One day before Election Day, most people in Israel are on edge since, more than ever, the future of the state appears to be at stake, and a clear-cut decision by the voters does not appear to be at hand.
At present, there are two alternatives. The first is that Israel will continue to deteriorate into becoming an authoritarian state, under yet another all-right religious government, in which its center-left and Arab populations will be subject to progressively growing oppressive measures and physical attacks by unruly right-wing bullies.
As in the current government, the new government’s leader will again be Benjamin Netanyahu, who was and still is bent on a continuous bleeding war, irrespective of its cost or consequences.
It will be a coalition of parties who seek the unilateral application of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and turning Israel into a more religious state than it is today.
The second alternative is that Israel will continue to exist as a more or less liberal state, which tries to remain both Jewish (in terms of its serving as the national home of all sections of the Jewish people) and democratic (in terms of being tolerant to all its citizens, whether Jewish or Arab, religious, secular, or everything in between), and attentive to the rules of international law to the maximal extent, without endangering Israel’s survival.
At this stage, in the existing circumstances, I do not believe that a well-functioning national unity government – which is what Israel most urgently requires – is an option, as long as Netanyahu is still the leader of the Likud.
Unfortunately, also the prospects of a stable government in which one of the sides has a clear majority are close to nil, especially if predictions that the Arab population will turn out to vote in large numbers and thus increase the number of Arab MKs to as many as 16 will materialize.
When US President Donald J. Trump announced his “complete and total endorsement” for Netanyahu on October 18, nine days before polling day in Israel, his accompanying words undoubtedly warmed the hearts of all those in Israel who support another Netanyahu-led government, while disgusting and angering its opponents, both Jewish and Arab, who happen to constitute a majority of the Israeli electorate.
This majority disagrees with Trump’s statement that “Netanyahu has been a great warrior prime minister, and an even greater partner for peace in combating the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Most of this majority sees Netanyahu as the man who bears most of the responsibility for the greatest catastrophe to have befallen the Jewish people since the Holocaust – the massacre of October 7, 2023 – but who, over three years after its occurrence, still refuses to accept any responsibility for it, or to appoint a national commission of inquiry to examine the events that preceded it.
It also believes that despite some brilliant military operations in the last three years, Netanyahu has, time and again, promised a total victory over Iran and its proxies but has failed to bring about even a single victory, while managing to isolate the State of Israel in the international arena and turn himself into a person wanted for trial by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Trump’s endorsement statement also rejected all the other potential candidates to head Israel’s next government, even though the Israeli elections are not about electing a prime minister but about electing parties to the Knesset, which may become part of a coalition government.
At the moment, it doesn’t look like Netanyahu, even with Trump’s endorsement, will manage to muster sufficient parties, with sufficient Knesset seats, to form such a government.
Trump ended his endorsement by stating to the Israeli voters that “Bibi Netanyahu will never let you down!” Time and again, Netanyahu has let a majority of Israel’s citizens down – not least of all over the return of all the Israeli hostages – both alive and dead.
In fact, it is Trump himself who was responsible for bringing them all back home – not Netanyahu, who kept sabotaging efforts to reach an agreement with Hamas over the release of the hostages, when more of them could have been brought back alive. There were allegedly strategic considerations for this enervating action of his.
Apparently, we must also thank Trump for dissuading Netanyahu from attacking Iran two weeks ago and thus sabotaging tomorrow’s elections. Nevertheless, Trump remains guilty of unwarranted intervention in the Israeli elections.
Incidentally, though it is generally assumed that international law categorically rejects intervention by states in the elections of other states, in fact, so far, no treaty-based solutions to the problem of foreign election interference have been formulated.
What does exist is an International Court of Justice ruling from 1986 that the principle of nonintervention is a pillar of customary international law.
In addition, traditional international law prohibits actions that are coercive by nature – i.e., intervention that compels a target state to act against its will.
Finally, there are several UN General Assembly resolutions that explicitly condemn direct or indirect interference, foreign financing of political groups, or attempts to sway domestic electoral processes.
Strictly speaking, what Trump has done is not illegal under international law but is certainly enervating and objectionable to those who believe that Netanyahu’s continued premiership is dangerous to Israel’s continued existence as a liberal democratic state. Some even believe that it endangers Israel’s existence altogether.
Final words
A few words should be mentioned about the ugly and libelous campaign by the Likud and its non-haredi partners against Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, who is one of the current promising candidates for the premiership of the opposition parties, and has been unjustifiably belittled and mocked.
The worst manifestation of this was the disgusting referral to him, by Channel 14 moderator and close associate of Netanyahu, Yinon Magal, as “an oriental-Moroccan monkey, who is backed by the Ashkenazi elites that manage him.”
It doesn’t matter whether Magal used the word “monkey” in the physical sense, or – as he later explained – as the word used in the Israeli underworld to mean a front man, puppet, or straw man. In both senses, the meaning of the word “monkey” is disgusting, demeaning, and meant to belittle and insult.
Hopefully, tomorrow will go by peacefully – both in verbal and physical terms.
And just one final word to Netanyahu personally. The way to deal with threats of international economic sanctions against Israel, which you mentioned several days ago, is not by moving over to crypto or turning Israel into a super-Sparta, but by changing your policies that have led to the threats of sanctions against our state.
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.