Israel elections: rising panic in Likud ranks as

opposition gains ground

Polls indicate growing lead for Zionist Union led by Yitzhak Herzog over Binyamin
Netanyahus party with less than a week before vote

Yit
zhak Herzog attends an election campaign event as polls suggest his Zionist Union party leads by three or
four parliamentary seats. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA

Peter Beaumont in Be'er Sheva-Wednesday 11 March 2015

Israels opposition leader, Yitzhak Herzog, appears to be gaining
momentum in the runup to next weeks general election, triggering a rising
sense of panic in Likud, the party of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Two new polls suggest a lead of three to four parliamentary seats for the
Zionist Union, with internal polling from both parties indicating a wider gap.
A text message sent to Likud activists, imploring them to get friends and
relatives to vote on Tuesday, reads: We are in danger of really losing!

It goes on: We must save the day and make sure that every single one of
our friends/acquaintances/family makes it to the polls on election day and
votes for the Likud. Wake up!
Herzog, the Labour leader who has formed an electoral alliance with former
justice minister Tzipi Livni under the Zionist Union banner, has been
running neck and neck with Netanyahu, who is campaigning to serve a
fourth term as prime minister.
Under Israels system of proportional representation which invariably
produces coalition governments, Netanyahu still has an advantage. But in
the last days of the campaign, there is a new sense of optimism among
Zionist Unions supporters and Mps.
At a campaign meeting on Tuesday in Beer Sheva, in the Negev desert,
Herzog told a gathering of the faithful, the curious and a handful of
supporters of other parties that he represented hope for those who felt
excluded within Israels dysfunctional economy and for those who sought
the possibility of peace. He and Livni promised to end Israels increasing
isolation in the international community.

Isr
aeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog addresses a rally in Beer Sheva.

Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Guardian/Peter Beaumont

According to MP Erel Margalit, Zionist Union supporters were buoyed by the
large turnout at an anti-Netanyahu rally in Tel Aviv at the weekend and by
leaks of internal surveys that suggest Netayanhus position is worse than
published polls suggest.
Ive become optimistic in the last few days, Margalit said. I wasnt so
optimistic before. In the last few days I have felt a sense of building
momentum. I feel a change is coming. People want a leadership based on
something else than fear.
The sense of fatalism that has been around in a large part of the campaign
people thinking that whatever happens they will get Netanyahu as prime
minister again I think that is what has changed.
Aron Klipper, 71, a retired engineer echoed Margalits sentiments. Im here
because we desperately need a change of atmosphere in Israel. We need
young people to be able to earn enough and afford places to live, he said.
But with six days to go before the election, a key question is whether
Herzog can defeat Netanyahu when it comes to the post-election horsetrading over forming a government.
In the tortured electoral mathematics of Israels coalition-building,
Netanyahu still has a theoretical marginal advantage with six potential
parties he can negotiate with to form a government, against Herzogs five.

Young supporters of Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog cheer as he

enters a rally of supporters in the Israeli town of Beer Sheva on Tuesday
night. Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Guardian/Peter Beaumont
Among the factors that will come into play is whether some of the smallest
parties including the leftwing Meretz win enough votes to meet the
electoral threshold for representation in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
And if the election turns out as close as the polls currently suggest,
President Reuven Rivlin could insist on negotiations for a national unity
government embracing both Likud and Zionist Union.
Herzog has tried hard to increase his visibility in a campaign dominated by
the personality of Netanyahu, not least in a long interview with the author and columnist Ari
Shavit that sympathetically depicted the opposition leader munching peanuts
for energy on the campaign trail and visiting Likud strongholds.
The stall Herzog has laid out has been a practical and emotional soft
nationalism, open to negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinians,
and seeking a pragmatic middle way through Israels problems.
I am a social democrat who wants both a free market and a just state. I am

a pragmatist who tries to act fairly. I try to bring the contradictions into
harmony and unity, he told Shavit.
In contrast, rivals have often sounded inflammatory appeals, not least
foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman on disloyal Israeli Arabs: Those who are
against us, theres nothing to be done we need to pick up an axe and cut
off his head.
In the last days of the campaign, Herzog has aimed his fire most heavily at
the area where Netanyahu is seen as being most vulnerable his failure to
deal with Israels domestic problems.
But the party of his roots Labour, the dominant political force in the early
years of the Israeli state has not occupied the prime ministers office since
Ehud Barak in 1999. Before that Israel had returned only one Labour prime
minister since 1977 - Yitzhak Rabin.
It used to be the thing that parties were from the cradle to grave, said
Einat Wilf, a former Labour MP and author of a book on Israels electoral
system.
Now they are built on shifting sands. People make their decision at the last
minute or people vote for different parties from election to election.
One reason is a global one: the end of ideology. So the party machines
have declined and everywhere it has become much more personal. Large
parties have became small and small parties have become large.
Posted by Thavam