As Israelis went to the polls on 17 March 2015, the headlines across the world were dominated by Netanyahu’s apparent rejection of a Palestinian state. There was almost universal condemnation of his position, accompanied by opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers that he had unmasked himself as a hardline ideologue. His comments at Har Homa also attracted much international criticism with the belief that he was strongly committed to the settlement programme, and allied with the Settlers movement.
As Netanyahu surveyed the press and television channels, he wondered if his little dance for the right in Israel on the previous day had been enough to move the necessary votes to the Likud. His main fear, however, was voter apathy among the Likud supporters which had been so damaging to the party’s performance in the 2013 Knesset elections. In what was expected to be a close race in 2015, voter turnout was considered a key factor in determining the eventual outcome.
By lunchtime, Netanyahu was deeply concerned and starting to panic that reports of lower than average turnout in Likud strongholds would cost him the election. As direct campaigning on the day of the election was not allowed Netanyahu took to social media after lunch and posted a hugely controversial video, which many people argued crossed the line into being racist.
The video was shot in an office with a map of the Middle East behind him. A stern-looking Netanyahu said, ‘Arabs are going to the ballot boxes in droves, they are being bussed in by left-wing NGO’s.’1 The comments caused an immediate political storm in Israel as Netanyahu allegedly exercised racism towards Israeli citizens who were going to the polling stations to exercise their democratic right to vote.
The Obama administration were horrified by Netanyahu’s statement both in terms of its content and by the fact that it came so soon after his flip-flop on his policy towards a Palestinian state from the previous day. Speaking to the Huffington Post about Netanyahu’s rhetoric on the day of the election, Obama said it was:
. . . contrary to what is the best of Israel’s traditions. That although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland, and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly. To lose those values would give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also I think starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.2
The full transcript of the video posted indicated that Netanyahu wanted his supporters to understand the extent of the campaign by the V15. At one point in the video Netanyahu said, ‘Friends, we don’t have a V15.’ Here Netanyahu was clearly alluding to the foreign funding that he argued financed the V15 so-called non-partisan project. The fact that it was non-partisan meant that it could accept such funding, and this was what he meant when he talked of the Arab voters being transported by left-wing NGOs.3
Netanyahu’s comments were truly horrible, but from an electoral point of view they achieved their intended purpose. Following the posting of the video, polling stations reported a late surge in the number of voters casting their ballots in the final hours of polling. The surge was particularly strong in areas where the Likud and right-wing parties were considered to be strongest. The outcome of the election that always looked to be close became even harder for the pundits to call.
One of the knock-on effects of the late surge in voters was its potential to distort the exit polls conducted by Israeli television. These exit polls largely finished gathering their data approximately two hours before the polls officially closed. Any changes in voting patterns after this time would come too late to be picked up in the polls. On top of this, there remained the Israeli national pastime of lying to the pollsters, which had distorted several exit polls from previous elections.
When the polling stations closed and the three exit polls from three Israeli television channels were flashed up on screen, there were cheers from the Likud party election headquarters, and a more muted reaction from the Zionist Union faithful. Two of the exit polls (from Channel 1 and Channel 10) had the Likud and the Zionist Union tied on 27 seats, while the other poll (from Channel 2) had the Likud ahead by one seat at 28 to 27 for the Zionist Union. Taking into account the margins of error of the polls, all three channels called the election a virtual dead heat between the Likud and the Zionist Union.4
As the votes were counted, it soon became clear that the exit polls were indeed wrong, and that Netanyahu and the Likud had won a clear victory in the election by securing 30 seats to the Zionist Union’s 24. Netanyahu, with Sara beside him, was soon able to address the Likud faithful at their election headquarters. As the crowd chanted, ‘Hail, Hail, Bibi’, he said:
Against all odds, we have scored a major victory for the Likud. We have scored a major victory for the nationalist camp headed by Likud. I’m proud of the Israeli people because at the moment of truth they knew to differentiate between challenge and nonsense and they took up the challenge
. . . Now we must form a strong, stable government that will know how to uphold security and socioeconomic wellbeing. We are faced with major challenges on the security and socioeconomic front. We promised to take care of cost of living and rise of housing costs, and we will do it.
I spoke to all of the nationalist party leaders, and I called on them to join me in forming a government without delay, because reality doesn’t take a timeout. Citizens expect us to form a responsible leadership that will work for it, and that’s what we will do.5
He then leaned across and kissed Sara, who feigned surprise, and put her hand on her neck as if to say ‘Amazing’. The kiss annoyed many Israelis, just as much as when he kissed his wife after he had won the contest to become leader of the Likud in 1993. Over 20 years later the contempt of the Israeli media for Sara Netanyahu had not changed one bit, nor for the Netanyahu double act in general.
For Netanyahu it was a stunning victory, arguably the greatest of his career. He won the election by not going to the political centre, as had been the case in previous elections, but, rather, going to the right. In the sober light of day, when all the votes had finally been counted, it was clear that the results did not reflect any major political realignment in Israeli politics. Indeed, the percentage of votes that the right-wing camp received did not greatly increase from its performance in 2013.
As suspected, voter turnout was higher than in 2013 with 72.36 per cent of the electorate casting their ballots in 2015. Netanyahu’s fear-mongering that the Israeli Arabs were going to polling stations in masses appeared to have done the trick for him. It would be wrong simply to say that this was the sole reason for his victory. In reality, the opposition lost the election as much as Netanyahu won it.
At the start of the campaign, the Zionist Union appeared to have everything going for them. The country was suffering from Netanyahu fatigue. Even the man himself looked tired and made noises about his increasing disillusionment about public life and its toll on his family. The campaign to oust Netanyahu was highly flawed. It made the same mistakes that had characterized the failed centre-left campaigns of Shimon Peres: too much preaching to the converted and not enough hard graft on the ground.
The campaign also missed the point that just because opinion polls found that the majority of Israelis wanted to get rid of Netanyahu, it didn’t mean that they would actually vote at the polls to kick him out. There was also an unexplainable under-estimation as to the extent that Netanyahu would play dirty and push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to their limits.
As Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian wrote about the centre-left opposition during the campaign, ‘Right now his opponents look like a team facing an open goal and poised to miss.’6 And miss they did. For all Netanyahu’s bluster in his victory speech, for much of the campaign he had looked like a man who understood that he wouldn’t win big time. His performance prior to 16 March had been one of the worst of his campaign career.
In essence, both Herzog and Livni failed to convince the voters that they would be any better at running Israel than Netanyahu. While the outside world ran to their tune of hope versus the fear factor of Netanyahu, the election result was a timely reminder that many Israelis don’t think about their country in the same way as foreigners.
On a deeper level, the rise of Netanyahu to power, and his ability to maintain a stranglehold over power, can be partly attributed to the failure of the centre-left to find a successor to the late Yitzhak Rabin who could appeal to voters beyond the traditional centre-left ones. For a while, Ehud Barak promised much, but his star soon faded and since then nobody has emerged, least of all Herzog or Livni.
It was no coincidence that for much of his political career at the apex of Israeli politics the major forces of opposition to him came from within the centre-right and the right-wing. In 2015, the election result reminded people that the centre-left’s search for the new Rabin-style figure was not over. In the meantime, Netanyahu and the politics of fear continued to rule Israel.
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, argued that the real winner in the 2015 Israeli election was Iran. As he wrote the day after the Israeli election in his column, bubbling over with frustration:
Oh, my goodness. They must have been doing high-fives and ‘Allahu akbars’ all night in the ruling circles of Tehran when they saw how low Bibi sank to win. What better way to isolate Israel globally and deflect attention from Iran’s behavior?
. . . From Iran’s point of view, it makes fantastic TV on Al Jazeera, and all the European networks; it undermines Israel’s legitimacy with the young generation on college campuses around the globe; and it keeps the whole world much more focused on Israeli civil rights abuses against Palestinians rather than the massive civil rights abuses perpetrated by the Iranian regime against its own people.
It is stunning how much Bibi’s actions serve Tehran’s strategic interests.7
Friedman’s masterly argument was spot on. The re-election of Netanyahu suited the Iranians’ needs perfectly. The continuation of the Netanyahu–Obama stand-off, and the increased international scrutiny of Israel under Netanyahu, suited Iran’s aims perfectly.
A centre-left victory in Israel would have posed more difficult challenges for it. With a rekindling of warmer ties between Jerusalem and Washington there would have been a greater squeeze on Iran’s positions. International scrutiny of Israel might well have been less as it offered far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians.
The feeling among the centre-left in Israel was that it had missed a golden opportunity to get rid of Netanyahu, perhaps the last chance before Netanyahu became a truly important figure in Israel’s relatively short history. After March 2015, Netanyahu could point to an electoral record of three wins and one loss. Viewed as an outsider and a lightweight by many Israelis, it looked perfectly possible that he would end up becoming the country’s longest serving Prime Minister, replacing David Ben-Gurion.
While Netanyahu was untroubled by the feelings of the centre-left and the Israeli media, he was left with a bigger problem close to his political home. There was a feeling among several right-wing politicians that Netanyahu’s victory had been achieved largely at their expense. In some ways, the 2015 election had produced the opposite outcome to the 1996 elections, when Netanyahu won the direct election for Prime Minister, but the Likud lost ground to other smaller parties.
In 2015, Bennett and Lieberman believed that Netanyahu’s victory was secured at the expense of their respective parties. Bennett, in particular, felt that Netanyahu had stabbed him in the back as he shifted to the right in the final hours of the campaign. The additional seats that the Likud secured were taken from the Jewish Home rather than the centre-left.
In truth, as both Bennett and Lieberman viewed themselves as heirs apparent to Netanyahu as the darling of the Israeli right, the post-election manoeuvrings and coalition building took on even greater importance than was useful. The importance of both men to Netanyahu was further heightened when Yair Lapid made it clear that he would be taking his party, Yesh Atid, into opposition.
The political centrist Lapid also regarded himself as the next Prime Minister of Israel. Having served as Minister of Finance in the previous Netanyahu government – not usually a good route to the premiership – Lapid and Yesh Atid preferred to sit on the opposition benches and shout from the outside. In firing Yair Lapid (as well as Livni) in December 2014, Netanyahu had among other things potentially reduced his post-election coalition options.
Bennett and Lieberman both saw different opportunities created by the election. In some ways, Lieberman’s choice was easiest. Yisrael Beiteinu won only six seats in the election and the preference was to go into opposition to rebuild the party and try to reconnect it with the voters. Bennett, on the other hand, wanted to go into government to maximize the number and the importance of the cabinet portfolios that the Jewish Home would be offered.
Immediately following the election, the headlines were dominated by the prospect of a government of national unity being established between the Likud and the Zionist Union. Although President Reuven Rivlin made it clear that this was his preference for the government, it was never a realistic prospect. Herzog and Livni preferred to take the Zionist Union into opposition from where they believed they would be able to develop an alternative to a Netanyahu government.
Netanyahu, as a result, was left in a strange position, having won a clear victory at the polls, but faced with problems in putting together a winning coalition. What followed was a game of poker with an old Likudnik, Moshe Kahlon, whose Kalanu party (All of Us) had won ten seats at the polls, holding most of the cards.
Kahlon, who had campaigned on socio-economic issues, particularly affecting the middle class, was regarded by several important commentators in Israel, such as Ari Shavit, as a potential heir to the old Likud school of Menachem Begin. During the campaign, Kahlon had been careful not to endorse either Netanyahu or Herzog for Prime Minister, and it was possible that he could sit in government with either block in power. His main demand was to be given the ministry of finance.
Given the complexity of forming a coalition, and with several of the party leaders involved having an eye on positioning themselves for the post-Netanyahu era, it was not surprising that the first deadline for forming a coalition was missed. On 20 April, President Rivlin granted Netanyahu a two-week extension until 6 May to form a government.
Negotiations went right up to the wire before, with only hours to spare, Netanyahu informed the President that he had put together a government coalition comprising 61 seats. In addition to the Likud the coalition comprised the Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu and Shas. Eyebrows were raised at Lieberman deciding not to join, and by the fact that Netanyahu announced he would not appoint a Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was widely presumed in Israel that he was keeping the post open to help entice Isaac Herzog to join the coalition with his Zionist Union colleagues at a later date.
The government was sworn in by the narrowest of margins (61 to 59) in the Knesset on 14 May 2015. During the fiery exchanges, Herzog once again stated that the Zionist Union would not be joining the coalition. It was a curious occasion in what was meant to be the start of the next chapter of Netanyahu’s rule; all the headlines were grabbed by the opposition forces. The Prime Minister looked like a leader who understood that the chances of his coalition surviving its full term were limited.
The election had returned Netanyahu and the Likud to power, but the opposition to his rule from across the political spectrum did not bode well for his chances of doing much with the legislative power the election had given him. Israelis essentially voted for the status quo, and the known over the unknown.
The status quo, however, was about to end when the American-led efforts to secure a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran bore fruit and robbed Netanyahu of the single issue that his politics of fear had centred upon. Israelis, and the rest of the world, looked on to see how Netanyahu would react to losing the debate on Iran, and whether, in the post-deal era, he could still remain relevant to Israeli and international politics.