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Israel's electoral threshold: A matchmaker for marriages of convenience

The four-Knesset-seat threshold has forced several parties to form alliances despite starkly contrasting ideological differences between them.
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On July 28, the council of Meretz convened to approve the left-wing party's merger with Democratic Israel, led by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Labor Party Knesset member Stav Shaffir. The writer David Grossman, addressing the Meretz delegates, endorsed the deal. “Sometimes,” he said, “marriages of convenience hold together better than marriages of love.” Perhaps, but not all is rosy in this political marriage.

Over the years, the political meanderings of Meretz's happy “groom,” Barak, had taken him from the Israel Ahat alliance to Labor to Atzmaut, and today the extent of his love for his new bride, the political left, was obvious at their engagement ceremony. Announcing the formation of the Democratic Camp on July 25, Barak pointed to himself, declaring that as number 10 on the alliance’s slate of Knesset candidates, along with the number 2 on the list, Shaffir, he would lead the “sharpest, most biting, most between-the-eyes campaign.” He “forgot” to mention Nitzan Horowitz, Meretz chief and the leader of the new alliance.

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