Published: 16 August 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Three basic scenarios for Israel’s upcoming election: Sweet dreams, King Lieberman and Your worst nightmare (Haaretz)
Here are the three basic scenarios that could emerge from the election. From the point of view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents, these can be divided into three categories: Sweet Dreams, King Lieberman and Your Worst Nightmare:
1. Sweet Dreams (aka Pie in the Sky): The centre-left improves its performance in the April 9 elections by 5 seats, reaching a blocking majority of 60 or more seats without Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Benjamin Netanyahu’s path to forming a new right-wing government is effectively blocked.
2. King Lieberman: Both political blocs secure around 55 seats each, as the polls indicated all along. The balance of 10 seats is held by Yisrael Beiteinu, effectively anointing Lieberman as the ultimate kingmaker of Israeli politics.
3. Your Worst Nightmare (aka the Death of Democracy): Arabs stay at home, Labor falls flat and right-wingers come to the polls in droves, giving the right- wing bloc more than 61 seats and enabling Netanyahu to form a religious-right coalition without Lieberman. Such a coalition would exempt Netanyahu from criminal prosecution in exchange for a sweeping upheaval of the judicial system, politicisation of the civil service and active measures to annex parts or all of the West Bank.
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Illustration: Avi Katz
