The votes are counted, and the epicenter of political activity is now moving from the Knesset to the President's Residence. Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected in 2009, he has taken care to make the decision of the president – first Shimon Peres, then Reuven Rivlin – into a rubber stamp. Netanyahu saw the two presidents are hostile entities who wanted to bring him down and took care to present them with already-assembled coalitions. One of the worst ramifications of the lack of a clear victory in this week's election for Netanyahu is that fact that this time, the president could appoint another candidate to assemble the next government.
The prevailing belief is that Rivlin will be able to squeeze everything possible out of the opportunity. This time, everyone's eyes are on him. After calling for unity and urging the candidates to join hands, the president must, by law, assign on the responsibility of assembling the government.
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Rivlin can decide that given the lack of a clear win, he will give the responsibility of assembling a government to the winner of the election – Benny Gantz, under whom Blue and White became the biggest party. That is what former President Chaim Herzog did in 1984 when he decided to make Shimon Perez responsible for putting together a government when Peres' Labor party received the same number of votes as the Likud under Yitzhak Shamir.
Rivlin could also go with whoever brings in the most recommendations from his fellow MKs. In that case, Netanyahu would appear to have an advantage. He has about 56 seats in his pocket, on the Right and from the haredi parties. Gantz, on the other hand, has only Blue and White and the other two left-wing parties, which give him only about 45 recommendations. And if Gantz doesn't up his number of recommendations, it will be a resounding political failure. Gantz could easily enlist the support of Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, who shares his message of a unity government without the haredim, as well as the support of the Arab parties (with the possible exception of Balad), which under Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi have been heavily hinting that they wouldn't have a problem recommending Gantz if it helped oust Netanyahu.
It's not certain it would be a boon to either candidate to be the first one assigned to assemble a government. If the first fails, the second will get a chance. When the time allotted by law runs out, there is a difference between someone else being given a chance and knowing that the country will face another election. Party leaders will think twice before calling a third election and putting Israel on the list of politically unstable countries, like Italy.
A mandate from the president isn't the only thing on Netanyahu's mind when he analyzes the election results. Even if he manages to form a government, it will be a coalition that will bind his hands and possibly might not last long. If left-wing figures like Amir Peretz or Gantz become coalition partners, it will mean a freeze on planned reforms to the justice system, law enforcement, and will enable pressure for concessions when the Trump administration unveils its peace plan.
Many media pundits and members of the opposition think that this is a positive development. They see the moves the Right is initiating as designed to make Netanyahu immune from prosecution and allow him to be tried while serving as prime minister, as he works to weaken the court and the prosecution.
Law enforcement and justice officials' war against Netanyahu is a personal one, whose goal is to topple Netanyahu. The moment law enforcement doesn't come up with the goods, they become targets, like the attorney general.
For the Right, depending on left-winger to form a coalition is a major step back from what the right-wing government achieved, and there appeared to be a lot more to come. That is what the Likud supporters meant by their cries of "We don't want unity!" It appears that if Likud supporters were to vote on whether they wanted a unity government or a third election, most would choose the second option.
But as bad, or funny, or bizarre, as that sounds, the possibility of another election in February or March of next year is on the table. As of right now, none of the candidates have a chance of forming a government. Gantz walled himself off by his phone call to Ayman Odeh after the election. Netanyahu closed himself off with leaders of the Right and the haredim and formed an alliance with them. Now he needs them, and they will need him later one. Just like they could decide to join a government under Gantz, he could head them off and join forces with Gantz himself.
As far as Netanyahu is concerned, the only scenario in which he is not prime minister is a third election. The question is – do the other right-wing parties feel the same way? The only coalition Gantz could assemble would be a nearly impossible one: Lieberman and the haredim, or the New Right and Meretz. None of these are combinations that could work together and survive for long. So despite what party leaders were saying just before the election, a third round might be the best option for them.
While Gantz's achievement might be partial, it's the most he could have gotten out of this election. Even in the rosiest scenario, it was clear from the beginning he wouldn't have a coalition unless he went with the Arabs. Gantz's achievement, therefore, is in throwing a wrench into Netanyahu's plans. He could try to break down the right-wing alliance and bring some of its members to his side, or he could try to foment a rebellion in the Likud to have Netanyahu replaced as party leader. If one of those tactics succeeds, it could install him as prime minister, but neither one has much of a chance.
So Gantz has two bad choices: joining a government under Netanyahu and the Right, either with or without Lapid, or a third election. It's unclear which would be worse for him. If he has to run in a third election, it would be the toughest entrée into politics any candidate has ever had. Is Gantz built for a long-term campaign? He might be more tempted by an appointment to the post of defense minister in a Netanyahu-led government that would hold on for a few years.
Gantz would really like for the threat of a third election to spark a revolt in the Likud that would oust Netanyahu. Then he could form a unity government with the new party head. Unless Netanyahu resigns, that's unlikely to happen. The Likud ministers would prefer another election over facing off with Netanyahu. For Netanyahu to be ousted from the party leadership, a senior party member would need to call a primary election. If that happened, most senior Likud members would back Netanyahu.
The failure of the Right in this election stemmed mainly from Netanyahu's scare campaign, which started to sound like he was crying wolf. It was hard to convince supporters that the right-wing government was in danger when he said it twice already, and it turned out not to be. This time, when the right-wing government really was in danger, no one believed it. Likud strongholds in the periphery, in the poorer neighborhoods of major cities, and even in Judea and Samaria saw much lower voter turnout this time than in April. Left-wing areas, however, were fully engaged. A scent of a possible change of government was in the air and everyone lent their hand to the effort. The Arab sector also saw an unusually high rate of participation in the election. Netanyahu thought that the idea of putting cameras in polling stations and pressuring the Arab sector would make them feel desolate, but it did the opposite – it spurred them on to vote.
Just like the possibility of removing Netanyahu as head of the Likud isn't an option, the possibility of Blue and White splitting isn't an option now, either. If anything could help Gantz navigate the intensive months in which he was attacked and slandered from every side, it was the wall-to-wall support he enjoyed from the media from the moment he challenged Netanyahu. Scandals were swept under the rug, he was asked almost no tough questions, and even when he decided to boycott some media outlets he was afraid of, no one gave him a hard time or criticized him for it. So it doesn't look like Gantz is ready to give up his biggest asset, because he knows that the moment he cooperates with Netanyahu, he'll lose the protection he had and he will be marked by the media, as were so many who preceded him, and paid the price.
When Amir Peretz managed to become leader of the Labor party, it was clear to him what the next step was. With every fiber of his being, he wanted to do what he did in the 2006 election – bring Likud supporters to Labor. He set a goal of winning 15 seats, so he should have been disappointed with the results. But Peretz wasn't. He thinks it was a good result. He also thinks he lost a lot of seats to Blue and White but that his aggressive campaigning in Likud areas moved two seats from the Likud to Labor.
Peretz stressed that he wouldn't go back on his promise not to join a government under Netanyahu. Joining the government would have been advantageous to Peretz for many reasons. He would have been proof against being removed as party leader, for example. He would have been promised to be allowed to run for president a year and a half from now. His party colleagues would have received major portfolios like finance or other economic ministries. But Peretz kept his promise. Many of his predecessors hung onto their integrity but not onto power.
When we look at the election results for the Democratic Union, it's hard not to wonder what Ehud Barak's strange political turn meant. He started out as a kind of candidate for prime minister, went on to herald a unification of the Left, and finally joined forces with Meretz and disappeared into oblivion. His associated are convinced that he got back into politics to help bring down Netanyahu.
Others see his political foray as a business venture. In the many years since he last held public office, the former prime minister and defense minister has been forgotten by the public and the media. And nothing is worse for business than when it turns out that the person who was made a director because he could supposedly open doors can at most break into homes. This last run was very valuable for Barak. In three months, he became one of the most interesting, relevant figures in Israeli public life, and perhaps that the point from the beginning.
One of the people who came out of the election disappointed was Ayelet Shaked. The Yamina leader has taken quite the path in the space of a few months, but the election results have put her at an impasse. When party lists were finalized a month and a half ago, it looked as if no one was better for the job than she. Polls were favorable and activists who were hungry for success were mostly willing to swallow the humiliation of her jumping ship from Habayit Hayehudi to found the New Right with Naftali Bennett, and not only welcome her back on the list but to make her head of it. It was so obvious to everyone that she was only one who could lead it to success that Rafi Peretz turned over the keys without a fight and without preconditions.
The division of labor was supposed to have been clear – Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich were to bring in religious Zionist and national haredi voters, and Shaked would bring in the liberal religious and the secular voters, increasing the list's normal electorate.
That didn't happen. Very quickly, Shaked found herself pulled into a sectorial campaign. In the final stretch, the target audience was religious voters only, and she put all her eggs into that basket. Shaked saw how Netanyahu was trying to eat away at her religious Zionist base and she was forced to fight him for that constituency. It's uncertain how many religious Zionist voters moved to the Likud, but there's no doubt that the number of secular voters who switched to Yamina was negligible.
If we're talking about Yamina, we can't avoid mentioning the party that nibbled away at the Right. Up until the last, Netanyahu didn't know what to do about Otzma Yehudit. After he decided to wipe them out, he saw them rising in the polls and took care to make that clear, thinking that the party could bring another four seats to the right-wing bloc.
In the end, it turned out the attention paid to Itamar Ben-Gvir and Otzma Yehudit wasn't worth the energy. After the election, Smotrich rushed to attack Otzma Yehudit, claiming that ego had cost the Right precious seats. The Right did indeed lose seats, but their worth is questionable. In retrospect, Otzma Yehudit "burned" about 80,000 right-wing votes by failing to make it past the minimum electoral threshold. That number proves that Netanyahu was right by saying nothing could help the party. They were too far from the minimum threshold.
The election results also showed that in contrast to what Ben-Gvir had said, the right-wing bloc wouldn't have had 61 seats, even with Otzma Yehudit. Ben-Gvir might have wasted 2.5 right-wing seats, but as things stand, they wouldn't have been enough. Even if he had dropped out of the race and the votes were spread between the other right-wing parties, or if he had made it into the Knesset with four seats of his own, the basic picture – in which the Right doesn't have a majority – wouldn't change.
