Israel General Elections || 23.03.2021

[DC Al Fine]

Likud reserved spots:
10. Galit Distel (author and Bibi media puppet, started off with the quote "I'm thr people")
26. Orly Levy
28. Ofir Sofer, Smotrich representative
36. Yair Gabay, obscure figure who appealed for Likud primaries and cancelled the appeal after, we can see now, Bibi bribed him
39. Nail Zoabi, Arab former school director
40. Boris Applechuck, pro Bibi protestor

What's a reserved spot?

[DC Al Fine]

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 thar I wrote for DDHQ 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.

Link?

[DC Al Fine]

Bit of a dumb question: If there's no obvious candidate for PM besides Bibi, and Bibi doesn't have a working majority, why couldn't he just form a minority cabinet like in the UK and cut deals with other parties on a case by case basis?

[DC Al Fine]

Like regular Atlas except you can tell an attempted suicide to kill themselves and get away of it.

[DC Al Fine]

Bibi is definitely on edge. Attending UTJ caucus meeting today. Losing the vote on the house committee shook him. I think he thinks it’s likely a Lapid-Bennett axis will happen and UTJ are the weak link in his bloc

What does UTJ (or Degel HaTorah I guess) get out of a Lapid-Bennett government? Bennett is presumably acceptable to them, but Lapid is quite anti-clerical. I assume one or both parties had to make some compromises?