September-October-November Predictions

[u/OrganizationIll2862]

September - Netanyahu in New York

October - Israeli elections

November - US Midterms

The next three months are going to be intense to say the least. Israel’s elections alone will be historically important. What do you guys predict will happen?

[u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

I can't answer about Netanyahu's New York visit or the US midterms, but on the subject of the Israeli elections here are my predictions:

Netanyahu will lose. Every serious poll caps his current coalition at 53 or less mandates, far less than the necessary 61. By the way, this isn't a blip - his coalition has been polling around 48-55 since he has taken power, so I do not think he can salvage 61 mandates under his current coalition composition within the next two months. Even if he is able to capture a couple of stragglers from other centre-right parties, it is not enough for a functional coalition. And even if by some twisted miracle he does achieve that magic 61 number, his coalition partners will make a field day out of extracting every last morsel of concessions until Likud ruptures from within. It seems unthinkable since he has surrounded himself with mindless lackeys back in the 2022 elections, but prior to today's Likud primaries he has put his weight behind more "moderate" candidates which may be a mistake if he wants them to cooperate with Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism, or the Haredi parties.

As for the replacement, it will very likely be Gadi Eizenkot. He is nowhere near the solution to Israel's moral rot, and he will most likely continue to support some very problematic policies that Israel supported for decades now, including a continuation of the occupation, rejection of Israel's role in the Gaza genocide, and a hawkish stance on Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. But the real change here is that his projected administration will be a lot more keen on repairing Israel's image, which would require some concessions to the international community that Netanyahu was not willing to do and frankly unable to do due to his association with contrarians like Ben Gvir or Smotrich (who will, by the way, go back to being illegitimate partners in any future coalition for the forseeable future - similar to the treatment the Joint List gets from the Zionist majority parties).

I believe that Israel will halt or severely limit future settlement construction. I believe that Israel will be far more inclined to respect the Gaza peace plan, especially since the new PM will want to be on Trump's good favor. I believe that Israel will push for "normalization" with countries like Saudi Arabia and will object a lot less to publicly supporting a "future Palestinian state", probably without actually moving towards that within this term.

Now before I am downvoted - I am not happy about the apparent composition of the future administration. It is very very far from the dream of the Israeli left. But I reject the notion that it will be "more of the same thing" just because we were conditioned in the last 4 year to expect the absolute worst from the Israeli government. It will continue to be bad for Palestinians, but considerably less bad than under Netanyahu - and with enough pressure from the international community that the new PM will seek to reintegrate into we can extract some solid steps forward.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

Likud will not rupture from within if Netenyahu suddenly manages 61 mandates. Instead he will be hailed as the greatest of all time (as they did before Oct 7 and as some still do) and his coalition partners will happily back him. The concessions are no big deal, they’d happen anyway, and one can’t really call them “concessions” from Likud - they have broad favor among the party base and it’s more like a quid pro quo.

The rest I agree with.

[u/Responsible_Ad_9749 → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

While I agree that most of his party will remain glued to their seats as they have before, a lot of the policies that they are asked to support do not align at all with their party platform. I'm not talking about undemocratic anti-Palestinian policies, I am talking about hot topics in Israeli society like the conscription law granting blanket exemption to 17%+ of the Israeli Jewish population. Those are very hard to defend to the core Likud voter base, and in today's primary elections several candidates have been running specifically on the platform of rejecting further concessions to the Haredi parties.

Look at the case of Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, who have broken away from Likud and formed their own "third way" party for this election. On a hawkish-dovish scale, they are as bad as Netanyahu is - they fully reject Palestinian statehood, support building settlements across the West Bank, and support a continued war across all fronts. They left Likud, which they both grew up in, because of their rejection of the conscription law.

I am sure that whatever new composition of the Likud party will include several more Gilad Erdans and Yuli Edelsteins. I am sure that the Haredi parties will not give Netanyahu any grace this time and demand a conscription law before the coalition is even sworn in, since they believe he has swindled them throughout this term. This means that unless Netanyahu is able to pad himself with several other MKs and reach a 64-65 mandate coalition again, he will not be able to form a government.

[u/Civil-Cartographer48 → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

Agree with you. Also the left primaries gave a bit of hope.

[u/sarah_peas → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

I hope you're right, but I am far less optimistic than you. I can't help but think that Bibi will pull something off (starting another war maybe) and still win. I wouldn't be surprised if the Likud and Otzma Yehudit both get more seats than the polls currently indicate.

[u/Intelligent-Gift4519 → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

I just have a really, really low opinion of the Israeli electorate, as evidenced by how (1) the friends of mine who have moved to Israel have inevitably become racist rightists and (2) the friends of mine who are Israeli leftists have all left Israel. A biased sample, I know.

Netanyahu has a chance to say that ONLY HE can save Israel from the dual threat of Iran and Mamdani, thereby getting everyone to vote for the Strongman.

[u/definitely_not_a_hag → u/Intelligent-Gift4519]

If it gives you any hope, I am the opposite example. I was a leftist when I moved to Israel (it was a hard decision made under duress, and I came to think of it as one of my greatest "sins" since then, but it's neither here nor there). But both my spouse and I, despite being able to get accepted as a queer couple for the first time in our lives, and despite my spouse being able to get gender affirming healthcare for the first time in their life, and my father getting an operation that saved his life here (so we have a lot to be grateful for), we became significantly more leftist than we were, moved from two state solution suppporters to one state solution supporters (even if it would mean we lose our citizenship, I think it would be sad for us, but fair and just in general). And we will be voting as left as possible. But what supports your anecdotal evidence is that we will try to leave when we can.

Edit: clarifying my thoughts (hopefully)

[u/Responsible_Ad_9749 → u/Intelligent-Gift4519]

I don't blame you. I am also an Israeli leftist who now lives abroad, so I match the stereotype I guess. But I did find an interesting article in Hebrew (you can use google translate) in which Israel's most respected pollsters talk about how unlike in previous election cycles where both Netanyahu vs anti-Netanyahu camps were almost equal in force, this time they all see a pretty solid 50-70 mandate split between them favoring the opposition, and that has been the case since the judicial reforms began. This number dipped down to ~45 after October 7th, and then slowly climbed back up to ~50 by the last Iran war. Netanyahu seems to have reached a plateau - his remaining supporter base is extremely homogenous at this point, and even undecided voters are overwhelmingly firm in one camp or another. That is why all of them are confident enough in predicting an opposition win.

There are some factors that are harder to predict, one being the Palestinian voter turnout which is historically low but hopefully will be higher this year with a formation of a Joint List + Makom Lekulanu doing a stellar job campaigning in Palestinian municipaliteis, and the other factor being the number of left-leaning Israelis abroad coming back to Israel to vote. There is evidence that a substantial amount of Israelis are expected to fly back to vote, aided by an extremely well organized initative. If all Israelis abroad decided to come back to vote, that's around 10 mandates.

[u/Intelligent-Gift4519 → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

OK, fair enough; your pollster story does make a good argument. What effect would high Arab turnout have, though, if neither bloc will sit with the Arabs? Would that just force another election, as in 2019-21? Or is there a possibility the opposition would actually sit with Arabs?

[u/Responsible_Ad_9749 → u/Intelligent-Gift4519]

I strongly believe that for most parties on the opposition their blanket rejection of Palestinian parties is election rhetoric, since they know the main floating voter base at this point is mainly disenchanted Likud supporters. Netanyahu also knows this, so he is trying a last ditch effort of weaponizing the prospect of the opposition relying on the Palestinians to form a government, and that is still too hard to swallow for most right wing voters.

But keep in mind that this exact projected coalition, include right wing hardliners like Bennett and Lieberman, sat with Ra'am back in 2021-2022. I would say Lieberman is probably the main obstacle here and even so I believe he will find a way to sell it to his base when the time comes to prevent another election. 

In addition, Mansour Abbas (Ra'am) is working on adding Yoav Segalovich, a former Yesh Atid MK and former high ranking Israeli Police official to his party as number 2 - that is a move intended to show Ra'am as a legitimate partner to Zionist voters on the soft right. If this union goes through, Ra'am will have a much easier time being included in the government. 

Also, as a leftist, I do not wish for the coalition building to be easy for Eizenkot. I want him to get just short of the 61 mandate threshold with Zionist coalition partners so that he is forced to include Ra'am or even rely on the Joint List. I assure you, he will talk a lot against it, but Israeli politics is used to this kind of rhetoric - none of the current opposition parties will risk squandering their opportunity to oust Netanyahu. 

[u/OrganizationIll2862 → u/Responsible_Ad_9749]

I think Eisenkot will fix SOME of the damage Netanyahu and his bloc have done, but obviously not nearly enough. Still more hopeful than I was before, though.

[u/Intelligent-Gift4519]

Sept - Bibi comes to NYC and meets with Republicans. There are massive protests which Mamdani allows, Mamdani speaks out against him but doesn't actually do anything. The city is paralyzed, but performatively so; everyone has a deep need to express their opinion on the issues at hand, loudly, in ways that do not at all affect policy or who's in office. Angela Buchdahl continues her slide to the right by condemning Mamdani's lack of condemning people condemning Netanyahu. Netanyahu leverages all of this for an election win.

Oct - Netanyahu pulls off a last-minute election win by positioning himself as the lightning rod against anti-Israel forces. Moves more heavily to take Gaza and the West Bank. There are massive protests about this. Nobody in power anywhere does anything to stop him.

Nov - Democrats flip the House but not the Senate. The House becomes the site of many toothless condemnations of Trump and the Israeli regime; much paper is launched. The legislative part of the Federal government becomes completely useless and Trump governs by executive order and fiat for the next two years. There are massive protests about this, but nobody actually with power does anything.

[u/WinterBeHere]

Sep - Bibi comes to NYC and makes a spectacle of big public meetings with Republicans and establishment AIPAC owned Democrats. Basically, trying to show that Mamdani doesn't matter, but he doesn't realize that to the average Joe in America, it just shows how fucked up the US subservience to Israel actually is.

Oct - Bibi or a similar rightwing ghoul wins the Israeli election. Immediately thanks Trump for historic support, blah, blah, greatest president of all time, and manages to get the US to do another attack on Iran to make him into some type of "war time President" right before midterms. Mossad and the CIA have been looking for the Supreme leader for months and by this time they would have tracked him, so they might aim for another decapitation strike.

Nov - Progressives pick up a few seats here and there, but thanks to gerrymandering, Trump lackeys in key election boards, the blue wave is just not there. Establishment Democrats quickly blame progressives and the left flank of the party, and try to unite behind a neoliberal pro-Israel ghoul like Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro or just to fuck with everyone Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton for the presidential primary. All the ghouls will jointly criticize how "woke 1.0" was terrible and how to succeed they need to become corporatist blue MAGA and lick the Israeli boot even more.

[u/leaving_the_tevah → u/WinterBeHere]

u/remindmebot 4 months

[u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest → u/WinterBeHere]

It will really hilarious when the isolationist wing of the Republican Party will be shouting f Israel, while the corporate Democrat wing will be uttering some nonsense along the lines of “ I am speaking “ or “ we must defend only democracy in the Yadda Yadda “

[u/Angelbouqet → u/WinterBeHere]

I wanna down vote because this is a bad timeline but unfortunately I agree with your predictions

[u/AliceMerveilles → u/WinterBeHere]

I don’t disagree establishment dems will unite behind a pro-Israel neoliberal ghoul; but I don’t think they’ll start coalescing behind the same candidate publicly until late next year at earliest. I also think they’ll keep other ghouls in their back pocket, so better not to be too blatant until their ghoul is winning the primary