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Low turnout expected in Israeli elections

The 2013 Israeli government promised reforms in education, transport, housing prices and cost of living, but the early elections set for March 17 have cut short the formulation of these reforms, disappointing large parts of the public.
Labour party candidates Itzik Shmuli (R) and Stav Shaffir attend a mock election at a high school in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv December 6, 2012. The leaders of a grassroots social protest movement that swept Israel in 2011, Shaffir and Shmuli, have shot to the top of a rejuvenated Labour party that polls say will at least double its power in a Jan. 22 general election that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud is forecast to win. Picture taken December 6, 2012. REUTERS/Amir Cohen (ISRAEL - Tags
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When the public heard the surprising news Dec. 2 about the disbanding of the third Netanyahu government less than two years after its inception in March 2013, Uria Levy, a 28-year-old resident of Tel Aviv, decided to express his own little protest. He filmed himself for a short clip in which he looks straight into the camera and says: “I, Uria Levy, pledge not to vote in the 2015 elections.” This sentence succinctly expresses the sense of growing despair regarding Israel’s political leadership, as reflected in the town square of the social media.

The Facebook page of Yair Lapid, the finance minister dismissed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tells the same story. Less than two years ago, it was filled with hope and the promise of a new kind of politics; this week it was filled with the sounds of his supporters’ despair, as though he had suddenly grown old by the unfulfilled promise in less than half a term in office.

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