling a bill aimed at requiring every Israeli youth to do some form of national service, whether in the military or in local hospitals and schools.

The reform is aimed primarily at eliminating draft exemptions for military service for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox students who are instead subsidized by the government to continue religious study. (It would also make national civilian service mandatory for Israel’s Arab minority.)

“Our principle is simple: Everyone must serve,” said Lapid, to a standing ovation. Then addressing ultra-Orthodox youths, he added, “We can’t continue to subsidize you.”

Lapid is following in the footsteps of his late father, Mordechai, a newspaper editor and blunt political commentator who got into politics in the late '90s and became the leader of the third-largest parliamentary bloc by running a highly negative campaign against the ultra-Orthodox.

But the younger Lapid has a more carefully crafted appeal as the voice of modern young Israelis. In an effort to calm ultra-Orthodox groups, he declared this week that he will not come with a “tank” into their enclaves.
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Childlike Empress said:
No, I never heard of that party. I heard of some ultra-right wing billionaire recently forming a new party out-bibiing Bibi, but that's not it. The guy sounds "centrist" as in "sane". Good.
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You're probably thinking of Naftali Bennett's Habayit Hayehudi who is popular with the right-wing of the Likud. Bibi's actually on the left of the Likud, though that obviously doesn't imply he's on the left of the political spectrum.
 
Netanyahu Gets Lukewarm Vote for Third Term

However:
With 90 percent of the vote counted, Israel Radio reported Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud-Beiteinu ticket was poised to take 31 of Parliament’s 120 seats. Mr. Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid — There Is a Future — garnered 19, many more than polls had predicted.

The right-wing and religious parties that make up Mr. Netanyahu’s current coalition combined for 60 seats, according to Israel Radio, equal to the total won by the center, left and Arab parties, pushing the prime minister toward a partnership with Mr. Lapid and perhaps some of the groups that had been in the opposition. The left-leaning Labor Party took 15 seats and Jewish Home, a new religious-nationalist party, 11.
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There are 120 total seats in the Knesset, so 60 seats is only half. They need at least one more party to join the coalition.

Hatnua is Tzipi Livni's party BTW. I guess that everyone important already left Kadima.
 
Here's the latest breakdown by party:

As of 4 A.M. Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu claimed 31 seats in the next Knesset. The count for the rest of the parties was as follows: Yesh Atid 19, Labor 15, Shas 11, Habayit Hayehudi 11, United Torah Judaism 7, Hatnuah 6, Meretz 6, United Arab List-Ta’al 5, Balad 3, and Kadima teetering on the verge of the electoral threshold with 2 seats.
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If you are like me and have no idea what some of these party names are, I looked them up. Habayit Hayehudi = Jewish Home I think, described as a religious-nationalist party. Shas is a party of the Ultra-Orthodox; United Torah Judaism is also a party of Ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews; Hatnuah is Tzipi Livni's party, mostly ex-Kadima members, Meretz is a left-wing, Zionist, social-democratic political party; and Balad is an Israeli-Arab party. Here's the wiki article on Yesh Atid; They mostly seem to be a party about making conscription universal instead of allowing exceptions for Orthodox Jews and Arabs.

I wonder if Israel really needs conscription to survive. The US for example has an excellent military without conscription. How would Yesh Atid coexist with Shas and United Torah Judaism in the same ruling coalition?
 
Puppycow said:
Here's the latest breakdown by party:



If you are like me and have no idea what some of these party names are, I looked them up. Habayit Hayehudi = Jewish Home I think, described as a religious-nationalist party. Shas is a party of the Ultra-Orthodox; United Torah Judaism is also a party of Ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews; Hatnuah is Tzipi Livni's party, mostly ex-Kadima members, Meretz is a left-wing, Zionist, social-democratic political party; and Balad is an Israeli-Arab party. Here's the wiki article on Yesh Atid; They mostly seem to be a party about making conscription universal instead of allowing exceptions for Orthodox Jews and Arabs.

I wonder if Israel really needs conscription to survive. The US for example has an excellent military without conscription. How would Yesh Atid coexist with Shas and United Torah Judaism in the same ruling coalition?
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I don't think the principle of conscription would be up to debate. Israel is surrounded by more populous Arab states, so everyone should be able to defend their country. And moving to a professional army would cost the state big sums in salaries for professional soldiers instead of conscripts.

The issue at hand is about the exemption for yeshiva students. The numbers of these exemptions have risen dramatically. Only 2.4% of the possible conscripts in 1974, 9.2% in 1999 and projected to be 15% this year. The Haredi - where most of these exemptions come from - are seen by the rest of the Israelis as parasites: they don't work, don't do military service, dedicate their whole life to "religious studies" and hold their hand up for welfare with the state that - to add insult to injury - they don't even recognize as legitimate.

As to the political landscape, this Haaretz page has a nice map putting the parties in two-dimensional landscape: a left/right and a secular/religious dimension. Hope it's still there when you read it.

I hadn't followed Israeli politics for a while either, so I was first of all surprised by the joint list of Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, and secondly by Kadima's implosion - not really surprised by the latter though. But the dynamics of the Israeli political landscape is overwhelming to the casual observer.

The 60/60 split seems a bit artificial to me. It lumps in on the one side all Arab parties - both secular as Balad and religious as the United Arab List - and all center/left parties, from Meretz to Yesh Atid. Personally, I'd be hard-pressed to even call ẗhe Labour party "left". On the other side, there's a combination of non-religious right-wing parties as Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home), and the ultra-orthodox parties United Torah Judaism and Shas.

The Dutch TV news predicted the election would be a choice between right and even righter, so at least I'm pleasantly surprised to see the Likud/Yisrael Beiteinu ticket lose 11 seats. :)

ETA: there is also a very extensive wiki page on the elections.
 
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Puppycow said:
Netanyahu Gets Lukewarm Vote for Third Term

However:


There are 120 total seats in the Knesset, so 60 seats is only half. They need at least one more party to join the coalition.

Hatnua is Tzipi Livni's party BTW. I guess that everyone important already left Kadima.
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It could be translated as "Netanyahu is not all the great,but he is better then the other clowns running".Not a ringing endorsement.
 
I think the only thing surprising about this election is that a party can come from nowhere and do very well, but that's happened in Israeli elections before, so even that's not so surprising.
 
Mycroft said:
I think the only thing surprising about this election is that a party can come from nowhere and do very well, but that's happened in Israeli elections before, so even that's not so surprising.
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The main surprise, IMHO, is that this party is led by a newcomer to politics. It's quite normal in Israeli politics for an established politician to split from his party, take with him a couple of other MK's and form a new party. Kadima was formed this way by Ariel Sharon. Barak's Independence party - which didn't contest - too. And Lieberman was an active Likud politician too before he founded Yisrael Beiteinu.

Ya'ar Lapid, on the other hand, had no political experience whatsoever before these elections. I wonder how long his party will hold their fortunes, as there seems to be a continuous coming and going of parties in the political center.
 
Puppycow said:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4335746,00.html



Anyone heard of this party Yesh Atid? The article says centrist, so I guess that they are left of Likud-Yisrael Beteinu.
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Yes, they are centrist, but not really left enough from Bibi to upset his apple cart. They just made a coalition.

Also, did Obama figure into this somehow? I remember reading some speculation that Netanyahu would be propelled to victory by a backlash against some Obama comments critical of Israel or Netanyahu.
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My guess is that Obama's Israeli allies wanted to help Livni and so the left got a few more votes. But it was not some kind of upset. In the end it Obama didn't make much difference either way.
 
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