“It’s frustrating,” said Avraham, a 59-year-old lawyer voting at a Jerusalem school who asked not to give his last name to discuss politics. “The stalemate is bad for the country’s internal cohesion. I only have limited hope that this time will be any better.”
Pollsters say the impact of the pandemic, uncertainty about turnout and a high level of undecided voters make this election redo unusually difficult to predict.
But final surveys suggest not much has changed in the toss-up dynamic of the past three elections, which have largely been referendums on the 12-year-long rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Once again, a bit less than half the country appears poised to elect parties backing Netanyahu and a bit more than half will cast votes to oust him.
One very possible outcome of the fourth election will be the need for a fifth.
“It don’t see any reason to think voting again will help” break the electoral impasse, said Tzofiya Malev, a university worker who had just cast her ballot during a misty rain in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood. If necessary, she said she will come vote again. And again. “Whatever it takes.”
A continuing stalemate is one of the three likely scenarios political analysts foresee following Tuesday’s vote. Another is Netanyahu finally winning a narrow but outright majority, an outcome made more likely by an uptick in support for his Likud party in the final days of the campaign.
Once again, the constellation of anti-Netanyahu parties could win enough seats to unseat the prime minister, but only if they achieve what has eluded them after the previous elections: negotiating a power-sharing deal among groups that range from right-wing religious factions to leftists to Arab-Israelis.
Except for a short-lived — and dysfunctional — emergency “unity” government that formed last spring as the pandemic erupted, party leaders have refused to join forces across ideological lines. The electorate, meanwhile, is left hanging.
“The voters have been consistent in saying what they think three times in a row and then it all hinges on the decisions of four or five men,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster. “It’s dismissive and disrespectful of the citizens.”
So far, the frustration hasn’t dented voter turnout, which increased over the course of the past three elections, from 68.4 percent in April 2019 to 71.5 percent last March. Polls suggested Tuesday’s rate would remain in the 60s, Scheindlin said.
The number of voters already at the polls by early morning suggested Israelis, who get a day off for elections, were ready to come out for a fourth time.
“It’s been normal,” said poll worker Ariel Morgenstern outside Jerusalem’s Horev Elementary School. “People in Israel know this is a democracy.”
Some things are different the fourth time around.
With Israel posting the world’s fastest pace of inoculating against the coronavirus, and semblances of normal life beginning to return, Netanyahu is banking on a vaccine gratitude strategy. He has campaigned at vaccination centers, tried to woo the CEO of Pfizer (a U.S. company that jointly developed an effective coronavirus vaccine with German partner BioNTech) to make a pre-vote visit to Israel, and was chastised by election officials for usurping the catchphrase of the government vaccine drive, “Coming Back to Life,” as his campaign catchphrase.
“After a year of covid-19, we are going to have a very hard situation at least economically, and I don’t see any leader around who can do what Netanyahu can,” said Erez Goldman, 62, a Jerusalem attorney planning to cast a vote for Likud. (Covid-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.) “I see the way he’s worked throughout the year of covid, he’s managed for us to not only get vaccines but get peace with four countries,” referring to newly established relations with Arab countries in the Gulf and North Africa.
Critics counter that Netanyahu’s overall covid response has been chaotic and haphazard, leading to repeat national lockdowns with rules routinely flouted in many ultra-Orthodox communities. Human rights groups say Israel should be doing much more to provide vaccinations to 5 million Palestinians effectively under its control in the West Bank and Gaza.
“He was also responsible for the grave situation before the vaccine,” said Avraham, the lawyer, who voted for the center-left party led by former news anchor Yair Lapid. “We could have had half the deaths, half the closed businesses.”
Jill White, a market researcher from New York who retired to Israel with her husband three years ago, has seen her voting shift over the course of four elections. She started as a Netanyahu supporter, but his increasing embrace of right-wing parties has pushed her away. This time, she voted for Lapid.
“A lot of what he said resonated with me,” said White after voting. She cited in particular comments Lapid made suggesting police employ the same tactics to disperse ultra-Orthodox crowds gathered for mass funerals and weddings that they used to control liberal protesters against Netanyahu.
Also, new this round, Netanyahu faces his first serious challenge from the right. Former Likud education minister Gideon Saar left the party to take on his former mentor. His bid, which has attracted other politicians and significant voter interest, gives conservatives a shot at right-wing policies without the ethical taints of the prime minister, who is standing trial in Jerusalem on bribery, fraud and other corruption charges.
“They get Likud without Netanyahu,” said Jonathan Rynhold, professor of politics at Bar-Ilan University.
Former Likud defense minister Naftali Bennett is also making another run, providing conservatives yet another option. The military hard-liner is running on a platform of covid-recovery competence — a rebuke of Netanyahu’s pandemic performance.
But he is also the only major contender who won’t rule out bringing his Yamina party into a new Netanyahu coalition, giving him potential kingmaker leverage in the factional bargaining that will follow Tuesday’s vote.
“[Netanyahu] has been in for too long,” said Malev, the university worker, a right-leaning voter who was looking for alternatives to the prime minister’s “behavior,” which she considers unethical. This time, she settled on Bennet’s Yamina, although it’s getter hard to keep track of the shifting parties. “I don’t even remember who I voted for the first time.”
A third former Netanyahu ally, Avigdor Liberman, leader of a Russian-speakers party, is also vying for votes. It was Liberman who pulled out of the prime minister’s right-wing coalition in 2019 citing objections to the role of ultra-Orthodox parties, sparking the political stalemate that continues still.
This round, it is only the ultra-Orthodox parties who were willing to sign a pledge not to join a government led by someone other than Netanyahu. Other right-wing parties have signaled they are willing to bargain with other potential leaders of a new government.
“The major shift in the fourth election is the rift within the right wing,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University. “Both Bennett and Saar are out there, and both talk about replacing Netanyahu.”
The challenge had led Netanyahu to seek new pockets of support. He shocked the political establishment by inviting an extremist politician with roots in the banned Kahanist movement to join his coalition.
At other end of the spectrum, Netanyahu has been seeking votes in Israel’s Arab communities. In a turnaround from past campaigns in which he portrayed Israeli Arabs and their politicians as a threat, this round found him having coffee with Bedouin elders and promising to boost spending on police and infrastructure in some of the country’s poorest towns.
The Arab outreach may gain Likud a seat or two, analysts said. But more importantly, it has helped splinter the coalition of Arab parties that has achieved record support in recent elections. One party, wooed by the prime minister, has split, and pollsters expect Arab turnout to drop, lessening the power of a key anti-Netanyahu bloc of voters.
“He’s implementing a divide and suppress strategy with the Arabs,” Scheindlin, the pollster, said of Netanyahu’s tactics. “And it seems to be working.”
“I have some friends who aren’t going out today,” said Ehab Jabareen, a media strategist who voted Tuesday in the northern Israeli village of Fureidis. “The campaign that happened throughout the Arab society was very difficult. All the extremism of the campaign has only increased the feeling of apathy.”
Among liberal voters, Lapid’s Yesh Atid party offers the best hope. With an array of small, left-leaning parties, including the once mighty Labor Party, hoping to contribute a few seats, Lapid could have a significant center-left bloc to offer potential coalition partners.
But those voters were badly burned in the last election, when Lapid’s then-partner in anti-Netanyahu Blue and White party, Benny Gantz, reneged on his promise not to join forces with Netanyahu. Gantz became secretary of defense and “alternate” prime minister in the emergency unity government.
It was a crushing blow to those supporters and, according to political scientist Talshir, it may lead some of them to sit this election out.
“I think many in the center left will not vote because there is mistrust in the system itself,” she said. “This may actually bring Netanyahu his next government.”
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