The third election to be held in Israel in less than a year has led to another realignment of the country’s political kaleidoscope.
In an effort to maximise their attractiveness to voters and produce a result that differs from the two elections of 2019, smaller parties on both the left and the right of the spectrum have combined their movements.
On this page, the JC looks at the main contender parties that could form next Israel's next coalition government.
Pick a party and scroll down to read more
Projection: 9 seats
Combines: Labour, Gesher, Meretz
Labour, the party that founded Israel, recorded the worst results of its history in the two elections of 2019, forcing its reluctant leader Amir Peretz (right) to bow to the inevitable and forge an alliance with the left-wing Meretz under Nitzan Horowitz (left). The new partnership does not extend to smaller left-wing parties like Stav Shaffir’s Greens, but former nationalist Orly Levi-Abekasis’s Gesher is still included.
Projection: 34 seats
Combines: Israel Resilience, Yesh Atid, Telem
There is no disputing Blue & White’s success: founded in February 2019, it has not celebrated its first birthday yet, but it in both elections in 2019 it won roughly as many votes as Likud and Benny Gantz (left) — who is in alliance with two other former IDF generals, Moshe Yaalon and Gabi Ashkenazi, and the centrist Yesh Atid party of Yair Lapid (right) — is the only credible alternative to become prime minister.
Projection: 31 seats
Likud remains the modern mainstay of Israeli politics, a party that reflects the sympathies if not necessarily the votes of most conservatives. In the past year, party leader Benjamin Netanyahu has increasingly pandered to the fringes of Israel’s right wing in an effort to cement his power bloc and lengthen an unbroken decade in power. But the tactic failed to generate a breakthrough in either of 2019’s elections and there is little so far to suggest it will succeed in 2020 either.
Projection: 11 seats
Combines: The New Right, National Union, Jewish Home
Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked (left and right respectively) surprised many observers when they announced a tieup with Bezalel Smotrich’s hard-right National Union in what they called a “great unification of the ideological right and religious-Zionism”. After a brief hesitation and an abortive alliance with the extremist Jewish Power movement, Rafi Peretz and his Jewish Home party signed as well.
Projection: 13 seats
Combines: Balad, Hadash, Ta’al, United Arab List
Representing political views across the spectrum from socialism to Islamism, the four main Arab parties are again fielding a joint list of candidates to help win as many seats as they can under Israel’s proportional electoral system. But the parties do disagree: after the last election, Balad refused join the other three in endorsing Benny Gantz for prime minister. Ayman Odeh (above) of Hadash leads the alliance.
Projection: 7 seats
If there is one reason why Benjamin Netanyahu was not comfortably returned last year at the head of a fresh coalition, it is Avigdor Lieberman (above). He refused to join a Likud-led coalition after refusing to water down his plan for more Strictly Orthodox draftees in the IDF — and it played down well his voters, many of whom are secular-minded migrants from the former Soviet Union whose children have served. He pushed for a unity government after the September election.
Projection: 8 seats
This Strictly Orthodox party is very close to Benjamin Netanyahu: before the 2019 elections, the prime minister’s portrait appeared alongside that of leader Aryeh Deri (above) across Charedi neighbourhoods. But it has not always been so — Shas has sat with in government with Labour in the past.
Projection: 8 seats
Combines: Degel HaTorah, Agudat Israel
There was little talk this time of a UTJ alliance with Shas, unlike previous elections. It means recently-promoted Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (above) will lead UTJ’s two factions into this election once again.
Endorsed Netanyahu for prime minister last time
Endorsed Gantz for prime minister last time
No clear prime minister endorsement
There are 120 seats in the Knesset, which means a coalition will need at least 61 votes to form the next Israeli government — a figure that has proven to be remarkably elusive in 2019’s two elections.
Israel’s election system involves a threshold: a party that wins less than this share of the national vote will win no Knesset seats. It can lead to significant blocs of voters being excluded: in April 2019, the New Right fell short of the threshold, meaning Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked were out.
