UGA Students Get Real-Life Lesson on Israeli Politics

Thirty-five students at the University of Georgia were in the middle of a school project when their assignment was disrupted by the unpredictability of Israeli politics. The students are enrolled in the Israeli politics course being taught by Eli Sperling, the Israel Institute Teaching Fellow in the Department of International Affairs at University of Georgia.

The students had been divided into groups representing the various political parties expected to run in the upcoming Nov. 1 elections. But on Sept. 15, one of the three Arab parties running on the Joint List split from its coalition partners.

“It was pretty cool for the students to wake up in the morning and see the project change,” stated Sperling. “The students saw how small cracks can become big seizures. It’s quite an evolving series of things.”

The project assignment entailed simulations in which the students would create campaigns for their assigned party lists, suggesting advertising and strategies for each. “The students assigned to the Joint List that was partly dissolved had been thinking of going after the left Jewish vote,” as part of their strategy, Sperling said. Meanwhile, until the parties submitted their slates to the Central Election Committee, it was not definite which parties would run together.

The more left-wing parties of Labor and Meretz decided to run separately. Former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was able to convince right-wing parties Otzma Yehudit and Noam to run with the Religious Zionist Party just days earlier. Sperling said Netanyahu’s party, Likud, has become the “chameleon party,” bringing in figures from the right who would be favorable to him, changing it from the “classic Likud” of former prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. And, the Arab parties of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad were expected to run together. But at the last moment, Balad decided to run on its own.

Political polling shows Balad probably won’t meet the minimum threshold of votes and legislative seats to make it into the nation’s legislature, the Knesset. Sperling said those students representing the Joint List were given the choice to join other parties’ groups. “The biggest frustration of the students has been the devastating effect of Netanyahu,” he added. “They are frustrated by the fact that one individual can throw the national agenda under the bus for his own political life.”

“Typically, before the course starts, students think in terms of the U.S.-Israel relationship. When they look at the domestic issues, they see so much overlap” with the American political concerns, said Sperling.

The unexpected party breakup provided a notable example and powerful lesson on the precariousness of Israeli politics, and the difficulty of predicting the outcome of what will be the country’s fifth election in less than four years.

The biggest frustration of the students has been the devastating effect of Netanyahu. They are frustrated by the fact that one individual can throw the national agenda under the bus for his own political life.

The instability of Israeli politics is not new, but since early 2019, the volatility in Israeli governments has forced voters to head to their polling stations again, again, again and again. Only weeks after Israel’s attorney general announced that he would indict Netanyahu in several different cases, Israelis voted in April 2019. No party was able to put together a governing coalition government, requiring 61 or more of the 120 Knesset seats.

Israelis thus returned to the polls in September 2019 and in March 2020. Netanyahu cobbled together a coalition, but that government fell, and Israelis returned to the polls in March 2021. The opposition parties, meaning those not supporting Netanyahu and his Likud party coalition, formed a government first headed by Naftali Bennett and now headed by Yair Lapid, who is acting as caretaker prime minister until a new government can be formed.

Polling immediately following the submission of party slates indicated that Netanyahu might, barely, be able to form a government after the November election.

“The anyone-but-Bibi movement has weakened,” said Sperling, adding, however that “100 percent that could change” after the election. But much depends on the turnout of Israeli Arabs.

One Israeli Arab party, Ra’am, made history by joining the coalition government after the 2021 election. But with the breakup of the Joint List of Arab parties, there’s much speculation that Arab voters will be less inclined to show up to vote.

As Sperling pointed out, in 2019, there was talk of an Arab boycott of Israeli elections and “voter turnout was low. It got better in subsequent elections.”

But it is not even clear how motivated Israeli Jewish voters are to vote once again, especially when pundits point out that it is unclear whether a stable coalition government can be formed even after the vote.

Sperling gives credit to the government that resulted from the March 2021 elections, noting that it was able to pass a budget, which hadn’t been done for a couple of years, and “it had kept the government alive.”

He also pointed to the strength of the regional alliances with Arab countries that the current government has reinforced. “Lapid and Bennett have been very, very successful on foreign affairs as a centrist government,” he said.

Just recently the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates visited Israel and participated in a press conference with Prime Minister Lapid in English. Lapid also met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Erdogan even broached the idea of visiting Israel, reflecting the warming relations between the two countries after a bitter fall-out in 2010.

However, Sperling said that the “average Israeli will be voting on bread-and-butter issues, like the cost of living.” This is a change from the past when Israelis were more concerned about national security.

Forecasting the results of this next election is certainly a fool’s errand. Sperling said, to some extent, “it boils down to Bibi’s toxicity,” referring to Netanyahu’s nickname. But then again, “only 50 percent [of voters] plan to vote for the same parties as in the last election,” he said. “Another seven percent don’t plan to vote at all, and many are undecided. There’s a great deal of frustration” with Israeli politics.

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