Israeli Elections: Netanyahu's Rivals Lead in Latest Polls

With a month and a half remaining until the Israeli parliamentary elections, the coalition formed by the main rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, March 2, has taken the lead in public opinion. The results of the first polls after the announcement of the coalition between three reserve generals, Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya'alon, and Gabi Ashkenazi, with opposition politician Yair Lapid, indicate that their coalition could secure up to 36 seats out of 120 in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. According to various media polls, including Yedioth Ahronoth, published on Friday, March 3, Likud is expected to gain 30 seats. Despite the lead of Netanyahu's rivals in securing more parliamentary seats, the total number of seats for the right-wing bloc still slightly exceeds the total of all parties that may support the formation of a government by Netanyahu's opponents. Many well-known old parties appear to be facing collapse in the upcoming elections. The elections in Israel will be held on April 9. The last time Likud secured fewer seats in an actual election was ten years ago during the competition with the Kadima party, but Zippi Livni, the then-leader of Kadima, despite having one more seat than Likud, could not form a government due to insufficient support from other parties, thus handing the premiership to Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud. Benny Gantz, who only entered the political arena last month by forming the Israel Resilience Party, managed to form a coalition with Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, this Thursday. The other two generals, Moshe Ya'alon and Gabi Ashkenazi, who, like Benny Gantz, have previously served as chiefs of staff, are present in this coalition as the third and fourth figures. Mr. Ashkenazi had never been involved in politics before. Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid announced the name of their coalition, Blue and White, the colors of the Israeli flag, at a press conference on Thursday night, claiming they were capable of defeating the Likud party and forming the next government. According to Gantz and Lapid, Benjamin Netanyahu has continued as prime minister through fear-mongering, but this method is no longer effective. Yair Lapid stated that Israelis deserve a leader who is not at the top of news reports every day due to police investigations against him. The Blue and White coalition submitted a list of several dozen candidates from both the Israel Resilience and Yesh Atid parties to the election headquarters on Thursday night. Likud and all other parties submitted their candidate lists to the election headquarters on Thursday night, which was the final deadline for submitting election candidate lists; some parties, like Likud, Labor, and Meretz, selected their candidates through internal elections, while others selected candidates through a leadership council. Benjamin Netanyahu, shortly before submitting the final list of Likud candidates to the election headquarters, responded to his rivals' statements, saying that Gantz, Ashkenazi, and Ya'alon are all leftist generals, and in a veiled reference to Ehud Barak's premiership, who was also a general and chief of staff, he stated that people remember how these individuals are willing to abandon principles. Netanyahu also warned Israelis that the Gantz-Lapid coalition poses a serious threat to the continued rule of the Likud party, claiming they are 'weak' individuals who will not be able to defend Israel's interests against powerful forces. Netanyahu further stated that while the whole world accepted the JCPOA, the 'bad' nuclear deal with Iran, he was the only one who continued to oppose it and managed to turn the tide against the JCPOA on the global stage, while Gantz, Ashkenazi, and Lapid had explicitly stated in interviews that the JCPOA is a reality and must be dealt with. Netanyahu, recalling that in his youth he was the commander of an elite commando unit who 'risked his life for the homeland many times,' sarcastically remarked that Yair Lapid was merely a magazine reporter. Netanyahu also mentioned that Benny Gantz, after his military service, became the manager of a private company but squandered the vast public funds entrusted to him in a very short time, leading to the company's bankruptcy; 'So how can this individual be entrusted with a country with the complexities of Israel?' The Israeli Prime Minister's veiled reference was to a cybersecurity company named Fifth Dimension, which Gantz managed, and several former Israeli security and military officials were on its board. This company was shut down two months ago. Haaretz newspaper published an investigation last month regarding the claims of the company's managers, who stated that the closure of the company was due to the name of Viktor Vekselberg being placed on the US sanctions list. Viktor Vekselberg, one of Russia's top ten billionaires, was recently sanctioned by the US government. The closure of Fifth Dimension coincided with Gantz contemplating entering the political arena to compete with Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, under pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, several small right-wing Israeli parties formed a coalition in recent days, which for the first time in three decades includes supporters of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Netanyahu promised their party, named Jewish Power, two ministries in the next government. Rabbi Kahane was an American-Israeli Jew and the leader of a highly extremist party that was declared illegal by Israel two years before he was assassinated in 1990 by a Muslim Egyptian linked to Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian extremist sheikh, due to his racist beliefs and incitement to violence. Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister and former leader of the Likud party, attacked Netanyahu on Thursday for bringing Rabbi Kahane's supporters back into the political scene, stating that the spirit of the founders of Likud is shaking in their graves.