These were heavily contested elections – they were unquestionably the most contested elections since 1999 – and the results show that. During the course of the election there was a lot of acrimony – very, very heated – there was a tremendous amount of engagement of civil society, which is not something we have seen in the past. To the wire, it was clear that we were talking about some form of a toss-up. I will contend that the polls weren’t wrong (in broad strokes).

The result of the Israeli election is a split in Israeli society and Israeli politics, just as anticipated. In terms of the ‘blocs’ – right, centre and left – the numbers are almost precisely as predicted. The difference is that the distribution withineach bloc was different. Primarily, the distribution within the Right bloc was different. This allows Netanyahu to claim a major victory, although the Right actually shrunk a bit overall (also as predicted). The Left grew – substantially – for the first time since 1999 and the centre contracted a little bit.

Much of Israeli politics is about numbers and I want to do the calculations. The Likud did receive 30 seats, but it very clearly took these seats from three sources – from Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party who went down from 12 to eight seats, from Avigdor Liberman who went down to six seats and from Shas who went down to seven. If you are looking for how Netanyahu in two or three days went from 24 seats to 30: it was by cannibalising his natural allies. Not only that, but the ultra-Orthodox went down: from 18 to 13 seats – they are smaller than they have been in years. If you put it all together: The Right and ultra-Orthodox come up to 57 seats – which is less than what they had before (and less than a majority). It was not a victory for the Israeli right, but it is victory for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I think it is very important to make these distinctions, because we must be able to understand the political dynamic in the country.

Before the election, Labour and Hatnuah were on 21 seats and they are now on 24. Meretz – my party – lost a seat. The real significant new element in this election is the Joint Arab List, which garnered 13 seats – two more than all three Arab parties had in the outgoing Knesset – making it the third largest party in the Knesset. This is a political force that Israel has never known and it is going to have an amazing impact on parliamentary life in the future.

Read the article in full at Fathom Journal.