Israeli Parliamentary Election, 2018
The Leftist Revolution
March 2018- The socialist left crushes the right in an earthquake of an election
Meretz- 23.7% (31 Mandates)
Labour- 17.6% (23 Mandates)
Progress- 13.6% (16 Mandates)
Israeli Center- 11.7% (14 Mandates)
Likud- 8.3% (11 Mandates)
United Arab List- 5.8% (7 Mandates)
United Torah Judaism- 4.1% (5 Mandates)
Jewish Home- 4.0% (5 Mandates)
National Party- 3.8% (4 Mandates)
Yisrael Beytenu- 3.7% (4 Mandates)
Shas- 2.6% (BELOW THERSHOLD)
Others- 1.1% (BELOW THERSHOLD)
Going into the 2018, it seemed clear to all that the Israeli right was in trouble. Bitterly divided into several parties, its figurehead of ten years indicted with strong, numerous corruption charges, and an apparent fatigue from decades of nearly-uninterrupted right-wing rule setting into the frustrated Israeli middle class, the right-wing parties were plummeting in the polls. But no one in the right quite predicted just how dire the situation was.
Feeling that the Israeli electorate would never veer too much left, Likud went into the election with the strong, religious right-wing message of its new leader, Tzipi Hotovely. In a response, Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home was forced deeper into the religious right and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu intensified its nationalistic rhetoric. Meanwhile, running on a new list called National Party, Benjamin Netanyahu tried to cling onto power by running a fiery, almost Erdogan-esque campaign against the media, the judiciary system and the other right-wing parties, calling them all 'puppets sent by the left to overthrow the Prime Minister'. The Israeli Center Party, on the other hand, managed to run an effective campaign, veering the the center-right and presenting Lapid and Kahlon as viable alternative to the 'radicalized right'. It worked, and they gained many right-wing voters, but at a cost- losing much of their liberal base.
Meanwhile, the left-wing parties largely refained from attacking each other, focusing on appealing to large swathes of the Israeli public. While Erel Margalit's Progress Party ran on a solidly left-wing progressive platform, economically but especially socially, and appealed to a large amount of people frustrated by the growing power of religion in Israel, Labour ran as a center-left, hawkish alternative to the right and managed to gain a surprisingly large amount of Likud voters who were hawkish on the Palestinian issue. But that, just like for Israeli Center, came at a cost. Meretz, lead by socialist Ilan Gilon, became the big story of the election- strongly appealing to hundreds of thousands of frustrated poor and middle-class Israelis, Sephardic voters who were disillusioned with the right, Arab voters who saw hope in the surging Meretz and abandoned the United Arab List, and also their base of traditionally far-left voters, they managed to win a big, shocking election victory, sweeping more than a fourth of all the seats in the Knesset.
As the dust settled in and a shocked world watched a socialist party emerge as the biggest one in Israel, the task of building a government fell to Ilan Gilon. A visibly shaken President Ruby Rivlin, hailing from the liberal wing of Likud, granted the leader of Meretz the right to build a coalition, and the talks started.
At first, it seemed clear that a broad left-wing grand coalition will be established, with Meretz, Labour and Progress cooperating to build the first Israeli left-wing government in years. But the talks, while eventually successful, proved surprisingly tough- the Progressives made socially liberal demands that made the situation tougher for Gilon, who had one eye on the large amount of socially conservative voters who chose him, and Labour's Avi Gabay demanded that the government will be "sensible" and veer to the center rather than to the hard left, especially in foreign policy, where he demanded much less dovish policies than Meretz would've liked. In the end, though, the talks ended successfully, and Israel headed towards a leftist government...
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