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Careful what you wish for: The lesson of Israel's vote threshold

Israel's vote threshold has created a situation in which the Likud, which went to great effort to expel Moshe Feiglin, prays that his party will cross the threshold to enter the Knesset, while Blue and White, which dislikes Balad, hopes for its success.
A general view shows the plenum at the knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun - RC128845A660
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For weeks now it has been clear to all that the April 9 elections will be decided by the small parties that manage to pass the vote threshold for entering the Knesset. The irony of fate is that Avigdor Liberman, the architect of the idea to raise the Knesset-entry threshold from 2% to 3.25% on the eve of the 2015 elections, had intended it to limit the number of parties vying for seats in the legislature and to reduce the undue power of the small parties.

The first unintended consequence was the formation of the Joint List in 2015 to enable three small Arab parties to pass the threshold. The party won 13 mandates and emerged as the third largest party in the Knesset. If Liberman’s real plan had been to create a vote threshold that no Arab party could surpass, he only succeeded in creating an Arab political force comprised of the religious, nationalists, communists and others whose only common cause was opposition to Zionism.

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