Israel Votes 2009: CIC’s David Weinberg Reflects on Election Day

On a rainy election day, David Weinberg, Director CIC Israel office, reflects on  the quiet – indeed sober – campaign.

It’s been a blessedly short and remarkably quiet election campaign here in Israel, and now its time to vote. I went early in the morning, to avoid the lineups, and to get my vote in early. Making a choice wasn’t hard; I’ve known who I was going to vote for months. But that didn’t stop the campaigners from calling all day long. We received at least a dozen telephone calls with recorded messages that run something like this: “Hi, this is Benjamin Netanyahu, and I urge you to vote today for a strong, stable Likud government that will bring security and peace to Israel…” or “This is Tzipi Livni and I need you to help me bring peace…” In synagogue, in the shopping mall, at the gym, at traffic lights too – everywhere I went today – there were party activists hawking their last-minute wares.  

Fifty percent of the electorate had voted as of 6 pm this evening, which is considered high. The percentage could easily rise to 75 percent by 10 pm when the polls close.

Today was supposed to have been a national picnic day; all places of work and schools are closed by law. But it rained and stormed, so most people stayed home, jumped out to vote, cooked a good meal for lunch, and are settling in for a long evening of television watching; the first exit polls will be released beginning at 10 pm. My wife and I have a dozen friends coming over to drink wine and whiskey and celebrate/mourn the results.

Yet nobody is getting too excited. This has been a sober, grim campaign led by lackluster candidates. Even the last-minute, unexpected drama - a reportedly tight race between Likud and Kadima – has failed to really stir things up. Everybody knows that the Likud-rightist-religious bloc will come out ahead.

Much of the international press coverage I’ve seen already has the Israeli election all wrong. To them, the election is all about the rise of a “racist, hard right-wing” in Israel, personified by the surprising strength of Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party.

Indeed, Lieberman’s strength is one of the surprise stories of this election, but I think its mainly a protest vote against the three mainstream and veteran parties, much like the surprise showing of the Pensioners party in the last election or Shinui in the election prior to that.

There is a shift to the right in Israel, but it is more subtle and correctly rooted in a strategic reading of the Middle East than in any Lieberman-style populist hate-mongering. The best article I’ve seen on this was Herb Keinon’s commentary in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, which we posted on the blog.

Keinon explains why Israelis have turned away from Labor and Kadima and have lost faith in the Oslo process and the dawn of any ‘New Middle East’:  ”Palestinian actions over the last 15 years have transformed Israeli society, and the country has gone from believing in the 1990s that it had reached safe shores and had been accepted in the region, to believing in 2009 that no matter what it does – be it negotiating a peace deal based on ceding some 95 percent of the territories, or unilaterally evacuating settlements – it will not be accepted in the region. While the pundits were warning about the radicalization of Palestinian society and overlooking what the Palestinians were doing to Israeli society, they were also calling unceasingly for Israeli confidence-building measures – steps they calculated were needed to shore up Palestinians’ confidence that Israel was indeed genuine about wanting a peace deal, as if the withdrawal from Gaza and evacuation of more than 9,000 Jews was not enough of an indication.

 ”But how about the confidence of Israelis? What were the Palestinians doing to build that up? Suicide bombing attacks, homemade rockets, and tunnels meant to kidnap soldiers don’t exactly do the trick. So as a result, we are facing a situation where regardless of whether it is Likud or Kadima that wins Tuesday’s elections by a seat or two, the right-wing bloc will most likely be strengthened considerably, as the Left is simply melting away,” Keinon concludes.

 Keinon adds that it is not only the Palestinians who bear a great deal of responsibility for this fundamental shift in the country’s mood; so do the politicians of the Israeli Arab parties. “For the last 15 years, the ticket for political success on the Israeli Arab street seemed to be strident rhetoric against the state. The more angry and bitter the rhetoric, the better the Arab parties – competing among themselves – seemed to do at the polls among the Arab voters. The problem is that it was not only the voters in Umm el- Fahm, Kafr Kana and Rahat who were listing to the diatribes of Balad’s Azmi Bishara and UAL-Ta’al’s Taleb a-Sanaa and Ahmed Tibi; so were the residents of Tel Aviv, Modi’in and Jerusalem. So when Lieberman runs on a ticket demanding loyalty to the state, his words are falling on ears extremely weary of Bishara, Sanaa and Tibi’s tirades.”

As I said, these are sober,  not hot-headed, realities. Whoever wakes up as Prime Minister in Israel tomorrow will have his/her plate full: a difficult coalition challenge, a looming Iranian threat, aggressive and threatening enemies on our southern and northern borders, a fatally stalemated diplomatic process with the Palestinians in the West Bank, a hurting economy, and more. He or she should enjoy their shots of whiskey tonight, because there is little rest ahead for them in the months and years ahead.

Possibly related posts:

• Israel Votes 2009: CIC’s David Weinberg Crunches the Numbers
• Israel Votes 2009: CIC’s David Weinberg on How New Polls Are Shaking Up Boring Campaigns
• Israel Votes 2009: Analysis – Actions and Reactions
• Israel Votes 2009: CIC’s David Weinberg on the Obama and Ross Factors
• Israel Votes 2009: CIC’s David Weinberg Watches the Parties’ TV Ads