Israel Election – Virtual Tie 60-60 A Loss for Netanyahu’s Coalition

8 Comments

1. 

   Oui on January 22, 2013 at 6:50 am

   According to Israeli media causing a late shift to the right …

   ‘Obama: Israel doesn’t know its own best interests’

   TEL AVIV (Jerusalem Post) – US President Barack Obama has stated repeatedly in private conversations that “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” regarding Jerusalem’s advancement of new settlement plans, influential Jewish American columnist Jeffrey Goldberg reported.  

   Following the November 29 UN vote to upgrade the Palestinians to non-member observer state status, Israel announced that 3,000 housing units would be built in areas beyond the Green Line, and zoning and planning for thousands of other units throughout Judea and Samaria would be authorized, including in the controversial project between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim called E1.

   In his weekly Bloomberg column published on Tuesday, Goldberg wrote: “When informed about the Israeli decision, Obama, who has a famously contentious relationship with the prime minister, didn’t even bother getting angry. He told several people that this sort of behavior on [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu’s part is what he has come to expect, and he suggested that he has become inured to what he sees as self-defeating policies of his Israeli counterpart.”

   Building in E-1, which would create contiguity between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim to the northeast beyond the Green Line, is something various Israeli governments have long wanted to do, but which US opposition has prevented. The Palestinian Authority has contended that construction in E1 could split the West Bank and damage the prospects of the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.

   The White House publicly criticized the E1 building plans immediately after they were announced in late November, stating that “these actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution.”

   According to Goldberg, Obama said in private that Netanyahu was leading Israel down a path toward near-total isolation by advancing settlement plans.

   Ynet News – Obama said ‘Israel doesn’t know what’s good for it’

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   Cross-posted from my diary – Israel’s Election Super Star: ‘No Palestinian State’

2. 

   Oui on January 22, 2013 at 7:11 am

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   Bibi’s backing for Romney could cause him trouble now

   Mr Obama spent a good deal of political capital on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during his first term, with disappointing results. His new Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton is likely to be succeeded by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry) will advise the President whether the administration will be able to achieve better results in his second term. As a start, he will probably want to see a map, at least in private, of how Mr Netanyahu envisages the final borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

   In Mr Kerry, at least, Israel appears to have a firm ally. In 1999, he signed a letter taking President Bill Clinton to task for not moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. And, in the 1990s, he fought President Bush senior when his administration restricted aid to Israel through the loan guarantees programme.

   In the wake of the flotilla to Gaza in 2010, Mr Kerry told a journalist: “Israel has every right in the world to make certain that weapons are not being smuggled in.”

   • The Junior Senator from Massachusetts Who Exposed the Criminal Bankers BCCI
   • 

     Salunga on January 22, 2013 at 9:38 am

        Oh Damn. I didn’t know he was such a lapdog on Israel. Its a double win for the Republicans. They hope to get the senate seat too. Nominate someone else. McCain gave him the back slap of death anyway. I like Kerry but if its like that…

        Everyone knew what was on the flotilla to Gaza. It was humanitarian aid. After murdering several activists the Israeli’s found there were no weapons. It was an aid operation completely out in the open to show the brutality of the blockade. Well it did and most of the blockade remains in place. Israel considers Gaza to be their “lawn” and they reserve the right to tend to and “mow the lawn”.

3. 

   Oui on January 22, 2013 at 7:57 am

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   Ahead of Israel elections, parties stumble on an American problem

   TEL AVIV (Global Post) – With Israel’s elections on Tuesday [today], it’s widely assumed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will get to keep his job. That said, he and his allies are reeling from an onslaught of bad news.

   The past month has shown a precipitous fall in support for Netanyahu’s Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu bloc. Last Friday’s polls— the last to be published before the vote — show their support at its lowest point since elections were called in October. They predict the ticket could lose up to 10 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s 120-member parliament.

   THE AMERICAN PROBLEM

   Take Arthur Finkelstein, a New York-based Republican Party consultant. He’s the Netanyahu campaign’s chief strategist. At least, he was. On Thursday night, Israeli TV Channel 10 reported Finkelstein had left the country and, by implication, the campaign. That sent Israelis tittering over the latest mishap to befall the prime minister.

   Finkelstein protested it was a “lie.” Likud struggled to save face, issuing an anemic rebuttal saying the “campaign remains on a schedule established months ago.” But the fact remained that the campaign’s chief guru had decamped — four days before election day.

   Yet the American could now be tarnishing the Israeli’s ticket.

   Finkelstein’s failed forecast that the Republicans would trounce the Democrats in the last US presidential election, a broad range of Israeli media reported, probably played a part in Netanyahu’s move to all-but-openly support Mitt Romney’s candidacy

   The campaign’s also taking heat for a strategy criticized as “all security issues, all the time.” In recent months, Likud candidates have openly sniped about a Finkelstein policy that left them with no responses to social and economic concerns.

   Israel’s right-wing bloc drops to 63 seats, center-left rises to 57

4. 

   Oui on January 22, 2013 at 12:59 pm

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   Two interesting headlines.

   Elections C’tee: Voter turnout at 55.5%, could top 70%

   The Central Elections Committee reported higher than expected voter turnout on Tuesday, with 55.5 percent of eligible voters casting their ballot by 6 p.m., as opposed to the 50.3% of Israelis who voted by 6 p.m. in the 2009 Knesset election. The voter turnout numbers marked the highest rate since the1999 election. Polls were set to close at 10 p.m., after which exit polls prognosticating the results of the elections were set to be released.

   Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lamented the relatively low turnout in traditional Likud neighborhoods in the elections despite the high voter turnout across Israel. “There are reports that in regions that have traditionally been Likud strongholds, turnout has been lower than the national average,” Netanyahu said during a visit to a polling station in Ashdod. “I therefore call on all generations of Likud voters to drop everything and go vote.”

   Analysis: A focus on domestic issues…at last

   (Jerusalem Post) – Israel’s 19th general election is seminal because it is the first since 1965 to have been dominated by domestic issues. It is through this prism that its parties, issues and candidates should be seen. Among the parties, Labor should take credit for this change of the agenda. Its strategic decision to focus on the economy and all but ignore foreign affairs has been a success. This is what most voters wanted discussed, and this is what the campaign ended up debating.

   After decades of allowing the Right and the Left to preach and execute their Greater Israel and land-for-peace visions, swing voters concluded they were wasting their limited political resources on a conflict that they no longer believed will be solved in their lifetimes.

   The mainstream electorate that fought the war on suicide bombers, imposed the West Bank security barrier on thenprime minister Ariel Sharon and then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and finally backed the retreat from Gaza is the same electorate that later took to the streets demanding cheaper housing, education and food.

   And so, though an end to the Middle East conflict is nowhere in sight, Israeli politics have entered the post-conflict era, as voters have come to see the conflict’s treatment as a matter of management rather than ideology.

   The politicians who tried to resist this trend, Tzipi Livni with her focus on the Palestinian front and Shaul Mofaz with his initial focus on Iran, failed in their quests. The public yawned so impolitely that the two soon joined everyone else’s domestic discourse – Livni by suddenly recalling her past as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s privatization czar, which she now claims to regret, and Mofaz by celebrating his social origins as an immigrant boy who rose to command the IDF.

   Indeed, Kadima, the party that the two led successively, entered the outgoing Knesset as its largest faction, and emerges from it a political relic, having been caught off guard by the social upheaval in the summer of 2011. While Kadima preached peace, it discovered that the people expected their politicians not to wait with their treatment of mortgages, tuition and cheese prices until Israel’s enemies are persuaded to beat swords into plowshares.

   More specifically, the vote pits Labor’s Shelly Yacimovich, who plans to hike social spending and upper-echelon taxation, against Netanyahu, who plans to rebalance the budget by cutting it.

5. 

   Oui on January 22, 2013 at 4:39 pm

   .

   Analysis: Why Likud collapsed

   (JPost) – It is true that having a real, tangible adversary in an election can be helpful. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, he became his own worst enemy. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a lot of confidants, and some of them are not afraid to be brutally honest, as long as you don’t identify them.

   When one of them was asked what he would have done differently to prevent the Likud’s free-fall from 42 seats in the outgoing Knesset, he said: “I would have sent Netanyahu to Iceland for the duration of the campaign so he wouldn’t screw it up and lose 10 seats.”

   …
   Without a candidate on the Center-Left considered serious competition, Netanyahu pretended at times to be running against President Shimon Peres, former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Europe, US President Barack Obama, and finally that generic, hated foe “international pressure.”

   It is true that having a real, tangible adversary in an election can be helpful. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, he became his own worst enemy.

   • Election results 18th Knesset in 2009
6. 

   Oui on January 23, 2013 at 3:33 am

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   Kadima party just met the threshold for two mandates and shifts the final result to a tie 60-60.

   According to a tally of 99.5% of the votes, the results are as follows:

   *    Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu: 31
   *    Yesh Atid: 19
   *    Labor: 15
   *    Shas: 11
   *    Habayit Hayehudi: 11
   *    United Torah Judaism: 7
   *    Hatnua: 6
   *    Meretz: 6
   *    United Arab List-Taal: 5
   *    Hadash: 4
   *    Balad: 3
   *    Kadima: 2

   The results also spell one of the narrowest gaps ever noted between the Right and Center-Left blocs in the Knesset; giving the Right 60 seats and the Center-Left 52 seats. Factoring in the Arab parties’ mandates, the House could potentially be divided 60-60.

   The results are expected to make it tough for Netanyahu to form a coalition. The prime minister vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible, saying that aside from the Likud’s natural partners, he considers Yesh Atid a “true partner” in government.

    « click for story

7. 

   Oui on January 23, 2013 at 9:22 am

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   Should have read Finkelstein, thanks.

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