The Israeli peace camp can defeat the right in the next election, facing a prime minister the police have already recommended for indictment in at least two cases of bribery and may yet face additional ones by the next election. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit may actually decide to indict him by then. They are also facing a minister of welfare (Haim Katz, also of the Likud) who is expected to stand trial for bribery pending a hearing. And then there is Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, a convicted criminal who already served time in prison and yet, much to the country’s shame, returned to the government and even to the ministry where he first committed his crime, only to be investigated again for additional crimes. It would be hard for the current coalition to ask the public for its trust for another four years.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is far from enjoying the support of a majority of the country. He relies on the backing of about a quarter of the public to form a very narrow coalition. Because he is dependent on the smaller parties, he has a hard time fulfilling his promises. In the past, his electoral defeats were always a knockout, while his victories came down to a sparse few points.
In 1996, for example, when Israel had direct elections for its prime minister, Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres by less than one percentage point, while the Likud’s Knesset faction had fewer seats than the Labor Party. Three years later, in 1999, Netanyahu was defeated in another direct election, this time pitting him against Labor’s Ehud Barak. When he ran again as head of the Likud in 2006, the party won just 12 seats and Netanyahu was almost deposed. After the 2009 election, Netanyahu managed to put together a narrow coalition even though the Likud under his leadership won 27 seats, while Kadima, headed by Tzipi Livni, won 28 seats.
When he called an early election in 2012, Netanyahu felt it necessary to unite his party with Yisrael Beitenu, headed by Avigdor Liberman. Even running together, these two parties lost 11 seats. Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, whose new party won a remarkable 19 seats, almost formed a coalition, though it was Netanyahu who did so in the end.
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