Introduction

Neri 0:04

Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod. I'm Nary Zilber, a journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum. We're going to take a deep dive into Israeli politics this week, before the upcoming election, set for later this fall, with my good friend Dahlia Scheindlin. Dahlia is a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and public opinion researcher with nearly three decades of experience serving Israeli politics, including working directly on nine different campaigns here in Israel. These days, among many other things, Dahlia is also a columnist for Haretz, a fellow at the Century Foundation, and the author of a recent book titled The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled. Do check it out wherever books are sold. I was really curious to get Dahlia's expert take on the current polling here in Israel, what it may say about the upcoming election, and what the respective states of play were for both the Israeli opposition parties and the Netanyahu coalition parties as they soon head into what will undoubtedly be a very hot and very contentious summer electoral campaign. Before we get to Dahlia, some housekeeping notes. First, do check out Israel Policy Forum's new report on the next U.S. Israel Defense Agreement, often called the MOU, titled Partnership Recalibrated: The Next Era of US Israel Security Cooperation. That report is available on our website. And two, do subscribe to this here podcast and also leave a rating if the mood strikes you. Five stars, please. The powers that be tell me that these things are super important in the podcast biz. And finally, just a few thoughts from me. So this week, obviously, we'll be focusing on domestic Israeli politics, but just a word on the other things going on right now in and around Israel. There is as yet, as most of you I'm sure know, no deal between the US and Iran to properly end the war. It looked very close last week. In fact, we were told it was close last week, but both sides seem to have balked at the last minute. Now we have these minor flare-ups and exchanges of fire every other day or so, including last night. And we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon Tel Aviv time. So all told, things uh are extremely fragile in the Gulf still, with both sides, both the US and Iran, projecting like they have all the time in the world and don't really need or even want a deal, or at least don't need or want it as bad as the other side. This isn't a recipe, I'd argue, for any kind of stability, uh, or for that matter, not really a recipe for a quiet summer. Uh, but hopefully they do get a deal uh and soon. The other thing, Lebanon, things there are even more unclear. Uh, as I discussed last week with Michael Koplau and Shira Efron, the IDF escalated in Lebanon last week and was threatening to restart strikes on Beirut. Uh Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz uh even said as much uh early yesterday. Uh but then Donald Trump stepped in. And amid uh Iranian threats uh against Israel, uh Trump reportedly pulled Israel back. So yet another, call it what you will, climb down capitulation concession by Trump to Iran to at least preserve uh the framework for negotiations and a possible deal between the US and Iran. Fair to say there was a lot of domestic criticism aimed at Bibi Netanyahu and his government over uh this turn of events yesterday, with people calling Israel now a vassal state of the US. Uh and we can all imagine, let's take a moment to imagine how Bibi Netanyahu would have reacted, uh, if he were opposition leader right now in this scenario, uh and not the prime minister who pulled back and has yet to strike Beirut. Um now, despite what Trump said was a mutual Israel-Hizbolah ceasefire, the fighting does continue. We should be clear about that, uh, but at least in southern Lebanon uh over the past two days or so. Uh we'll see if Israel deigns to defy Trump uh next time a northern Israeli community gets hit by a Hezbollah rocket or drone and seeks to actually expand the fighting, including to Beirut, like Netanyahu and Israel Katz threatened literally yesterday. But all told, the increasingly frustrating stalemates in Iran and Lebanon uh are increasing pressure on Netanyahu and his government domestically. Uh, there are also murmurings of discontent with uh Donald J. Trump himself from certain right-wing Israeli circles. Uh if things stay as they are, uh it'll undoubtedly be difficult, not impossible, but very difficult for even Bibi Netanyahu to spin these wars as amazing Israeli victories. Um I don't even want to say total victories because no one even believes that anymore, and BB and his ministers don't even talk about it anymore, but spinning it as some kind of victory at full stop. Um, hence BB's recent push, I'd argue, to have elections held in late October, at the end of this government's official term, and not earlier as had been mooted, say in September. Uh I'd argue BB needs time to dig himself out of the various battlefield holes, whether in Iran, Lebanon, or even in Gaza, that he's dug for himself since really the start of this year. So uh it remains to be seen when elections are actually called for, but it seems very clear BB is pushing for as much time as possible to make up ground and repair the damage of well the last couple months, which uh I don't think went quite as he wanted them to and quite as he had planned. So with all that said, let's get to the great Dahlia Shetling. Hi Dahlia, welcome to the Israel Policy Pod.

Dahlia 6:30

Thank you so much for having me, Neri. I'm happy to be here.

Neri 6:33

I'm thrilled that you have come on, Dahlia. This is long overdue. I don't understand why we haven't had you on before, but uh this is, I think, a propitious and appropriate time to have you on. I think it'd be very instructive for our listeners and viewers to get a sense of the lay of the land uh in Israeli politics as we uh enter uh what is definitely going to be an election campaign in the summer and an election day September, October, I believe. So uh the date isn't official yet, but we are looking at a summer campaign, which um well I've said this on the podcast many times before. Uh I argue it's an existential election for Israel. You may agree or disagree, but we'll we'll get into the reasons why. But I want to start here, Dahlia, kind of big picture uh in terms of the polling out there. And there are a lot of polls done all the time here in Israel.

What the Israeli Polls Are Saying Right Now

Neri 7:30

Uh as a professional with uh years, I don't want to say decades, but years of experience.

Dahlia 7:35

It is decades. There's no way around that.

Neri 7:38

That's fine. Decades of experience in Israeli politics and also uh with polling. What uh what do you see when you look at the polls right now and kind of the electoral map um as we are set to enter the election campaign officially?

Dahlia 7:54

Thank you, Neri. Uh it's a very good opening question because there's a very, very clear um image that arises from the polls, and it's frankly pretty surprising. And that is not something that journalists like to hear, but it's very static. Uh and what I mean by that is that if you look specifically at the horse race polls, which sounds a little bit shallow, but what I mean by that are the is the electoral breakdown between people who support Netanyahu's coalition, the current coalition in Israel, the one that was formed in late 2022, that included four parties at the time. They're now five parties because one of them broke up. But the people who support that group of parties versus the people who support anybody else, i.e. any opposition party, whether it's right wing, centrist, left-wing, uh representing Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel, those two blocks say a great deal about where Israel's going. I would say this is far beyond the kind of shallow horse race question. And they are incredibly stable. And they have been, again, to my mind, after yes, decades, 27 years doing polling here in uh nine election campaigns, they are surprisingly stable. And that has been the case since polls stabilized around September, October, the fall of 2024. Um, before that, very, very brief rundown, the government was elected, but this this coal this Knesset was elected on November 1st, 2022, and the parties of the current coalition had 64 out of 120 seats. That's a nice firm majority. Uh, but by the time the government was formed already in late December 2022, their numbers were going down in surveys. And by mid-January, just a week or two after the justice minister uh Yerev Levine published his judicial overhaul plan, the polls were already showing that there was no grace period. Usually you would see um supportive, you know, majority supportive attitudes towards any new government for at least, you know, the first few months. There was no grace period. Right away, the parties of the current coalition lost their majority in surveys. And nevertheless, they didn't go too low. They were down to about 50 to 55 seats out of 120 in all polls throughout 2023. October 7th happened. Uh, every indicator, whether it was support for the parties of the coalition, for the Likud itself, for Prime Minister Benjamin Atanya, who plunged. They got what I call an anti-rally. And those polls felt incredibly stable for the first month and second month and six months. They really didn't move because they finally started to recover. They, all these polling indicators I'm talking about, uh, the position of the government and the prime minister and his coalition started to recover very slowly and incrementally from the spring of 2024. And as I said, from about the fall of 2024, that process was complete, meaning they were back up to where they were before the war, which was not as good as their electoral result, but it has been remarkably stable. And you think of everything that's happened since the fall of 2024, by the time Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel uh in I think it was the first day of September or very, very late August, September 2024. No, September didn't move the polls anymore.

Neri 11:08

Late September 2024.

Dahlia 11:09

Late September, right? So even that didn't move the polls anymore. And nothing, you know, not the wars with Iran, uh, whether they were perceived as a great triumph or a terrible defeat, nothing has really changed that basic equation unless you look at the right-wing advocacy polls, where the prime minister's coalition regularly gets a majority of about 63 to 65 or six seats, but there's still no upward trajectory. There's no real movement. It's a stable, a kind of static line. Um, and that's why I think we're in a very unusual situation where if you talk about a summer campaign, I really have to wonder what could possibly happen in the Israeli political landscape to change attitudes that have not changed throughout the most tumultuous phase in Israeli history with such unprecedented events. Now, I do think we'll see some portion of people changing their mind, uh, particularly those who are telling pollsters now that they are undecided or that they may not vote, which, you know, we have very high voter turnout. There's always some people who don't vote. But the combination of people right now who say they are undecided or won't vote indicates that they really haven't decided yet what to do. And so as we get closer to the election, there's a natural process by which those people will start to gravitate to whichever side that they, you know, they feel uh closer to. And we will know a little bit more. I'm not saying that the this breakdown cannot change, but as it stands now, the parties of the current coalition have a very hard time reaching a majority in any serious survey. And the parties of the opposition, in terms of how coalitions are built here, they have a majority, but because of their long-standing taboo, self-imposed taboo, I should say, on forming coalitions with Zionist parties and Arab parties. Uh, right now there is, you know, a very, it's very unlikely that they will have a pathway to a clear majority of just the Zionist parties, and they have a self-imposed taboo of going into a coalition with Arab parties. So really what we're looking at is a polling situation, a polling landscape where the two blocs are essentially tied, not so much in numbers, because again, the opposition is doing better, but in terms of their potential for forming the next government and Israel's coalition building system.

Neri 13:21

So that's a terrific overview. And yes, we're going to get into the um the opposition and uh the Arab-Israeli political parties in in just a minute. I'm curious, just in terms of the polls, uh, you're right. I think big picture, it's been static for quite some time, remarkably so, given, like you said, everything that has happened. But there have been maybe certain shifts, I guess,

Differences Between the Various Polls

Neri 13:44

tactical, micro-tactical shifts, depending on the poll uh that you look at, depending on the poll that you uh want to believe. So for instance, in uh Channel 12's polling uh uh fairly consistently, the opposition parties are say around 59 seats, very, very close to 60. You know, there was a period of time where the quote unquote Zionist parties without the Arab political parties were even at 61, right? That was like big news for them. But in let's say the Channel 12 poll, they're at around 59 seats. But then other polls, uh I'm gonna leave out channel 14, which is the kind of a pro netting.

Dahlia 14:19

I call the right wing advocacy polls.

Neri 14:21

Yeah, the right wing advocacy polls, you know, living in, I think, la la land. But even the polls for say channel 13, they have the opposition at maybe like 56, right? And the coalition maybe at like 53. So it's a bit, a bit closer, let's say, in channel 13's poll than channel 12 poll. What which ones do you believe should we take everything with a grain of salt? What do you think?

Dahlia 14:44

So I wouldn't look at it exactly like that. I would compare each poll to itself. Uh, each poll, each polling company, each polling agency has what they will, you know, what we might call a special sauce, which is, you know, the reality is that, you know, people want to think of polling as a science, and it is the most scientific possible way of doing this, but there are limits to it because we cannot entirely predict things like voter turnout. We know something about the difference in voter turnout between different parts of the population, but it's all, you know, at the edge, at the far edges of trying to model how the electorate will vote. There it there are a number of you know, presumptions and you know, suggestions based on previous voting patterns that each polling agency will take into account when it tries to calculate that final uh breakdown of seats. And then we have the added factor that we don't really know yet, which is how uh the parties on the on their respective sides of uh blocks will share their surplus votes, right? Because we have a mandate system in which it takes roughly 40,000 votes to get one single seat. And what if you get 47,000 votes? What happens to those extra 7,000 votes? It's not enough for an additional seat. So the parties will make agreements about how to share those surplus votes. We don't always know them right now, but they can make a critical difference, especially when the blocks, as you pointed out, can be very closely tied. So, first of all, to understand these polls, I would, you know, it is helpful to look at which are the you know long-standing veteran polling agencies and all of the ones you cited. Um Gar Mochot, which works for, which conducts polling for Channel 13, um Midgam, which is run by, you know, kind of a legendary pollster Manugueva for Channel 12, uh, Kantar, which has, you know, has been in the in the industry for decades, also working for Khan, the state broadcasters or public broadcaster, I should say, not state broadcaster, um, which also conducts polling for Israel Hayom, right? Israel Today newspaper, and Manachem Lazar's company, which does polling for Ma'ariv. And that's probably where you saw that for about three weeks running, the Zionist opposition parties did reach 61 and there was a lot of buzz around that, but then they fell back down. So all of those are legitimate, credible pollsters, which I know because I've been tracking them for so many years. I wouldn't expect other people to know that, but the way to judge them is to see how transparent they are about their methodology. Nobody's going to reveal the real secret sauce of how they break down the mandates, but try to make sure that they have a legitimate sample, that they're showing the dates of interviews and the margin of error and how they collected the data, whether it's internet or telephones, how they tried to represent the different communities to the extent that you can, to the extent that the uh media who commission them report on those things. Then you're looking at better survey research if you can see those transparent methodological details. But I think that if you want to just do a shortcut and take it from me, those are pretty credible companies. But you know, nobody can really say which is more accurate right now because there are too many unknowns for the voters themselves. And so I would say watch their trends compared to their own polling. So look at channel 12's, you know, or Meat Gum's upward or downward or stable trajectory, and you'll see. I think the best way to look at it right now is is do any of the polls break the range? And the range, I would say, is the coalition regularly gets between 49 and 55 seats. Let's say channel 12's polling has them very often at 51 or 52. And they really haven't broken out of that, certainly not at the upper or lower margins of that full range. Um, and if they do, you need to then ask yourself, is it a one-off or is there a stable trend? And so that's a better way to judge polls than by saying, you know, is Meetgam the better polling company that it can predict right now what's going to happen in the elections when we don't even know what the parties are gonna look like, right? We're gonna see so many changes in the parties, they're gonna be parties merging and breaking up. We have not even, you know, begun to see all the musical chairs. So there's really if polls do not excel at predictions. This is a point I often make about polling because people very often forget. And it's not just that they forget, it's that they are often misled by popular commentators who think that polling is forecasting. Polling is not forecasting. Polling is the best and most sensitive tool we have for understanding everything that has happened up until now, including now. It cannot predict the future when the rules of the game or you know the structure of the parties is not even set yet.

Neri 19:01

I think that's a fair, that's a fair answer. I was hoping you would just come and say, no, no, you know, discard everything. Just look at channel 12. The opposition is very, very close to 60. Yeah, no. Um, and I'll tell you the reason.

Dahlia 19:13

Um, part of the reason is that Israel is an overpoled society. It's fascinating how much Israelis love asking themselves about themselves in every, you know, from every possible angle on every possible issue and for and at every possible stage in its history, including before independence. Okay, polling started during the war. Um, you know, even in late 1947. So uh there's a fascinating and rich history to it, but that means we have some very skilled and credible polling agencies and think tanks. We haven't even talked about, you know, looking at the deeper numbers, right? If you want to understand the credibility of any horse race dynamics, you should look at the deeper numbers, how people identify as right, left, or center, what their positions are on certain issues. That can give you a more stable grounding for understanding where society is going to go. For example, one quick example, an easy one I think that people should really keep in mind, is that the breakdown of self-identification by left, right, or center, which the media companies don't ask, or if they ask it, they don't publish it. I mean, usually they don't ask it. But I mean, all the think tanks ask people if they identify as left, right, or center. So you can track that in a very sensitive way. I've been tracking it for decades, really, since the late 90s when I began poll, you know, polling. And what we see is a very, very stable pattern among the Jewish population and the Arab population of, you know, for Jews, um, about 60% in recent years who identify as right wing, about a quarter who identify as centrist, and between 13, 14, 12 to 14%, let's say, who identify as left-wing. Uh, in among the Arab population, it's a few percentage points, usually 6% who identify as right wing, also about a quarter who identify as centrist, which means something very different for them. And about 35 to 40% who identify as left-wing. All the rest don't like answering the question. But among the Jewish population, that question is a great barometer, a great predictor of whether people are going to vote for parties representing right, left, or center ideology, not necessarily regarding coalition building. But we know more about that based on how religious they are, right? If they're religious and right wing, they're probably going to vote for a party of the coalition. Et cetera. I mean, there's more detail I could give, but you know, getting an understanding of what the polls mean at the level of the horse race is is greatly, you know, deepened by looking at those, you know, deeper reflections of who people are and how they think.

Neri 21:29

Very important point as well. Uh, it's not just kind of the weekly breakdown of political parties, it's kind of deeper lying questions of identity and uh political orientation, um, which also often gets lost. Uh final question about polling the Dahlia. Uh with all the due caveats as far as you know, election day being still months away and the musical chairs and the mergers and acquisitions that we are still likely to see uh in the months ahead. Uh it is fair to say that uh in the last two or three election cycles, the polls have actually been Fairly accurate in terms of the end result, right? Going into election day. Is that is that fair, despite maybe uh certain preconceived uh notions about the polls always being wrong, especially in Israel?

Dahlia 22:12

Honestly, I don't know where that that came from. In fact, it's the truth is quite the opposite. In the decades that I've been working in polling again since the late 1990s, the polls are almost always fairly close. And I mean uh both final stage, you know, public opinion um um uh representative samples, but also specifically what we call the uh midgam, the um exit polls, exit polls on the night of the elections. Those are usually quite accurate. Where the bad reputation came into the picture was in 2015, which was actually the outlier when both the polls and you know, the final stage polls and the exit polls uh ended up missing a few percentage points, which really skewed the final result. So that, you know, was a turning point in terms of perceptions of polls. Of course, if you get, if there's an outlier which gets it really wrong, you know, then everybody kind of misremembers everything else. Um, and I think the other thing that people misunderstand is that public polling with representative sampling ends three days before the elections by law. You can't publish them anymore. And sometimes there are final stage shifts based on those final portions, those few percentage points who haven't decided yet, who don't know what to tell pollsters, and or, you know, or they're kind of disengaged and haven't really been reached by pollsters. And so those people, if they vote, you know, they they could represent two or three uh percentage points, which is huge when you have two very closely tied blocks. So again, there are certain, there are just limits to what polls can actually be expected to do. And so when it comes to coalition building, in the very final stages of the elections of those last five years, right? Of the last yeah, yeah, the last, well, four years in which we had five election cycles, the polls were pretty accurate. Uh, they can't be expected to get, you know, to know whether a party's going to get 24 or 25 seats. That's those are such tiny margins that they're well within the margin of error in any poll. But uh it's unfortunate, I think, that people have this reputation, this image that the polls are particularly bad in Israel. It's quite the opposite. They're actually particularly good in Israel, um, with a few exceptions, of course, and limitations, built-in limitations, I should say.

Neri 24:16

A spirited defense by Dahlia of uh polling in Israel.

Dahlia 24:19

But it but it's just empirical. It's not even my it's not even a matter of defensiveness. It's not even personally defensive because I don't do uh exit polling, for example. I'm not defending my own uh industry here. It's a different subject, but um, it's just if you really look at those results, you know, that's what you'll find. 2015 was a bit of an outlier.

Neri 24:35

Yeah, and I'm not even being kind of uh too clever by half. I think it is important for people to hear that the polls are actually usually correct here, because I had someone a week or two ago say, well, you know, the polls are always wrong and we can kind of just throw them out and it doesn't mean anything. And that's I think Israeli politicians tend to say that, yeah.

Dahlia 24:53

I mean, I don't know if this was an outsider, but Israeli politicians tend to say that almost reflexively when the polls are not flattering to them, or they go for the other uh response, which is I we have other polls, like alternative facts, which can also be the case because it, you know, there are different ways of looking at this, but it's also it's not a perfect science. In fact, no science is a perfect science. It's just the best we have.

Neri 25:14

Yeah, except when you ask uh Channel 14 or like BBS and their polls are just completely in an alternate dimension.

Dahlia 25:23

Um I would be cautious about that too. I'm sorry to jump in, but I would be cautious about that too, because uh the closer we get to elections, the more interest they have in proving that they can be accurate as well. And so if you look at the final stage polling for direct polls in the last couple of election cycles, they weren't that far off. Now I think that, you know, when at a time when nobody knows, when there's no, you know, when everybody can plausibly say I just have a different methodology, I think they're, I really think they are playing a role of right-wing advocacy polls. But again, if you look at their trend line, it's static, just like all the other polls. So they're quite consistent in that way. And in most of their those two companies now, because direct polls broke up, but if you look at both of their polling, not only are they similarly static for the coalition relative to the more credible polls, but they also mostly do not have the government getting beyond 64 seats, which it already has today. So even if occasionally they'll have them at 65 or even 66, first of all, it's rare. Secondly, it it's a similar trend line to the other polls. So I wouldn't discount them the closer we get to elections.

Neri 26:26

But they have the coalition like with a clear majority. Yes. And that runs count runs counter to literally every other poll in this country. Um that's why kind of, as you said, it's right-wing right-wing advocacy polls, because it also has a self-reinforcing dynamic where their supporters say, well, we're, you know, we're gonna win and we're gonna disregard all of the uh fake news, the fake news media.

Dahlia 26:47

Um if they're counting on people having that reaction, that's also quite a gamble because there are other reactions. We have lots of academic data showing that people are much more likely to turn out when they think the race is really close and they could lose.

Neri 26:59

Okay. Uh fair. That's also a fair point. When they when it's existential in Netanyahu's uh issuing videos telling telling his voters that you know Arabs and left-wingers are heading in droves to the polls, yes, that also has an impact.

Speaker 27:16

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Neri 28:14

With that introduction about the state of play in the polling, I wanted to actually get into the brass tax. Uh we'll do kind of the opposition first and then the coalition at Yahoo Block second. But in terms of the opposition, uh, I think it's fair to say the big move of the past month was uh the merger between the two former prime ministers, Nabdali Benet and Yaril Lapid, into this new party called Bayachad, which is uh together in Hebrew. Now, depending on the poll, uh again, they're running slightly around where the Likud is, maybe low to mid 20 seats uh in the polling. But I think it's fair to say they've been losing a bit of ground and a bit of altitude since they announced their merger.

The Bennett-Lapid Merger and the Rise of Gadi Eisenkot

Neri 28:57

Um, so I guess two-part question. What did you think of the merger just in terms of kind of uh the dynamics of a political campaign? And also why do you think, if accurate, that they're losing ground and altitude?

Dahlia 29:09

Yeah. So I think that um I wasn't surprised entirely by the merger because there has been a lot of um expectation that the many parties and within the the anti-Natanyahu bloc will merge in order to try to maximize their votes. However, there are a couple of things about it that are surprising or not surprising. Uh for one thing, it was a little bit of a counterintuitive merger in one sense, because these people are these two leaders are ideologically very different. You know, Neftali Bennett comes from the far right. He began his political career, well, pre-even before politics, of course, as the head of the Judean-Sumaria council for, you know, basically promoting settlements. He's always been a strong supporter of settlements and always been viscerally and you know, uh ironclad, an ironclad opponent of Palestinian states or anything like a two-state solution. He began his political career running by, you know, kind of critiquing Netanyahu from the right. He was the first Israeli politician in, you know, in modern times to openly run on a platform of annexation, uh, publishing a plan in late 2012 about how about annexing parts of the West Bank. And he really, you know, contributed a great deal to legitimizing the annexation discourse, not to mention his party spearheading the assault on the judiciary when they were in Netanyahu's coalition between 2015 and 2019. So he's very right-wing. And Yirlapid comes from the staunch sector, but increasingly is seen as left-wing by a much more hard-line Israeli society. Definitely sees himself as the champion of liberal Israel, middle class, upper middle class, bourgeois, kind of, you know, Western integrated, uh, more secularist. And so these are strange bedfellows on one level, but on the other hand, we also know that they have a very strong personal relationship. They've always gotten along well. It's sort of a kind of they have a national nickname of being the alliance of brothers, and they have gone into a coalition together before uh in 2013 to 2015. And so we know that they've gotten along. They also, of course, were in the rotation government together, the change government in 2021. That's very important because they were able to come to this very collegial agreement, some would say even strange agreement by which Neftali Bennett became prime minister first, despite holding only six parliamentary each seat, uh, which you know was heavily criticized from a democratic perspective, which I I you know share some of that critique. But the point is, I think personal relations count for a lot more than ideology these days. So in that sense, it wasn't entirely surprising. In answer to your question about why they, you know, seem to not be doing as well. One thing is that we know from as a broad rule, not 100%, but I would say 80% of the time, when parties merge in Israel, they tend to do a little bit worse than they did separately. And that's like a long-standing observation. There are some exceptions, to be sure, but more of the time they do not as well combined as they had in the outgoing Knesset separately. Now remember, Naftali Bennett's party isn't even in the outgoing Knesset. It's a theoretical party. So there's a lot of ifs about the whole thing. And right now, we don't even know very many people who, you know, who are on his list. We know a few names recently, but in some ways, I think that ever since this government was formed, really since January 2023, when we saw the polls declining, there has been an opposition figure filling in the spot that voters needed to be able to express their displeasure at this government. Some of them from the opposition hoping for a big, you know, center-right party to challenge Netanyahu, some of them people who defected from supporting the coalition after voting for those parties in 2022. And they needed to be in a right-wing party, but challenging Netanyahu. And so we've seen it every phase. There's been some party that either was matching Likud's strength or rising far above, certainly during the post-October 7th, six months, when Likud lost 50% of its support. And Benny Gance was running in the upper 30s. Benny Gance, remember him in the upper 30 seat range, even close to 40. I swear I feel like I'm I'm quite sure I saw 40 seats at some point somewhere, or maybe close to 40. I mean, it was, you know, pie in the sky, but we've always seen a party that that seems to, well, you know, the the uh the uh chattering class, the consultants out there, the analysts call it the parking lot for voters who aren't sure what they're gonna do, but they just need somebody, a party that seems to be the best challenger to Netanyahu in the sort of, you know, center right or right wings uh but anti-Netanyahu camp. So they were hoping to take that spot. But in the meantime, they have a challenger. So first you have the basic rule that usually cuts uh against um, you know, the total level of support for two merge parties. Then you have another challenger who seems to be moving into the parking spot, and that's Gaudi Eisenhoot, right, who is former chief of staff, very popular, uh, also a bit of a martyr, right, has a kind of martyr image after um after losing his son and his nephew in uh in the wars of the last two and a half years. So it's a really tragic situation. But in fact, Gaudi Eisencote was quite popular before then, too, you know, long before he had the you know the kind of um tragic image of somebody who wants to serve the country despite, you know, his personal loss. And I think that, you know, he's moving into that spot and now he's on the rise, right? Just a few months ago when he began, when he announced that he's actually got his party, he was just polling at around six seats, but now he's up to as high as 17 seats in some of the surveys. Right. So that's impressive. And on the other hand, it's hard to say it's really to his credit. It's more because it's the voters who are looking for that fresh new challenger. Um, and if you think about it, it it definitely, I think that you know, the analysis that I've just given is justified by the fact that Gadi Eisencott has nothing like a platform. We don't know what he stands for, right? Uh he's starting to, I think he's starting to articulate positions, but nobody really knows what he stands for. Nobody really knew what Benny Gantz stood for. I mean, Benny Gantz entered politics in 2019, and we still don't know what he stands for because he never gave his position on any of the core issues that define Israeli society. And I think I think Gadi Eisencott really hasn't done that either. Uh, yet look at how much his polls are rising. It's because people are looking for the person or the party that can challenge Netanyahu from the mainstream center right in Israel. I'm not saying Gadi Eisencott is center right, but that's how Israelis they see him as a legitimate challenger. He's, you know, he's not viewed as left-wing, although some data shows that he's sort of viewed as more centrist, for example, than Aftali Bennett. But we'll see how the voter's perception of him changes as he, if he begins to release any of his actual positions.

Neri 35:32

So I was going to ask you about Gaudi Eisencott, and I think, you know, does he have positions? I I think so. I mean, it's kind of the same positions as most of the anti-Nahu opposition, right? Which is heavy emphasis on ultra-orthodox conscription, you know, sharing the sharing the burden of military service. I think that's a big part of it, setting up a state commission of inquiry into October 7th. Uh, they all agree on that.

Dahlia 35:58

Um everybody agrees on that.

Neri 36:00

Yeah, everywhere.

Dahlia 36:02

And it's also not a big vision. I mean, you know, what is he no? I realize, but I'm saying everybody in the opposition. And I would say when I talk about vision, I mean what is his vision for the future of Israel? Uh, should there be a constitution? Should it commit to democracy, or should it continue being, you know, partial, a kind of hybrid democracy, theocracy, uh, and leaning towards theocracy? Where are the borders of the country? What does he want to do about you know, Palestinian demand for self-determination? Um, two states, yes or no? I mean, these are the big things that very few are asking and very few are answering. But um I think that's what we're always talking about very specific and rather consensus policies, at least in the opposition. Drafting the Haridim is not only a consensus among the opposition, of course, the majority of coalition voters want that to happen as well. Um, and if you know, a state commission of inquiry, again, we're talking about something that didn't exist before October 7th, you know, and an issue that does not divide the parties, and it's not a matter of the vision for the country.

Neri 36:59

Fair point. I think a lot of them are keeping it kind of very vague to try to appeal to as broad a swath of Israeli society as possible. But you're right. Um you don't have a opposition Israeli leader getting up there and saying, okay, we're going to re-engage, say, on the peace process, or we need to pull out of well, all the buffer zones that Israel has seized over the past two years, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I'm just curious, in terms of Isencart, do you see him as a potential future alternative uh opposition candidate for prime minister? Could he actually overtake Bennett and Lapide? Are they uh are their ultimate fates going to be just to merge and Eisencott biding his time and increasing his leverage? I mean, how do you see this play out?

Dahlia 37:42

I think it's absolutely possible that he overtakes them, right? He's on the rise there on the kind of static or or you know, slight ebb. Um it's certainly, and they're not that far apart. If his upper range of polling is as high as 17 and their lower range of polling is as low as 23 or something, you know, or even 22, I think. So, you know, they're not that far off and their trajectories are going in different directions. Having said that, there's a lot of pressure on them to unify. The Israelis tell themselves they want this kind of unification. So it could also happen. But I think they're all missing something, which is that, you know, the way Netanyahu was able to really, you know, milk 64 seats out of the last elections with only 48%, 48.3% of the actual votes cast, it was by getting small parties to merge. It was the tiny parties who were, you know, sucking out, kind of draining away votes of disaffected people from the big parties that merged and managed to cross the electoral threshold, which brought over those key mandates. I mean, just crossing the electoral threshold of 3.25% is four votes, four mandates, four seats. In other words, there's pretty much no way to get, there's not really any way to get fewer than four seats if you cross the electoral threshold. And so I think the opposition parties are all missing something, which is that the B parties can merge or not merge. I don't think we're going to see a significant shift of the overall um, you know, voter dynamic at this stage, but I do think that the smallest parties out there need to merge. And by, you know, by that I mean obviously the Arab parties really need to work um to try to uh realize their promise to the voters to merge. Right now it doesn't look very good. And, you know, there are other numerous small parties in the opposition camp that are trying to make their, you know, stake their claim. I mean, you have the Miruimnikim party who are, you know, putting in a lot of effort. Yeah, Yoaz Henda, they're trying to put in a lot of effort. And, you know, they're very unlikely to cross the electoral threshold. And if they don't, they will just drain a lot of votes away. But if they merge with other small parties or with one of the other medium-sized parties, you know, that could actually maximize votes for the opposition. I think we shouldn't, at least if I was advising the entire opposition camp, I would say stop worrying about the actual exact constellation of the big parties and start worrying about the small ones that are going to drain votes.

Neri 39:52

Always very good advice for the Israeli opposition because as we've seen in previous election campaigns, that that's what did them in. I think they they they know it. They just can never actually act on that. But I did want to actually shift uh in terms of the final question with regard to the opposition to the Arab-Israeli political parties. Um oftentimes a major focus of Israeli election campaigns, especially in recent years, uh, both in terms of uh the overall turnout and uh as we alluded to, the uh the big election of 2021, uh where Mansoor Abbas and his Arab uh Islamist party, Ram, actually joined the Benet Lapid uh governing coalition. It put them over the top, so it gave them actually 61 seats. Um, and he was essentially the kingmaker uh of of that government and for the first time ever, unprecedented, an Arab political party actually joining an Israeli governing coalition. Um, I think it's fair to say that the Arabs, but especially Monsour Abbas, would love to repeat that feat. Uh, but as you talked about, the most of the Israeli Jewish

The Arab-Israeli Political Parties

Neri 40:58

uh opposition leaders uh are kind of holding them at arm's length, uh issuing, if not concrete promises, and you know, essentially saying, we don't we don't want to uh go down that path again. We don't want to use the Arabs, quote unquote, in our governing coalition. Um, so I guess I mean the first question in terms of the Arab-Israeli political dynamic, will that be the kind of the fateful decision of the opposition, right? Will that do them in if they're not willing to actually use Mansoor Abbas or the other Arab political parties to form a governing coalition to get a majority?

Dahlia 41:30

Based on current polling, yes. If the elections were held today, they will probably not be able. I mean, I can't see any situation if the elections were held today where the Zionist opposition parties can form a stable government, even if they have 61. 61 is a terrible government. 61, you know, the bare majority out of 120 collapsed within a year in 2021, or just over a year. Um, it's too easily undermined. They're, you know, one defector, two defectors, and you're gone. So I think that there's really no way they can do it without they can form a coalition without the Arab Party. So either they somehow manage to scrape up another three, four, five percent and get 64 and 65 seats, which I don't see so far. It hasn't happened. It's not impossible. But those that's very much not impossible, but completely hypothetical right now, because we have not seen that movement in the polls at any time, neither has the neither has the coalition. Or they break their promise, which most Israelis know that coalition building promises are made to be broken. They don't like it, they hate it every time, but it's been like that for decades. You know, or there's a hung post-election coalition building crisis, uh, and we go into another election cycle. Or the president says, Well, if you couldn't do it, we'll have to give the mandate back to uh Netzanyahu to form a coalition, see if he can do it, even though he didn't get a majority. That I don't see any other outcome. It's either they win back another, you know, significant uh number of percentage points to get that majority, or they go in with an Arab party or not. Are you if I missed a scenario, you can you can you can let me know.

Neri 43:00

I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a scenario in just a second, but uh are you impressed at all by the the vagueness of certain comments you hear from Naftali Bennett, um, where he says, I won't rely on the Arabs.

Dahlia 43:14

I mean they always try to leave themselves a little bit of a uh a little bit of an escape where, you know, and when when when they are sometimes occasionally asked, what's wrong with going into an Arab party, even by mainstream media commentators, oftentimes just to provoke them, um, they'll say, Well, I'm not banning them because they're Arab, but we need a Zionist coalition. We need people who support, you know, uh a draft for everybody, which is code for Kharidim, but also code for Arabs, which they know they won't support, um, or some sort of you know conditionality that makes it clear that they don't want to go in with an Arab party. So they do try to kind of play this little game. I I don't know why they make all the effort. You know, the Israeli public knows that they're going to promise not to go in with them, and they probably realize that they might break their promise. Um, it it almost doesn't matter. You know, nobody if after the elections they go in with an Arab party and Everybody says, how could they do that? So what? I mean, you can't topple a government by public demonstrations, as we all learned over the course of 2023.

Neri 44:09

So let me give you an alternative scenario. Um, and I'll preface it by uh quoting Mansur Abbas himself. He gave an interview, I think about two weeks ago, to Channel 12. Terrific interview. He's very kind of calm, poised. Like you said, a lot of the Israeli Jewish journalists and media try to provoke and just get into like the horse race and without the kind of real discussion about the broader vision, which is Mansoor Abbas actually reaching out and being like, no, I do want to be part of uh the government here. I do want to focus on things that are important to my constituency, uh, which needs a lot of things, especially in terms of personal security, uh, and kind of equal civil uh rights and opportunities in this country, and uh kind of leaving the big issues of war and peace, as he said, uh to the to the cabinet, to the government. But uh he said something interesting. He's like, look, uh let's hypothetically uh positive scenario where the Arabs just were evaporated, his words, uh, tomorrow. No more Arabs, i.e., no more Arabs in the cadessa, right? So they have now in total, according to the polls, 10 seats. So according to Monsour Abbas, you have uh whatever it might be, let's say 60 seats for the opposition, the Internethoo opposition, and 50 seats for the Netanyahu government and the coalition and no Arabs. He's like the opposition has a majority, right? They have a majority. Um, and I think he was alluding to the scenario where you don't actually need 61 seats to seat a government in Israel. You just need a simple majority. Now, it's never happened before in Israeli history, uh, a minority government de facto, but I think this is a scenario that Mansur Abbas was alluding to, where, you know, essentially when it comes to the vote at Knesset to seat the government, the Arabs will just go out for a cup of coffee. And the opposition will still have will still have a majority. So what do you think about that scenario?

Dahlia 46:01

Okay, so for one thing, it's it's uh let me be let me fine-tune it a little bit. There has never been a government sworn in or established as a minority, but there have been minority coalitions when the coalition falls apart. They don't do well, they don't last very long. And I think we can expect if that were to happen, which is possible by law, of course it's possible, to establish a minority coalition. Um, I doubt it could last very long. It would be on life support from the moment it was born. And so I don't think it's a great outcome. I thought you were going to pitch a different scenario at me, which a lot of people are speculating about here, if you really want to know what the chattering class is talking about, especially in the opposition, which is that it's a no who somehow vacates the scene. Now, I personally, having watched his career, you know, for all of these years, really in the 1990s, from then from 2009 onward, I don't think there's any scenario in which he voluntarily leaves the scene except for one, and that is health. Uh, I don't think he would ever do it if he doesn't have to, but if his health, you know, God forbid, somehow gets really bad and he has to leave, then you have the Likud uh without Netzanyahu at the helm. And I think sky's the limit, right? I think all of these parties that we're talking about in the right wing opposition, and I say right wing or center right wing in Israeli perceptions, um, all of them have no problem with, you know, forming coalition with Likud and without the ultra orthodox, let's say, gives them lots of leverage, lots of leeway because the Likud is still the biggest party. That's you know, a huge suddenly, you know, you have like just doubled the number of chess pieces in your coalition building game if you're in the opposition parties. Um, and so I think that is also uh, you know, one of the unpredictable, but predictions that we can think of. No, it's not a prediction, it's one of the unpredictable scenarios. Uh seems unlikely, but not totally out of range.

Neri 47:42

Yeah. I mean, if Netanyahu vacates a scene, then that's um an earthquake in Israeli politics. And it opens up uh a whole host of possibilities. Right. Not just, I think, for the next Knesset, the next government, but the entire country.

Dahlia 47:57

Um And I should say I don't think it's likely that he would do it of his own volition. But there are some very well-placed commentators out there who are influential and who are talking about this and who say, oh, mark my words, he's not going to run to the end. I don't know where they get that. Maybe it's wishful thinking on the part of some you know opposition-oriented uh commentators, but these are seasoned analysts as well. So we could all be, you know, you and I could be wrong.

Neri 48:19

Yeah, I mean, uh ultimately it's his decision and his family's decision, as as we know from past experience. Um, I will just say, in terms of my scenario, seeding a minority government, it does have the added benefit where even if it only lasts whatever three months, then you you go into the next election with that government actually as a transition government. They're they're still in power. Um you actually do at the very least kick out this quite terrible current Israeli government from power.

Dahlia 48:51

But only for a limited amount of time because who would know what who knows what would happen after a few after a second election cycle.

Neri 48:57

Well, yeah, maybe, maybe stalemate, and as we know from experience, uh another election, another election. But I could see the benefits of at the very minimum doing that. Uh even if they're not willing to actually bring in, let's say, Mansur Abbas and an Arab political party to actually get them over the 61 seat uh threshold. Um we have to shift to uh the government, uh the Netanyahu bloc. So it's the Lilikud party, it's the two Orthodox parties, uh, and then it's the two far-right uh settler religious nationalist parties, uh, led by Bethel El Samotrich and Itamar Benvir. So these five parties kind of writ large uh make up the Netanyahu bloc. Um I have no real uh faith or expectations uh in terms of the Haraides or the uh the religious nationalists, uh in terms of their future movements, their kind of sectoral uh parties focused on very specific issues and very specific ideologies. Um but how do you explain uh the Likud, which is kind of this big tent uh, you know, right wing obviously, but uh has uh presumptions to be kind of a nationalist and liberal party? Um how do you explain that it actually conserved and even kind of upticked its strength over the past say year or so, as you talked about at the top? Um they're polling now mid-20s, right? So the support for the party and really the head of the party, Netanyahu, has not cratered despite everything that's happened over the past three and a half years and a lot of it bad. Um so I mean, what's the attraction, the continued attraction to the Likud party? Um, I guess other than just

The Continued Support for Netanyahu's Likud Party

Neri 50:40

attraction to Bibi Nick Nyahu himself. How do you explain the Likud polling numbers?

Dahlia 50:45

Well, for one thing, I I think we um it's past time to admit that the Likud is does not have pretensions to be a liberal party anymore. Their roots were in were in liberal thinking in addition to being a nationalist party, which is I always thought was a contradiction. I wrote a whole article about it uh that was focused on you know Bennett's positions, but ultimately it's a critique of Likud most first and foremost. And then it also is a critique that can apply to other parts of the Israeli political map. But I think that Likud today has definitively broken from that legacy and has really put that behind it entirely. So it's not vying for the votes or the affections of anybody who still is committed to some sort of liberal position on Israeli institutions and democracy, et cetera. Uh, that's one thing. But it doesn't really answer your question of why the Likud still has appeal. And I think that there is a toss-up between, in my, you know, in my mind, between whether people continue to vote for Likud primarily because of Netanyahu or also because they are traditional Likud. I mean, you know, it's a party, it's one of the oldest parties in Knesset right now. Uh Likud and Shas, you know, of course Agudati Israel goes back to, you know, the early early part of the 20th century, but these are the oldest parties in the past. Yeah, one of the constituent parties of the Sharedi parties. So these are the oldest parties in Knesset, which means people have very, very long, they, you know, they they have they still have a constituency for whom party loyalty resonates. It was a home, it was an identity. And the newer parties haven't really built that yet. I mean, people may support Yeeshate and Ye'irlapid, maybe because they like Yerlapid, maybe because they like the people on the list. I think we underestimate, you know, people on the list uh when Yeh Shati was still a separate party, but it's not the same as, you know, the party being your home, part of who you are, your community. So, you know, the older parties have built that for generations. And that's part of it. I wouldn't assume it's only about Netanyahu, but of course, his personality is partly fused with the party. And so I think if you ask those voters, they'll say things like, all of the bad things that you talk about, they have a whole list of things where they think BB has shown has triumphed, has, you know, um brought incredible achievements. And I think that they look at everybody else as sourpuss left-wingers who are, you know, just cannot accept, you know, right wing success. So of course everybody hates October 7th, right? What happened? But they don't see it as Netanyahu's failure. They see it as proof that, you know, Palestinians always want to annihilate Israelis and nobody can solve that. But Netanyahu responded the way Prime Minister should respond in their view. Um, they also see Or they blame or they blame the opposition, or they blame the conspiracy. Yeah.

Neri 53:20

Yeah, the army or the Supreme Court or the deep state for October 7th and not the government of the day.

Dahlia 53:25

Exactly. And we know that these conspiracy theories that there was actually an inside job that kind of let it happen within the military and the security establishment, with the security and intelligence establishment, um, has, you know, been increasing in terms of people among opposition, among coalition supporters who believe it. We have polling on this from the interdisciplinary center, the Reichman Institute. Um, so that is certainly part of it. In other words, they don't blame Netanyahu for that. They think that he was a victim of this kind of conspiratorial thinking. Or even if it's not the conspiracy, it just proves their pre-existing attitudes towards Palestinians and we and it proves that they need somebody like Netanyahu to be the tough, strong, you know, leader who can rally the world or hold off global pressure, right? If he can't rally the world to Israel's side, at least hold off pressure. And Netanyahu has run around, you know, runs around telling everybody he held off on the terrible pressure of the Biden administration to stop the war, which is really, you know, an incredible distortion reversal of reality because the Biden administration did more than anybody thought possible to support Israel's ongoing war in Gaza, you know, with unprecedented levels of military support and political cover, and you know, a few kind of admonishments about you should not go into Rafah, but everything else was fine, and really didn't do anything to stop Israel. In fact, earning a lot of wrath and possibly even earning, you know, losing the presidency over that to the to the next Democratic candidate, you know, depending on how much you think Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voters mattered. So uh Netanyahu, you know, typically has really built, you know, a completely different world of ideas. Um and I don't know, I go back and forth between how much I think you can give him credit for, you know, manipulating people and convincing them of a world of lies, so much as you know, understanding that legitimately you can look at some of the things he's done, certainly before October 7th and even after. And they are real things, right? Okay, never mind the question of whether he held off non-existent pressure from the Biden administration, but convincing the US to basically allow Israel to have two escalations with Iran in 2024, a major full-out war with Iran in 2025, backed by Trump, who eventually joined that war at the end, and then essentially gave him his dream, you know, his dream uh solution to everything, which was to attack Iran. I mean, never mind that it all went south for the moment. I think he portrays that as an incredible, he he, I not just I think, I mean, he he openly says, and all of his supporters openly say, just look at where we are three years ago, where we were three years ago. Nobody could have imagined that we would have, you know, that we would have America's backing and the entire global community has basically allowed us to take action against Iran. He said just yesterday, just yesterday, we've done such damage to the Iranian regime, they will never be the same again. Their fate is to fall. You know, he'll keep saying that because even if he can't claim to have toppled it, if the regime falls in 50 years, he'll say, I started the process. And never mind, his voters are unfalsifiable. Right. Those things did happen. It's a matter of how you interpret them, whether they were good or bad. And so he's not making everything up. It's just a matter of, you know, which parts, you know, whether you, if you emphasize, if you look at the outcomes, and most the I should say the majority of Israelis are very disappointed in the outcome. It doesn't look good for Netanyahu, the ceasefire being imposed on Israel, both with Iran and with Lebanon. Uh, we have, we're coming after a tense couple of days with, you know, this um very salacious um phone call between Trump and uh Netanyahu, where Trump apparently custed him or didn't, if you believe the prime minister's office. But all to say that Netanyahu can certainly claim that he got America to allow him and even participate in some very, very dramatic action in the Middle East, whether or not you like the outcome. And then if you don't like the outcome, the question is whom you blame. And so if his supporters, you know, say, well, he did the best he could, and that's really it was really, you know, revolutionary, but he was able to do, okay, not everything went as we would have liked, but who else could have done this? They will continue supporting him.

Neri 57:18

Well, who else could have done this?

Dahlia 57:20

I mean. But that's what it comes down to, because many Israeli voters will say that there's nobody else.

Neri 57:25

Yeah, and this is the job of the opposition to actually convince enough Israelis that there is someone else and that there is and can be life after Netanyahu. Um, that's the hope. Uh Dahlia, last two questions for you before I let you go. Just in terms of the Netanyahu block and potential future scenarios, uh, Betel Smotrich and his religious Zionism party is polling, depending on the poll, uh, below the electoral threshold, sometimes now above the electoral threshold, but potentially in danger, and that could be a major shift either way in the next election. What do you expect to see in Smotric's future merger? Not is he just gonna kind of white knuckle it through? What do you think?

Dahlia 58:10

I don't see if he's can if he's regularly polling below the threshold, as he has been for much of the last year. Um, I don't see any, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't merge with one of the other parties or simply go back to the little, you know, sort of fake merger with Itamar Ben Gvir. I mean, it wasn't fake for the purposes of the elections, you know, it it helped them gain 14 seats, which is impressive uh from their from their perspective. And so I think that they could, you know, then they broke up promptly after the election. So they could do that again. And I don't see why they wouldn't. Why would they even risk waste, you know, why would they risk wasting even one vote?

Neri 58:41

Because Itamar Benvir, the last time around, was number two to Smotric, and now Smotric will have to um kind of crawl to Benvier and be his own.

Dahlia 58:49

Yes, he will. That's the nature, the nature of Israeli politics is a lesson in humiliation and how much you're willing to grovel to stay in the game. But that's how it always is. I mean, I don't see why they wouldn't do that. Uh, I think that that, you know, remember that Batsana Smoltric is 100% ideology. He is a religious fanatic, messianic, you know, uh complete fundamentalist. And what I mean by that is not just, I'm not just saying that as a matter of slurs, I'm saying that as an actual um category, right? Probably anybody who might have read my work over the years does not know that I studied religious studies for my BA and my master's degree. And I, you know, took, I took quite an interest in religious fundamentalism. And I think that what it comes down to is that he will sacrifice a great deal, including what looks like his personal ambition for the sake of his ideology of owning all of biblical Israel, which goes way beyond even the mandate borders. But I mean, wherever he has the possibility of doing that, he will do it. And that means staying in power. That means staying in the government. And so I have a feeling that when push comes to shove, if you look at a fundamentalist mindset, personal sacrifice is nothing. People will die, you know, for their ideology. And so coming in second in a political party, I don't think he would have any problem with that. I mean, he may not like it very personally, but I can't imagine he would waste votes, especially if he's getting 3%, for example, you know, just under the electoral threshold. That would be too many wasted votes. If he is regularly crossing the electoral threshold in polls, you never know. Maybe he'll try to stick it out on his own.

Neri 1:00:19

Yeah. And the best example of um both he and Nitamar Benvir's uh, you know, the courage of their convictions, such as they are, was back in 2021 when Netanyahu himself was the first one to negotiate with Mansur Abbas, uh, to have Mansoor Abbas and his Ram kind of Arab Islamist Party join Netanyahu's uh potential coalition back then. Uh people, well, not people, everyone remembers it, but the Netanyahu supporters choose to not remember it. Uh and the ones who vetoed that move uh were Smartush and Benever. And they were not, they they were willing to go to the opposition and give up potentially very cushy senior ministerial posts just to not have an Arab political party uh join their coalition, much to Netanyahu's chagrin. So yes, uh they've they've shown in the past that they're willing to play the long game and pay a personal price. Um final question for you, Dahlia, just in terms of the coming weeks and months, uh, what do you see as potential wild cards uh on the electoral map? Uh there's talk, for instance, of a Likud B party uh potentially being formed, these kind of former senior Likud ministers uh that maybe want to kind of break off and at least project a more moderate face than the present-day Netanyahu-dominated Likud. Uh that's kind of one scenario of a wild card party. I mean, do you see anything else coming down the pike? Who will it help? Who will it hurt? Give us your your best guess.

Dahlia 1:01:52

I mean, for one thing, we often have a situation in Israeli elections where five or six percentage points are unpredictable at the very up to the very end because people really haven't decided yet. Um, and so I would pay, you know, try to pay close attention to that, to that group to the extent that you can from public polling. It's very hard. But, you know, in my internal data from projects that I do, I really try to look at who they voted for last time, if they turned out, are they right, left, or center, where they might go. That's one thing. But and that, of course, could be a game changer in either direction, even whether whether or not there's a new party. In terms of a Likud bet, we have a precedent for it, right? We have the the um you know 2006 formation of the Kadima Party, or it might have been 2005, but they ran in the 2006 election for the first time. Ariel Sharon split off from Likud and really, you know, gouged the Likud's base of support and took parties away from took votes away from labor. So that was an unusual, you know, moment. Um

Potential Wildcards on the Electoral Map

Dahlia 1:02:45

right now, I don't think we're looking at quite the same circumstances. I think that um ultimately there's two competing axes in Israel in terms of how people decide their votes right now, certainly in the Jewish population. One is that ideological group I talked about before, right, left, or center. And the other one is the Netanyahu for or against. And so I think if there's a new party on, you know, breakaways from Likud, etc., we've we've seen efforts like this in recent years. Gidon Tsar tried to do exactly this and, you know, ultimately was a total failure, to be honest. No offense. But um reality talk about groveling and and you know, swallowing your pride. I mean, he had to go groveling right back to Likud where he started. Um, and I think we see him doing Netanyahu's bidding in foreign relations right now. But all to say that it doesn't seem to work out that well because ultimately the first mapping people do is ideological. Do they want to vote for a party of the right, left, or center? And then they say to themselves, do I want a party that's gonna support Netanyahu or not? And so if there's a new party, a breakaway from Likud from Likud, they're gonna be asked every hour, not just every day, every hour, you know, which kind of coalition would you want to go into with Netanyahu or led by Netanyahu or not? And however they answer, that's gonna determine whether people support them on either side. And I think that either way, we're not gonna see a significant change in the size of those pro or anti-Netanyahu blocs, again, until very close to the elections, if at all.

Neri 1:04:09

Right. It's just a question of, okay, if they can get, say, even the bare minimum four seats, could that actually be the difference between a new government led by the opposition? Could it in theory kind of serve as a, if not a government for Netanyahu, then a blocking, kind of a blocking minority for him vis-a-vis kind of coalition formation after the election day. In other words, they might hold the power, uh, a party like that.

Dahlia 1:04:38

There's always that can be kingmakers. Yeah, there are always small parties like that that can be kingmakers. That's the nature of the Israeli system. Um, it gives a lot of you know, disproportionate power, uh, coalition bargaining power to small parties because nobody ever reaches 61 in any single election. Uh, but I think ultimately the question is gonna be do they do they give voters the impression that they're willing to serve Netanyahu's continued leadership or you know, work with the block of parties who are supposed to be against him? Of course they could change their minds afterwards and do anything, but that's gonna determine, I think, how people vote.

Neri 1:05:10

It's also a very, very uh fine needle to try to thread. In other words, I don't know how many Israelis are out there that are looking for this specific party. Um, past president shows that not that many.

Dahlia 1:05:23

Well, I'm not sure if I agree, in the sense that I think that, you know, all the people who defected from Likud uh or from this government uh within the first month after it was formed, right? Because right away they lost their majority in surveys in January 2023, could probably vote for a party like that.

Neri 1:05:38

The voters. The voters, yeah. But then, like you said, they have to answer the question, okay, are you actually going to be in a coalition with BB? And if you are, then why don't I I just vote for Likud A? Right? Why don't I just vote for original Coke? Why do I have to go, you know, for the fake Coke?

Dahlia 1:05:54

Which is why I don't really think it's going to change the size of those coalition building blocks. But I could be wrong. Again, like all of this, you know, we have to take everything with a grain of salt. There's always changes that could happen.

Neri 1:06:05

Uh that is the nature of Israeli politics. Uh Dahlia, we'll have to leave it there. Um, you did not disappoint. So uh hopefully we'll have you come back on as things firm up closer to election day, whether in September, October.

Dahlia 1:06:19

Great. Thank you, Neri, for having me.

Neri 1:06:22

My pleasure. Okay, thanks again to Dahlia Shenlin for her generous time and insights. Also, a special thanks to our producer, Jacob Gilman, our editor, Tracy Levy, and our assistant producer Eden Jesselson, as always, and to all of you who support Israel Policy Forum's work. Do consider making a donation to Israel Policy Forum, so need being a credible source of analysis and ideas on issues such as these that we all care deeply about, including this podcast. And most importantly, thank you for listening. Please subscribe and spread the word. And let's go, NYX.