Israeli politics looks deadlocked all over again
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU spent the last two hours of voting in Israel’s general election on September 17th speaking through a camera to an online audience, begging people to come out and vote for Likud, his ruling party, before it was too late. “All the battles I fought as a soldier in an elite unit, all the battles I fought against a president of the United States [Barack Obama], all my other battles in Congress and at the United Nations—I did it for you. And now I’m asking you for something small.
About 54% of Israel’s voters, spanning the spectrum from Arab communists to Jewish nationalists, voted for parties opposed to Mr Netanyahu. Some are right-wingers who back many of Mr Netanyahu’s policies yet refused to vote for Likud or any of its allies. This was a personal rebuff. So . But there is a precedent for solving the conundrum. In 1984 neither Likud nor its main rival, the Labour party, could form a ruling coalition. Instead they agreed to a national-unity government with a “rotation” between Labour’s leader, Shimon Peres, and Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir, with each agreeing to serve two years of the prime minister’s term.
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