Coalitions (Article# 107) 2/19/2009

Wanting to vote in the first Israeli national elections for which I am a registered voter, I made sure to schedule my arrival from the USA for the morning of Election Day. As I mentioned last week, there are no absentee ballots in Israel for the average citizen. The only people who vote absentee are government workers, such as embassy employees or Jewish Agency representatives. Everyone else must be in Israel on Election Day in order to vote.

In Israel, Election Day is a national holiday. All schools close (well, probably not the chareidi schools) and many offices close as well. This is done for two reasons. One is to encourage people to vote. The other is because almost all the polling stations are in schools, and the kids would not be able to attend in any case. We had been told that Israeli Election Day would be a big party, with people having BBQ’s and other family/community activities. Any national day off would be treated this way because we have so few off days since Sunday is a workday.

Since the kids were off, Goldie brought the younger ones with her to pick me up at the airport and we went straight from the airport to the voting booth. The kids were very excited to be with us, and having experienced the voting process in the mayoral elections just a couple of months ago, they knew exactly how to vote.

It is important to remember that in Israel votes are cast for the political parties—not for the candidates themselves. The leader of each party is usually the person at the top of their Knesset candidate list. Knesset members are elected on a proportional basis, calculated from the popular vote results. Israeli law does not allow for a party to have less than three seats, so there is a mathematical formula to calculate how many seats each party actually gets.

Voters are divided into districts, with each district having its own ballot box. In Bet Shemesh the districts are divided geographically and often consist of a couple of blocks (our block alone has over 150 families in it). The polling place (as I said, usually a school) is divided up by districts as well, with three to five districts assigned a joint ballot box.

Upon entering the school, we went to the classroom assigned to our district and checked in. Each eligible voter is mailed a voting card to tell him where he should vote and what district he is in. Voters can vote without having the card in hand, but it is easier to show the card. Once a voter checks in, he is handed his ballot envelope and votes.

Unlike the municipal elections, the atmosphere (at least in Bet Shemesh) was pretty low key. The parties had their information/lobbying booths set up outside the polling places, but there was none of the frenetic “color war” type of politicking we had seen in November. With the exception of the immediate vicinity of the polling place, there wasn’t the blizzard of campaign literature littered throughout the streets, and to the relief of my little kids there was almost no disturbing the peace with “victory parades” or taxis running around with roof-mounted loudspeakers blaring voting instructions.

It was actually a pretty quiet day. Toward the evening we seized the opportunity to spend some family time together and went out for dinner (kosher food court at the mall). This turned out to be a pretty popular activity nationwide; the papers all carried stories the next day about the incredible amount of people who turned up at the malls on Election Day.

Since I don’t understand the TV news well enough yet, I got most of my election result information online. Exit and pre-election polls here are not so terrifically accurate, so it was hard to tell what the final results were going to be, but we had a pretty good idea what was happening by the time we went to bed.

I had been concerned about this type of result. The results clearly showed a Right leaning electorate and a repudiation of the “make peace at any cost—even if it is our end” policies of the Left. However, the Right’s splinter parties definitely weakened the Likud’s mandate, and it is not the largest faction in the Knesset. I still believe that Netanyahu will be the next prime minister, but his position is definitely weakened by having his party come in second place.

I think some of Kadima’s strength also came from a panicky anti-Lieberman crowd. I think that the growing strength of his party in the pre-election polls got many people who would have voted Likud thinking twice about supporting Likud (who would be the most ideal coalition partner for the Lieberman-led Yisrael Beiteinu party) and they cast their votes for Kadima—not in support of Kadima, but rather as a rejection of Yisrael Beiteinu and a diminishing of Likud’s mandate. They wanted Likud to win, but not by much.

So now we are going to be stuck with a government that has a chip on its shoulder, since the largest party will be in the opposition and will constantly be sniping at its heels. Alternatively, there could be a national unity government, which would mean that Netanyahu made a deal with the devil to get them in. Any such deal would probably be less than thrilling to those who voted the Right in, but would be a direct result of all the factionalized voting that ended up splitting the Right into a whole bunch of smaller parties instead of a unified large party.

Now that the elections are over the rest is up to the politicians, and we can go back to regular life. We have been having a major drought here. Even though it rained a couple of times this week, this has been the worst rain season since they started keeping records and follows two below average rain seasons as well. The economic crisis is catching up to us here (many employers have instituted across the board mandatory wage cuts of 10–20 percent, CPI is down and continues to fall and economic growth is expected to decline for the first time in years), and we are growing more and more concerned about the rising threats of our neighbors (specifically Iran).

On the personal front we are coming to realize that our oldest son is going to fly the coop in a matter of months (four) and it is startling. The kids’ report cards just came in (Yay!—at least for the most part). We have begun to prepare for Purim and Pesach and are looking forward to having the Zaidees and Bubbees with us on yom tov. Life continues...