2 min read
ByAnshel Pfeffer, Anshel Pfeffer
“Bibi wants elections as soon as possible and this is the issue he wants to fight it on, the nation-state.”
August 9, 2018 14:29No date has yet been set for Israel’s next election. Technically, it could take place anytime between this November and November 2019. In the Knesset, the prevailing view is that when MKs return for the autumn session after the High Holidays, the parties will get together and decide on holding it in either March or May 2019. But whenever Israelis go to the polling stations — and at least some of the coalition parties are still hoping to eke out this government’s days to the very end next November — the first round of the election campaign has already been fought to a draw.
Benjamin Netanyahu sounded the starter’s pistol last month, when he surprised many of his own partners by suddenly galloping the Nation-State Law, which languished for seven years in committees, over the final legislation hurdles in the last minutes of the summer term. “There was no clearer signal,” said one coalition MK, miffed at being whipped in to vote for the law. “Bibi wants elections as soon as possible and this is the issue he wants to fight it on, the nation-state.”
The prime minister is racing against time. Since Likud has only a quarter of the Knesset seats, he cannot dictate the timing of the election, but he knows full well that if Attorney-General Avichai Mendelblitt completes his ponderous deliberations and issues a decision to indict him on corruption charges, the campaign will be totally overshadowed by his own personal alleged criminal issues. Getting the Nation-State Law across the line at the end of the last term in which he can rely on the coalition for a majority was an attempt to at least dictate the terms of the election campaign before Mr Mendelblitt announces his fateful decision.
It was a repetition of the message Mr Netanyahu used at the end of the 2015 election campaign, where Likud used anonymous text messages to rally its base, warning them that “turnout is three times higher in the Arab sector” — and the prime minister himself, on election day, posted a video on Facebook in which he said that “the Arab voters are moving in droves to the polling stations.”
But last time Mr Netanyahu reached for the dogwhistle at the very end of the campaign. Now he has blown it at the start and given his opponents time to respond.
No politicians spoke at the rally on Saturday night in Tel Aviv, organised by the Druze-Israeli community in protest over the Nation-State Law. But was still an intensely political event.
It allowed the parties of the centre-left to focus their effort of trying to portray opposition to the law as a patriotic act.
The Druze are Israel’s “model minority” — non-Jews who serve in the IDF and are perceived as being bound to the Jewish state in a “pact of blood”. They are unlike the Israeli-Arab political leadership, which challenges the foundational narrative of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
As one of the Druze activists at the rally told me: “On the one hand, we’re all here to be hugged by the Israeli-Jewish consensus. But the Jews also need, right now, to give legitimacy to protest against the Nation-State Law.”
The leaders of the Zionist Union (Labour), chose to unveil a key part of their manifesto hours before the rally. Avi Gabbay and Tzipi Livni promised that, should they form the next government, they would legislate Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which includes some of the nationalistic components of the Nation-State Law, as well as the sections on full equality for all citizens which were omitted from the law.
Polls so far are inconclusive. A small majority of Israelis supports the law, but a similar majority also supports the Druze protest. Focus groups however show that, even among some of the law’s right-wing supporters, there are those who feel that it was ultimately a “PR spin” by Mr Netanyahu.
With the first round of the campaign over, it seems the prime minister has succeeded in framing the debate, for now at least, on issues of patriotism.
But that his opponents have articulated an effective response. This is, however, just the first round of what promises to be a particularly vicious and divisive campaign.
