Israel General Elections || 23.03.2021

[LabourJersey]

If there's no working majority and calls for *another* election after this, there has to be major calls for electoral reform, right? Don't most Israelis consider this deadlock to be absurd at this point? At least something like raising the thresholds in the PR system or something.

[LabourJersey]

Why are there so many parties? In other parliamentary democracies, you end up with two major parties and a few smaller ones. Why is this different in Israel? It seems like there are just a bunch of small-medium sized parties + Likud.

Infinitesimal Factionalism. If you want to have your mind blown every one of these parties except maybe Yisrael Beitenu is either an umbrella organization/alliance for smaller parties and factions or a merger of several parties and factions - including Likud. I don't recommend it to anyone deeply familiar with Israeli politics, but there is a good primer for the uninformed that I wrote for DDHQ (which is itself a summery of the two that I wrote for the newsletter) up on their site right now that explains why this is a thing.

AKA: you put two Jews in a room you get 3 opinions but politics.

Thanks for the article.

[LabourJersey]

Mandate has returned to Rivlin, and will likely pass to the Lapid-Bennett alliance.

How likely is it that the Lapid-Bennett alliance produces a government?

[LabourJersey]

This might be the wrong place to ask this question but I'll go: given all the swings and the PR system, who's the longest serving member of the Knesset? would it be Netanyahu?

I'm guessing there's no longevity in office like the UK where you had Kenneth Clarke from 1970 until recently or Don Young who's been hanging around the House since 1973.