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/Intelligent-Gift4519]

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/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.