On election day in March 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu filmed a controversial 28-second video, warning right-wing voters that Arab citizens were heading to the polls “in droves.” A week later, after he had won against prevailing expectations, he apologized, saying he did not intend to offend the Arab sector as a whole.
Eleven years and six elections later, Netanyahu is playing the same game, only on a much grander scale. CNN reported.
Since losing his majority in the October 27 vote, Netanyahu and his allies have been pressing a serious accusation: the election was “stolen” by Arab parties through bribery, foreign funding and fraud. They are demanding investigations, arrests and, in the most extreme version, even canceling the vote and going to another round of elections.
They have yet to present any evidence, but the political goal is clear: to cast a veil of illegitimacy on the Joint List and Raam, the two Arab parties that saw record turnout and are likely to be a crucial part of any effort to oust Israel’s longest-serving leader.
“They are doing this because they lost”, Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main challenger, said in a Thursday video statement.
Netanyahu did not lose the election outright, nor did he win it. The same is true for Eisenkot. Both fell short of the required 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament needed for a clear victory. Israel now faces weeks – perhaps months – of political uncertainty.
Netanyahu knows the math. His coalition dropped to 53 seats and has no clear way of securing a majority. The Eisenkot-led bloc has 48 seats on its own. But with the support of 19 seats from the Arab parties, it has a clear majority of 67 seats.
