JERUSALEM — Israel’s election has yielded a fractured parliament and no clear winner, setting up a horse-trading phase that seems likely to leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in place and in ever-deeper confrontation with the world. To govern, his Likud Party would need to depend on ultra nationalists — a recipe for neither stability nor bold moves toward Mideast peace.
There are also other scenarios: the outcome could be a joint government with moderate challenger Isaac Herzog. And there is the slimmest of chances that Herzog, through machinations, still ends up on top.
Much is in the hands of Moshe Kahlon, a relative newcomer to the big leagues of Israeli politics. Breaking away from Netanyahu’s nationalist Likud two years ago after a falling out with the premier, he has adopted a vaguely centrist platform and flirted heavily with Herzog’s Zionist Union. If he is non-aligned as he claims, then according to all the exit polls he holds the balance of power between the two traditional blocs — right and left, each with just less than half the 120-seat parliament.
Politicians and pundits have assessed that the former Likud figure will find it awkward to crown the opposition unless Herzog’s party, the Zionist Union, enjoys a cushion of several seats over Likud. That appears not to have happened: All the polls put Likud at a one-seat lead over Herzog’s party.
If Kahlon does go with Netanyahu, it would give the hard-liner a fourth term that, if completed, would make him Israel’s longest-serving leader, on par with the nation’s founder, David Ben Gurion.
That would not bode well for prospects of peace with the Palestinians or a rapprochement between Israel and the region, which seems tantalizingly close in an era in which many of the neighboring Arab nations fear jihadi extremism far more than they oppose Israel.
In recent days Netanyahu has said that he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state if elected. The Palestinians have said they would take their case against Israel to war crimes tribunals and other international bodies. A campaign to boycott Israel seems poised to gain traction. Netanyahu’s relations with the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama are frosty at best.
International isolation looms.
Netanyahu knows the complications of all this and may try to draw in Herzog, to give his government a more moderate character. But he has promised, in his final appeals to his base, not to do this — and Herzog probably would demand a rotation in the premier’s post as his price.
