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Comment and Opinion

Left Foot Forward: Could the centre-left form Israel’s next government? by Lorin Bell-Cross

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“I told my wife I am off for a weekend of coupledom with Tzipi”. So joked Isaac Herzog, Labour Party leader and maybe, just maybe, Israel’s next Prime Minister.

It is still more than three months to polling day, but three recent opinion polls show the alliance between Israel’s Labour Party, headed by Herzog, and Hatnuah, led by Tzipi Livni, winning the largest share of the votes in Israel’s March 2015 election.

But can ‘The Zionist Camp’ – the working title of the new alliance – not only emerge the largest party but actually form a coalition government?

Unlike the previous election in 2013 when victory for the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu was never in doubt, there are eight reasons why the Israeli Left has reasons to be hopeful.

1. They have got the framing right this time – Zionism vs extremism.

The centre-left has in the last two elections failed to appeal to a decisive number of voters who are pragmatic about territorial compromise but remember that the hopes kindled by Oslo were extinguished by the Second Intifada.

The promise of more peace negotiations (with no guarantee of success) is not an election winning pitch. That’s why Livni and Herzog are framing this election as a fight over the future of the State of Israel, and themselves as heirs to the liberal and democratic traditions of the Zionist founders.

Their rhetoric places this against an extremist /nationalist/sectarian camp which is contrary to those values. This time, as Ari Shavit, a commentator in the left-wing Haaretz put it:

“Neither Netanyahu nor peace is the crucial issue. What’s at stake is the existence of a sovereign, modern and democratic homeland, of which we can be proud and in which we can live.”

2. Netanyahu was the man who guaranteed quiet. Not anymore.

In previous elections Netanyahu has been able to appeal to Israelis as a guarantor of security for Israel in the face of Iran, the turmoil of the Arab Spring and Hamas. This summer’s conflict in Gaza, as well as the terror attacks and rioting in Jerusalem, may have led many to think again.

When the former Mossad head Shabtai Shavit declares that, ‘for the first time since I began forming my own opinions, I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project’ people take note.

When, at a demonstration against Netanyahu’s proposed ‘nation-state bill’, the former head of Shin Bet Carmi Gilon rails against more settlement announcements and a government of ‘pyromaniacs’ led by an ‘egomaniac’, then change may be afoot.

 

Read the article in full at Left Foot Forward.