Two major Ashkenazi haredi newspapers, Hamodia and Yated Ne'eman, both linked to the haredi United Torah Judaism political party (UTJ), reportedly published almost identical editorials this weekend asserting that UTJ may join forces with Israel’s left wing when all the votes are in from Israel’s national elections later this month and urging all haredi parties to join together to form a negotiating bloc that could "crown" a center-left government.
Prime Minister Benjaimin Netanyahu
Through Their Mouthpieces, Haredi Parties Threaten To Join Center-Left Government In Order To Retain Power As Netanyhu Appeals To Rightists For Votes
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Two major Ashkenazi haredi newspapers, Hamodia and Yated Ne'eman, both linked to the haredi United Torah Judaism political party (UTJ), reportedly published almost identical editorials this weekend asserting that UTJ may join forces with Israel’s left wing when all the votes are in from Israel’s national elections later this month and urging all haredi parties to join together to form a negotiating bloc that could "crown" a center-left government.
"Netanyahu and his partners are guilty of hubris… (and) if they keep being so dismissive of their partner [UTJ], the Likud-Beiteinu may find themselves facing blocs they have never seen before, when they come to form their coalition.
"Habayit Hayehudi, United Torah Judaism and Shas may come together as a bloc for the sole purpose of negotiating with Netanyahu. This bloc may be bigger than the Likud-Beiteinu. Let's see them tell us then that they will be keeping all the major portfolios.… [A united haredi bloc] could, for instance, strike a deal with [Tzipi] Livni [head of the centrist Hatunah political party] and [Shelly] Yachimovich [head of the Labor Party] and crown them prime ministers by rotation. There's nothing wrong with that,” Hamodia, which is controlled by Gerrer hasidim and which is linked to the Agudath Israel faction of UTJ wrote.
Meanwhile, the non-hasidic Yated Ne'eman's editorial was almost identical.
"Everything can change because the Likud is guilty of the sin of hubris,” Yated reportedly wrote.
It also speculated about a new bloc of parties that will have banded together to extract concessions from the election’s projected winners, the joint Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list, floating the possibility of a left and centrist government formed with the help of a united haredi bloc.
"Such a coalition will not hurt us because it needs us…The level of incitement (against haredim) will also subside – as it always does when the Left-Center rules. The Likud doesn’t know how to rule… Let the Likud-Beiteinu sit in the opposition and learn that it does not own the government,” Yated reportedly noted.
Haredi Member of Knesset Moshe Gafni (UTJ) and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett reportedly met last week to, as a UTJ source told Ynet, “discuss matters of policy."
Yesterday, Shas Party co-head Ariel Atias worried that Likud may decide to partner with the left, which would effectively exclude haredi parties from new governing coalition.
"This prospect has to worry anyone who does not want to see the 2003 government model again. A government without Shas will hurt the lower socioeconomic echelons and will promote anti-religious legislation,” Atias reportedly said.
Shas currently has 11 Knesset seats and holds 4 ministries and 1 minister without portfolio.
UTJ currently has 5 Knesset seats and holds 1 deputy ministry (health – the actual cabinet minister for this portfolio is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who holds the position in name only; the arrangement is a legal fiction that allows the UTJ MK to avoid voting on security issues).
In some polls, Shas is projected to fall to 9 seats in the upcoming election.
UTJ is projected to win 6, but a split with non-hasidic haredi conservatives could easily drop that number lower if the conservative’s Netzach faction actually runs in the election.
By contrast, the combined Likud-Beiteinu list is polling as high as 36 seats, and a combined right wing ‘bloc’ that includes Likud-Beiteinu but not the haredi parties polls as high as 49 seats.
A simple majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats is necessary to form a government, making broad coalitions – coalitions that are often almost ungovernable – formed with small and even one- or two- seat parties an inevitability.
If Netanyahu does not make that coalition with haredi parties, he will need to make it with the center and left.
But the head of the centrist Hatunah Party (9 projected seats), Tzipi Livni, who was already burned by Netanyahu when she headed the centrist Kadima Party last year, has argued that the center-left should form its own bloc to try to keep Netanyahu – who is widely dislike by his political opponents, by many in Israel’s diplomatic corps and by diplomats from friendly foreign governments – out of power.
Labour Party (18 projected seats) head Shelly Yacimovich reportedly welcomed Livni’s call for center-left unity yesterday and reiterated that Labor would not join a Likud-Beiteinu government.
That leaves Netanyahu with Kadima’s 2 projected seats and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party’s projected 9 seats. Assuming the polls are accurate and both Kadima and Yesh Atid join with Likud-Beiteinu, that would still leave Netanyahu one seat short of a majority.
There are several very small parties that could join Netanyahu’s coalition if they were to somehow get enough votes to qualify for a Knesset seat. But if any do, chances are the votes they win will come from Netanyahu’s larger partners or Likud itself.
The call for a center-left bloc and haredi threats to join it prompted Netanyahu to urge right-of-center voters to come out in force to support the combined Likud-Beiteinu list. Playing to the right’s fears, Netanyahu urged them to vote for Likud to prevent the center and left from making peace deals that would, in his view, endanger Israel militarily, and from instituting economic policies that would serious damage Israel’s economy.
“There is no doubt that the leftist parties will try to unite before or after the election. This is something that repeats itself time after time. They try to topple a government I head and going by past experience they will try anything.
“There’s a core there of two leftist parties, a definite economic left of the Greece and Spain ilk, which is prepared to make concessions and hand over territories that without a doubt will be taken over by Iran and its allies.
“I hope there will be a government based on a large ruling party, headed by the Likud and the way I am leading. I assume there will be other partners … I am not ruling anyone out but I am being ruled out. They are organizing in order to topple me. I think that this has sharpened the real choice there is here.…
“People thought there is a two ballot system here,” Netanyahu reportedly said, referencing a short-lived five-year experiment from 1996-2001 that saw Israels voting in two separate ballots, one for prime minister and for a Knesset list. “Netanyahu will be prime minister in any case [they thought] and we will help him by voting for other parties. They aren’t helping. By shrinking the Likud they are creating the possibility of a unification of the parties on the left, and also something else – I can’t lead the country vis-à-vis the challenges we are facing – Iran and Syria … as well as the worldwide economic shakeup. In order to continue to deal with these challenges I need a strong party behind me.”
Many former Israeli military and intelligence leaders have been critical of Netanyahu’s Iran policy, including former Mossad head Yuval Diskin, and condemnation for Netanyahu’s perceived meddling in the recent US presidential election has been widespread in Israeli diplomatic and intelligence circles.