Former Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Tuesday after winning the election. /
Jewish supremacists become the third force in the country and key support for Netanyahu to regain power
The polls in Israel were right with the victory of Benjamin Netanyahu, but failed to announce that the political deadlock in Parliament would be maintained. With almost 90% of the vote counted, Likud obtains 32 seats, but what is more important is that the bloc led by Netanyahu in the Knesset reaches 65 deputies, which gives it a large majority to form a stable government. In the absence of a last-minute surprise with a turnaround in the final stretch of the count that allows Meretz and Balad to overcome the 3.25% barrier to be in the chamber, Netanyahu, 73, will once again occupy the chair of prime minister as it already did for fifteen years. For this, it will have the support of Religious Zionism, a Jewish supremacist formation that has become the third force in the country, whose program includes proposals such as the application of the death penalty for «terrorists», total immunity for soldiers, the deportation of «disloyal citizens » and the prison for asylum seekers.
While some senior Likud leaders called for caution until the end of the count, Netanyahu himself has already put on the suit of head of government again and said that his goal is to be a prime minister “of all Israelis.” The pools also began on the distribution of ministries between the parties that are called to form the most radical government in the history of the Jewish State.
The alliance is made up of the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Judaism of the Pentateuch, which have 19 deputies, and the religious ultra-nationalists of Religious Zionism, with 14 seats. The latter, led by settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the most popular face of these elections, claim the portfolios of Internal Security and Justice, although the latter will remain in the hands of Likud, according to Israeli media.
“The next steps of the government will be to do something similar to what happened in Poland and Hungary. Destroy judicial independence to, among other things, take authority away from the trial against Netanyahu for corruption,” says political scientist Alberto Spektorowski, for whom these elections also represent “a mortal blow against the Zionist left with a party like Meretz fighting to enter the Chamber” and the final result reflects that in Israel “as in many places in Europe there is a very strong populist radical right”.
During the celebration of election night, Netanyahu’s supporters greeted him with the cry of “King Bibi, King Bibi!”, while Ben Gvir’s slogan was shouted by his voters: “Death to the Arabs, death to the Arabs!” but also: “Next prime minister, next prime minister!” The 46-year-old ultra-nationalist lawyer replied that “I am not prime minister… for now.” Ben Gvir is the grandson of Iraqi Jews, he defends the annexation of the West Bank and aspires to “recover the property of the State”, as he insists in each of his interventions.
third force
“This is unprecedented, never in the history of Israel have we had a far-right party as strong as this one,” says Yigal Palmor, a former Israeli foreign spokesman from 2008 to 2014 and current head of international relations for the Jewish Agency. He is following with concern the vote count drawn by the “most radical government in our history” with the presence of figures like Ben Gvir, “which is catastrophic for the image of the country, there is no doubt. As are the extremists, ultranationalists and racists in any part of the world. He is a dangerous provocateur who is going to damage government policy.”
Israeli politics registers in each election the irruption and disappearance of parties. Religious Zionism is now the novelty as Jewish Home was before, a formation of former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet that this time has not even managed to enter the Chamber. The difference is that the feeling is that the Jewish supremacists are here to stay and have managed to connect with a broad sector of voters dissatisfied with the system who seek radical changes.