What is the fate of Israel? The fate of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right alliance over 15 years of his term as prime minister in a close election

This approach understates the potential consequences of the shift in Israeli politics that this government represents. The cabinet is not another iteration of the unstable alliances that led to the past four elections. Those coalitions, like many before them, often included fringe religious or nationalist parties, but they were usually kept in check by more moderate political parties or even by Mr. Netanyahu over the 15 years he served as prime minister.

With the country’s close race, Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to return to power as prime minister and his alliance with the far-right appears likely.

Lapid campaigned with center-left allies, arguing he would keep right-wing extremism at bay. Palestinians killed 25 Israelis this year, prompting Netanyahu to promise a sense of security for Israelis. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in the last six months, making it the most lethal period in several years.

“The right side don’t like gay people, don’t like Arabs,” says Liron Gur, a gay Israeli voter. If they are the power, I think my life will be very bad.

At a polling station in Jerusalem where Netanyahu cast his ballot, some right-wing voters said they were abandoning support this time for Netanyahu and his right-wing allies.

“We don’t believe him,” says cab driver Udi Avni, who for the first time is not voting for Netanyahu and says he’ll cast his vote for the center-left Labor Party instead. He doesn’t care about anything else. His trial was about being free.

After exit polls were released, Benjamin Netanyahu told his supporters he was on the verge of a big victory. They applauded, “Bibi, King of Israel.”

“My hope was that the Jewish people would win, and Judaism would win, and that we won in the end,” says Netanyahu voter Haim Asher. “It doesn’t matter that much who is the prime minister. We want a Jewish identity in the country.”

Far right leaders danced with their supporters at campaign headquarters after the exit polls were published. Activists chanted “death to terrorists” during a speech by a far-right politician. Netanyahu will appoint him as a Cabinet minister.

“All the time I was believing that I could do my job, make our life a better place, I could collect people and bring people together, I really thought that I could do it all,” Alkadi says. I feel disconnected to the reality, and Israel is going to be a bad place.

All that is now threatened. The new government hopes to save Mr Netanyahu from prosecution and potential prison time, since right-wing parties have an absolute majority in the Knesset. In the absence of a constitution, the Israeli Supreme Court has weighed in on government actions against international law, and it is among the targets of the new leaders. The nationalists would diminish their authority by giving themselves power to overrule Supreme Court decisions. Not incidentally, they have also proposed eliminating the law under which Mr. Netanyahu faces a possible prison term.

It’s expected that the government will have an “unprecedented agenda” that will contribute to an erosion of Israeli democracy.

The past five years have seen far fewer Israeli civilian and military casualties than in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the Israeli Jewish public has also become much less willing to stomach losses. During the 21-day war in Israel last spring, there was a lot of interethnic violence in mixed cities and Mr. Ben-Gvir sympathized with peoples desire for a quick resolution. The establishment of sovereignty over Eretz Israel has been promised in the party’s platform, which also mentions the settlement of the enemies of Israel in the Arab countries.

Editor’s Note: Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.” Miller was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

If former Saturday Night Live great and actor Bill Murray wasn’t hired as a technical adviser to Israel’s Central Elections Committee, he surely might have been. Based on pre-election polling it seemed that Israel was headed for yet another Groundhog Day-style hung election for the fifth time in just short of four years.

The election was very important for Netanyahu. Had he failed to secure a governing majority – one that is likely to pass legislation to postpone or even cancel his trial – he may well have had to face the consequences of a guilty verdict or a plea bargain that would have driven him away from politics.

The left in Israel used to be dominated by the Labor Party, which now has less than one seat in the Knesset.

But while polling had predicted that the Religious Zionism – a bloc of three extremist parties that collectively embody a racist, Jewish supremacist, anti-Arab and homophobic view – would do well in the election, the extent of their success was nonetheless stunning.

The new prime minister is now beholden to these extremists and the two ultra-Orthodox parties who will have a long list of demands. The right wing and ultras in his own government make him a minority.

Facing criticism in Israel and abroad, Netanyahu previously did not talk about Itamar Ben-Gvir, the most controversial far-right politician in Israel who is next in line to be Netanyahu’s minister of national security.

One might think that this kind of narrow right-wing government won’t last. There may be more that ties this coalition together than divides it. The two Orthodox parties have been out of power and are eager to secure support for their religious schools and institutions.

How will this government actually behave? It’s safe to say as Israel’s 75th anniversary approaches next year, it won’t bring the country any closer to tackling the domestic and foreign policy challenges it faces and will almost certainly make them worse. Israel will see its rule of law under serious threat at home.

With less resources for their community and the possibility of a serious confrontation with Palestinians in the West Bank or Jerusalem, relations with Israel’s Arab citizens will likely be less than optimal.

There will be some constraints on the government’s behavior. Netanyahu doesn’t want to have a fight with Hamas or Hezbollah. The recently concluded maritime boundary agreement with Lebanon is one of the things he wants to preserve. He wants to maintain the Abraham Accords and lay the groundwork for relations with Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu would approve of the return of Donald Trump, like Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. Biden didn’t need or want the return of Netanyahu, which was tied to an extremists right wing partner likely to hurt the Palestinians, since his dance card already full with matters foreign and domestic.

Imagine waking up in the morning, and finding that Donald Trump had been re-elected, and that he had chosen Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General, as well as Mike Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, and James Dobson for education secretary.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving politician in Israel, and the consequences of a terrorist leader’s defeat of the Second Intifada

The religious-right coalition in Israel has solidified through the decade, thanks in part to Demographics, which could enable a permanent majority. Mourning the election results, Israel’s secular liberals lament that they increasingly find themselves a minority in their own country: More than half of Jewish Israelis currently identify as traditional, religious or Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), and demographers expect these politically conservative populations to increase as a share of Israel’s population. Roughly two-thirds of Jews under the age of 34 identify as right wing, while 49 percent of Jewish Israelis ages 18 to 49 agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.

The real reasons for this change aren’t what people think they are. Yes, the violence of the second intifada in the early 2000s disillusioned many Jewish Israelis about the possibility of peace with the Palestinians. Most Israelis were largely insulated from the repercussions of the government’s continued occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip during the decade and a half in which Mr. Netanyahu was prime minister. The issue of a two-state solution almost disappeared from Israeli discourse.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to return to office in a few weeks, is defending his effort to assemble a government with far right ultranationalists.

Netanyahu’s most extensive defense to date of his decision to embrace Ben-Ghir, who was imprisoned for supporting an anti- Arab group that Israel and the U.S. classify as terrorist organization, took place in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition.

Netanyahu has ruled Israel for the past 15 years, making him the longest serving leader in the country’s history. His nickname is “Bibi”, he completed a memoir during his time out of power. He was managing coalition talks while talking to NPR, a task he insisted he didn’t enjoy.

“All politics is cruel,” he said. Israeli politics are cruel more than most. I’ve been subjected to continual vilification by my family because I keep winning elections.

Well, first of all, his eligibility was decided by the Supreme Court. … a lot of his views have been changed since then And I have to say that, with power comes responsibility. Not always, sometimes it works the other way around. … And certainly [it’s one thing to speak in] political campaigns a decade and a half ago, and it’s another to actually be in a position of responsibility in governance, and I certainly will ensure that that will be the case. Now, you ask about the well, you know –

Well, I think one of the things that we’ve seen is the erosion of internal security in Israel. It’s a big, big issue. His party was running on that. He says, “I want to be tested. I think I can bring security to Arabs, the Arab citizens and Jews, citizens alike.” Is that possible? That was his campaign promise. There is a coalition. I said that you would get the chance. You’ll be given the tools. You have to do the job. I think that time will come.

Do you mean that Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians in Israel should trust this man who said that they should be expelled?

No, I don’t think anybody should trust anybody based on their promises. He doesn’t say that right now. But I think what will be the test is not whether you believe him or not, but whether you see an actual result. The same is true of me. The jury did not agree with what was said.

Is That the Only One That Will Last? — Joe Biden’s Question to the Vice President: Is It Complete Supremacy?

Well, yes, my formula is very simple. … The only peace that will hold is one that we can defend. In the one situation in which the Palestinians have all the powers to govern themselves, but no powers to threaten our lives, we have a chance to defend it.

No, I don’t doubt that for a minute. I say it aloud. Joe Biden, friend of 40 years, when he was vice president, was in Israel. And he said to me, “But Bibi, that’s not complete sovereignty.” And I said, “You’re right, Joe, but that’s the only one that will last.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142813395/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-government

The U.S. is Not Going to the Nuclear Agreement: Biden’s Memories, his Conversations with the Press, and America’s View of Israel

Joe Biden has been a great friend, although we’ve had our disagreements. He is always saying, “Bibi, I love you.” I don’t agree with you on anything.” That isn’t true. We agree on quite a few things. I have a suspicion right now that because of the unfolding events, the dramatic events in Iran [anti-government protests] and the change of attitude that has happened across the political spectrum, left and right in many lands … I have a clear feeling that today in Washington, people understand that the way to go is not to return to the flawed nuclear agreement, but in fact, to adopt a much more resolute attitude.

America’s leaders should say that these moves are troubling. The Biden administration’s main response so far has been a cautious speech by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the liberal advocacy group J Street on Dec. 4, in which he declared that the United States would deal with Israeli policies, not individuals. The new government has yet to be formed, so it is not surprising that the State Department does not yet have a well-defined position, but the administration has already discussed, according to a report in Axios, how to manage its meetings with the most extreme members of the new cabinet and which core interests to focus on.