The coalition agreements signed by the Likud Party with its government partners in May 2015 include a clause saying that the government will formulate a legislative proposal enabling Israelis who are abroad on Knesset election day to vote. Indeed, previous coalition agreements between the Likud and its partners, which included similar stipulations, amounted to little in past years. But according to a senior Likud source who spoke with Al-Monitor, in the remaining two years of this government’s term, a real effort will be made to advance this initiative.

The proposed legislation is the baby of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been seeking to promote it for over a decade, so far unsuccessfully. It would enable every registered Israeli voter who is out of the country on election day to cast a ballot at an official Israeli mission abroad. Then-Likud Knesset member Moshe Arens submitted the first version of the bill to the Knesset in 2001, but it did not pass.

The Likud supports the idea in light of surveys among Israelis living in the United States, which indicate that the right wing might pick up one or two additional Knesset seats from absentee constituents. In 2015, a senior Likud minister told Haaretz that the initiative was also designed to weaken the Arab parties, given that the proportion of Arab Israeli citizens living abroad is smaller than their 20% share of the population in Israel.

Estimates made in 2010 put the number of Israelis residing abroad at about 540,000. Experts are divided on the question of their voting preferences, and whether they would even show up to vote. Most experts support the idea of absentee voting, allowed by many countries.