Israel’s Election System Explained

You know, there's a lot of talk about left-wing and right-wing governments across the world.

And I think what they mean in different contexts differs, of course.

When one talks about Israel, what exactly are we talking about when we say the Israeli right?

Right.

This is where the Israeli political map becomes complicated.

The Israel right is, you know, it's not one homogeneous constituency.

You have multiple parties involved in this equation.

You have Netanyahu's Likud party, which is a nationalist conservative party.

This party puts considerable emphasis on security, Jewish national identity and a strong executive position.

Then you also have the ultra-Orthodox parties such as the Shas and the United Torah Judaism.

Their priorities include religious education, welfare, and sort of preserving the religious status quo right now, which includes the controversial issue of Haredi military services, the ultra-Orthodox parties.

currently does not participate in the mandatory military services.

And then you also have religious nationalists and far-right parties, including Itamar Ben-Gavir, Utsma, Geodit, I'm sorry, I'm probably not pronouncing this correctly, and other allied religious Zionist parties, which, you know, take harder positions, harder positions than potentially Benjamin Netanyahu on Palestinian statehood, settlements and territorial questions.

And these groups may sit in the same governing block, but, you know, they probably don't want the same things or not ideologically on the same spectrum.

Okay, you know, when it comes to the Netanyahu government themselves, does the Netanyahu camp fall into this idea of quote-unquote the right?

Well, I think it is better to think of it as a coalition of different right-wing and religious constituencies, like I said, that they overlap on certain questions, particularly which involves questions of national security and Jewish national identity, but they can also diverge and quite sharply on issues pertaining to military service, religion and state, Jewish settlements, judicial reform, economic policies.

You know, the Jewish settlements, the settler politics, which was a fringe element, that's not the case anymore.

And that is why coalition partners can simultaneously be Netanyahu's political allies and his political constraints.

So it could mean both in a coalition.

And what about the opposition? Is it what one would understand then to be the Israeli left? Does it fall into what one would understand as traditionally left-wing or does that, of course, differ as well?

Interesting question, but I don't think there is something called an Israeli left in the sense of... what left-leaning politics actually means.

And much of the opposition is also not traditionally left-leaning.

For example, former military figures such as Gadi, Eisenkot, represent a security-oriented political tradition And Naftali Bennett, who used to be a former prime minister of Israel, Yair Lippid, occupy positions that are generally centrist or center-right on security, while another leader called Avigdor Lieberman is hawkish on national security, but is considered to be strongly secular on the issues of religion and state.

So there is a smaller liberal left constituency that is represented by political figures such as Yair Golan, which places greater emphasis on democratic institutions, judicial independence, even secularism and opposition to the annexation of West Bank.

But if you ask me that, are there any parties with conventionally left-leaning ideologies of democracy, Even considering a two-state solution with Palestine, at present, none of that, none of that exists.