By Edo Konrad

A poster of Meir Kahane hangs from the bus stop at the entrance to the Havat Gilad outpost near Nablus. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami).

The first and only time I had ever spoken to an ideological settler was during the summer 2011 social protests. Out on Rothschild Boulevard in the heart of Tel Aviv, where thousands of Israelis gathered to demand social justice, I argued face-to-face with a teenage settler boy. It was on the same day that former MK Michael Ben-Ari arrived with henchman Baruch Marzel and a group of hilltop youth wearing shirts that read “Let the Jews win!” and “Keep Tel Aviv Jewish.” They were there to establish the “Judea and Samaria Tent,” whose main mission was to demand increased government spending on settlement construction and to ensure that the settlement issue was on the protest’s agenda.

“Why are you here?” I asked the boy curiously. To me, a group of people who actively call for taking even more Palestinian land are not allies in my struggle for social justice. His response was frank: “We’re here because we want to make sure that all sectors of Israeli society are represented, not just residents of Tel Aviv. We believe the residents of Migron are no less important, even if the government doesn’t give a shit about them.” The Arabs are the real occupiers of Jewish land, some of the others yelled.

I left Rothschild angry. I was angry with this group of people whose whole raison d’etre seemed to be to make life hell for the Palestinians. But I also began to realize how little I actually knew about them. Growing up in a tightly knit Israeli community in the United States, the settlements and the occupation were entirely absent from any conversation having to do with Israel. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I took a tour of East Jerusalem and the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement that I began to grasp what had been hidden from me for my entire life. Despite my anger, I couldn’t write the settlers off. They were as much a part of this place as any other group, and I needed to meet them. I made a decision to do so not as enemies on Rothschild Boulevard, or as a leftist from my soapbox, but on their own terms, where they live.

A year and a half later, on a rooftop in the heart of Jaffa, I proposed the idea to my friend and fellow +972er Yuval Ben-Ami. We didn’t wait very long, and two days later we set out on our journey.

Hidden from view

An elections campaign trailer featuring extremist activists Itamar Ben-Gvir, Michael Ben-Ari and Baruch Marzel. The sign reads: “No room for haters of the People of Israel in the Land of Israel – We are the only ones who understand Arabic.” (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

Yuval and I head out on a clear, sunny morning on Bus 86 from Tel Aviv to the settlement of Ariel, where we plan on catching a ride to Yitzhar, an established settlement in the northern West Bank with a history of incitement and violence against neighboring Palestinian villages. I’m feeling anxious, playing out possible scenarios in my head. Will they recognize us for the Tel Aviv leftists that we are? Will they become enraged at our questions? Might we face violence? Have settlers ever killed Israeli leftists, or is there a rule that Jewish blood is pure, thus assuring no violence will come our way? Yuval quells my fears. He is a seasoned traveler, and assures me that, after all, we are simply coming to meet and talk to people, not provoke them.

We don’t feel the Green Line as we drive into the West Bank. A lone checkpoint is all that separates this place from where we were just minutes before. Yuval sings Australian protest songs on the bus, while I laugh anxiously and clutch at my stomach. “You’re going to be fine,” I tell myself.

We get off at the entrance to Ariel and immediately hitch a ride with an elderly man from the nearby settlement of Kedumim. A classic Arik Einstein song plays on the radio, imbuing the ride through the valley dotted by red-roofed settlements and sprawling Palestinian villages with an eerie sense of normalcy. The driver says he cannot take us far as Yitzhar, but that he will drop us off at the nearby settlement of Kfar Tapuach, a town known to Israelis as the former home of Meir Kahane, a fanatical settler leader whose party was banned from the Knesset in 1988 for inciting racism against Palestinians, as well as the place where his followers train attack dogs to “prevent the next terror attack” [Hebrew].

But as we arrive at the settlement gate, I’m struck by just how much the place resembles the kibbutz I lived on a few years ago. We walk through the dusty main road to the local park where we meet Racheli and Adina, two young mothers who greet us with friendly smiles as their children play nearby. Racheli, who spoke to us in a mix of Hebrew and English, and who moved to Tapuach from Canada a few years back, recounts the difficulties of making aliyah and acclimating into Israeli society. “Everything is difficult here, everything!” she exclaims. “It’s crowded and everyone is always in your business, and the worst part is the way their parents dress their children!” Racheli and Adina tell us that Tapuach is generally very “normal” but that there is one family at the edge of the settlement that lives without electricity and rides around on donkeys – that’s the family we must talk to.

After a 20-minute hike past a guard tower, the resident security guard and a barbed wire fence that surrounds the settlement and separates it from the neighboring Palestinian village of Yasuf, we finally make it to Seter HaMadrega – the new outpost-neighborhood of Kfar Tapuach. As opposed to Tapuach, where families live in nearly identical red-tiled houses, the residents of Seter HaMadrega live in caravans, with unpaved roads and handmade sanitation systems. The place feels deserted, and apart from the chained dogs that guard most of the makeshift homes, and a few workers, there is no one in sight.

A young settler works on the settlement outpost of Seter HaMadrega, near Kfar Tapuach in the northern West Bank. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

At the bottom of the hill we find the man we’re looking for. Reuven greets us outside of his wooden cabin home, surrounded by what look like manmade structures built of stone, a big pool, a chicken coop and five barking canines that terrify me but have little effect on Yuval. Reuven is alone with his two sons, both of whom have astonishingly long biblical names, and without hesitation, graciously welcomes us into his home. He, his wife, and their two sons all live in the only real room in the house – a dusty, cavernous place where children’s games are strewn across the floor and the shelves are lined with books on the history of the Land of Israel, healthy organic eating, yoga techniques and holy texts. Hippies, I thought.

Almost everything in Reuven’s home is handmade. He built it himself, and decided to call the place Trashei Pereh (“wild rocks”), explaining that settlers often name their new homes after what they envision the place will become (ie. Sha’rei Tikva, or “gates of hope”). For him, it was just the opposite – he named his home in the hopes that it would mold its residents. We tell Reuven that we are journalists who are wandering around in the area and are looking to meet interesting people. He answers all of our questions. He’s friendly, smiles a lot, and never raises his voice. Neither his tone nor his choice of words is diplomatic. Even as he tells us that his dream is to one day conquer the Gilead Mountains and establish a Jewish kingdom across Jordan (“both banks of the Jordan River”), he does so with a hint of playfulness, as if to see how we’d react to what sounds completely absurd to our ears.

For Reuven, the “conflict” is not about hating “the Arabs,” but rather is an eternal war in which the Jews must come out victorious in order to remain where they are. Yuval asks about the prospects for a resolution. “This war has been going on for thousands of years. Perhaps one day he will have to fight in it too,” he answers, nodding at his son who is busy smashing banana after banana into his mouth.

Reuven and his son near their farm in the settlement outpost of Seter HaMadrega near Kfar Tapuach. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

“And what about your Palestinian neighbors?”

“We don’t have any problems with them, except during the olive harvest season. It is then when clashes take place, and then, you know, the police and the army and the Europeans come.” I suddenly understood. Reuven doesn’t harbor a violent hatred toward Palestinians. To him, they are people who simply exist in the background of the story of Jewish national sovereignty, and who every once in a while threaten that sovereignty when they tend to their livelihood.

Reuven’s home is built illegally, even by Israeli standards. Every so often, he says, someone from the government comes and places notices on all the structures, demanding they be taken down. “Nothing has happened yet,” he says with a smile as he shows us around the chicken coop. I smile back, wondering why, despite my efforts, feelings of anger or sadness are failing to arise. Meanwhile I am still terrified of the dogs that continue barking at us non-stop, as if they can smell the left-wing on us. I find myself hoping that nothing bad happens to Reuven, his family or his home.

Baruch, a young bearded settler, agrees to pick us up on the main road of Tapuach. He says he can take us straight to Yitzhar, where he has an hour-long meeting, after which he offers to drive us to visit his home in Havat Gilad (“Gilad Farm”), one of the most radical settler outposts, located just south of Nablus.

Cooperation under occupation

The drive to Yitzhar is windy until we hit the main road that goes through the Palestinian village of Awarta. Today, the village is known for being home to the two Palestinian teens who murdered the five members of the Fogel family in their home in the nearby settlement of Itamar. As we pass by the shops and gas stations on the main thoroughfare, I expect Baruch’s tone to turn grim. I have turned Baruch into a bloodthirsty settler – the kind that burns or uproots olive trees, harasses Palestinian children on the way to school or sometimes just tortures and shoots teenagers because they didn’t heed the laws of the lord. He must be the kind of settler that the evening news and my Facebook feed love to talk about. It makes it easier for us Tel Aviv Israelis to feel good knowing how different we are from the radical settler or the Golani soldier in Hebron or the Palmachnik who expelled families from their homes in 1948.

The Palestinian village of Burin, seen from Yitzhar. When a man in this village was shot by a settler, Yitzhar’s entire community kept the shooter’s identity a secret. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

Baruch makes me feel foolish. He speaks gently, and sometimes it is difficult for me to hear his hushed voice over the noisy engine of his tiny, cluttered car. Nothing in the way he speaks reveals even the slightest bit of anger or resentment toward the residents of Awarta or Palestinians in general.

“There is peace here,” Baruch says to our astonishment. “The Palestinians here are tired of fighting, especially after the Second Intifada. They are slowly turning bourgeois.”

“But is there any interaction between the settlers and the Palestinians of Awarta? Is there cooperation between the two?” Yuval asks.

“Very little,” he answers candidly. “Sometimes the Jews will come down and fill up gas here because it’s cheaper. But cooperation? The Jews wouldn’t allow it.”

As we make our way up the steep, windy road to Yitzhar, Baruch tells us a story of a settler from Yitzhar who was patrolling in the area but went a little too far, until he found himself in the neighboring Palestinian village of Burin. Upon catching sight of the settler, several of the village youth started throwing rocks at him. The settler then shot and seriously wounded one of the Palestinians. An IDF soldier caught the act from a nearby observation tower, although it took the security services nearly half a year to find out just who did it, since none of the settlers of Yitzhar would cooperate with the investigation. Eventually, the shooter was put on trial and acquitted. “Lovely,” I say to myself quietly. Baruch proposes he pick us up and drive us to Havat Gilad in an hour. We politely accept.

A new outpost on the northern outskirts of Yitzhar, one of the most radical settlements in the West Bank. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

We don’t stay long in Yitzhar, but we are there long enough to drink coffee and eat cake at a local café owned by a lovely grandmother type. We sit near a table of people who sound like foreign dignitaries. “Norwegians, friends of the settlement,” their host tells us sternly. Our very presence clearly arouses his suspicion. Our appearance screams Tel Aviv leftists. Yuval writes an update on Facebook while I stare down at the coffee.

Yitzhar is the place I most wanted to visit, but all we find there are rows of awkwardly built, non-uniform houses. Children mill about, near the local elementary school. Some of the young ones approach us and ask where we are from. When we tell them we’re from Tel Aviv, they ask us if we have any money to give.

Uninvited

The settlement outpost of Havat Gilad, just south of Nablus. The residents were not too happy with their Tel Aviv visitors. (photo: Yuval Ben-Ami)

The ride to Havat Gilad takes all but 15 minutes. Down the steep, windy road from Yitzhar, we pass Burin and stay south of Nablus on Route 60. Baruch makes more small talk with us. After some prodding, he tells Yuval that he self-identifies as a “sort of anarchist” who doesn’t like when people put themselves in a position of hierarchy. Baruch adds that he voted for Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party in the last elections, mostly because he thinks the extreme right parties like Michael Ben-Ari’s Otzma L’Israel focus too much on the Palestinian issue. For him, the conflict with his neighbors is something that shouldn’t take up so much of the government’s energy.

Baruch says he can’t be seen with us, adding gently that the people of the outpost are already suspicious of outsiders, and that associating with us may get him in trouble. He drops us off about 200 meters before the entrance – the rest, he says, we have to walk.

We are clearly unwelcome here, I tell Yuval as we pass the outpost’s electric sign, which flashes updates of the settlement happenings for its residents. “Wednesday: Gardening Workshop,” I read the bold, electric letters aloud, laughing nervously. From the moment we enter Havat Gilad, which consists of a smattering of caravans situated on a small range of green hills, we cannot wait to leave. I do my best to avoid the stares of the residents. One woman even drives up to us in her minivan, inquiring as to our presence there. If only Baruch had stayed with us, I think as I imagine myself the victim of the same settler violence I have read about countless times. We stay long enough to snap a few photos of the beautiful, caravan-speckled surroundings before leaving. Baruch was right about not wanting to enter with us, I tell Yuval, who takes one last photo of the Meir Kahane poster hung from the makeshift bus stop at the entrance to the outpost before we head back to Route 60 on foot.

Edo Konrad is an editor at +972 Magazine, a translator and an activist based in Tel Aviv.  

Binyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman thank their supporters at the Likud-Israel Beitenu headquarter, January 23 2013 (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

1. The future government
At the time of writing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s base of Orthodox and right-wing parties has 60 Knesset seats – the same as the potential opposition. Estimates are that the Jewish Home party will finish with another seat at the expense of the United Arab List once the soldiers’ votes are counted, pushing the Right over the Knesset’s halfway mark. This is not a major change, since it’s pretty clear that Netanyahu will form the next government with Yair Lapid – the biggest winner of the night – and probably Kadima. The three parties have 52 seats combined and with Naftali Bennet’s Jewish home party, they could reach 63-64 seats, which means a stable government. Other parties that might join the government, like Shas or Tzipi Livni, will do so on the terms of the senior coalition partners.

This combination makes sense because Lapid, Bennet and Netanyahu share the same ideology on social and economic issues, and have the same indifference to the Palestinian issue (with some nuances). Bennett will have the support of Likud hawks, while Lapid will take over the role of handling the Right’s contacts with the world, as Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres did for the previous Netanyahu government. Lapid spoke at the last AIPAC conference and enjoys nice relations with some of Israel’s allies in Washington, while for them his presence in the government will serve as proof that Netanyahu has indeed “moderated.”

The next government will try to reach a new consensus on issues of military draft reform and perhaps the heavy tax burden on the middle class – these are the issues that Lapid is most identified with and Netanyahu and Bennett will only be too happy to respond.

Naftali Bennett, head of Jewish Home party, greeting supporters at the end of election day, January 23 2013

2. The hard-Right and the settlers
So much attention was given before the elections to the rise of Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party and the increased representation of the settlers in the next Knesset that even his supporters were disappointed with the 11 seats they got (as I said, they are likely to end up with 12). But make no mistake, this was a relatively good night for the settlers. The next Knesset will have a record number of around 40 religious Jewish Knesset members (including 19 in the Orthodox parties) – many of them settlers or supporters of the settler movement. Since they will be part of the government, and since they tend to operate as one coherent bloc, they are likely to have major effect on issues involving appointments of government officials and on Israeli policies in the West Bank (I have written more about the rise of the settlers to the position of the new elite here). Unless Netanyahu leaves Bennett outside the government – an unlikely prospect – he won’t be able to pursue a diplomatic solution even if he wanted to, and everything he has ever done suggests that is the last thing he wants.

On the Palestinian issue, the next Knesset will not be very different from the previous one. Lapid himself declared before the elections that he opposes a territorial compromise on Jerusalem. He also refuses to form any sort of ad-hoc union with the Left or the Arab parties, which is necessary for any political path that could end the occupation. If you thought Netanyahu perferred confrontational speeches and a lot of hot air to bold action, wait until you see Lapid. After all, the guy is a talk-show host.

3. The ethnic vote
A Netanyahu-Bennett-Lapid coalition will be the most “white” Israel has ever had, for lack of a better word. The almost total absence of Sephardi Jews in those parties is quite shocking, and deserves deeper examination.

In fact, these were the most “ethnic” elections I remember, and it seems that each ethnic group or sub-group had its own party, with the clearest division being between Arabs and Jews, of course, but also within those groups. With the risk of tremendous generalization, I would say that poor Sephardi Jews voted Shas and those with higher income Likud; Ashkenzi national-religious went with Bennett; Secular Ashkenazi voted for Meretz, Livni and Lapid and so on.

Except maybe for Labor and Likud – the old forces which still have some coalitions between them – it seems that the entire system is determined by the interaction of two variables: ethnicity and economic status. The party lists reflect that fact, despite the occasional variations, which could be explained by the need to project a more inclusive image. Lapid’s novelty and the deeper reasons for his success is the understanding that the Ashkenazi upper-middle class now views itself as another sector that needs to compete for more benefits, rather than as the elite in charge of the entire society.

The effect of ethnicity and its interaction with class, especially among Jews, is the most denied element in Israeli popular discourse, because it runs contrary to the image or myth of the Zionist melting pot, and it certainly contradicts the image of a state which treats all citizens – Jews and non-Jews – equally, although that was always more of a comfortable self-perception than something you could seriously defend. Again, these issues deserve closer examination, which I will try to get to sometime soon.

Supporters of Shas at the women section during the party’s event on election night, January 22 2013 (photo: Tali Mayer)

4. Iran
Returning to politics: if you want to know how weak Netanyahu got, just remember that out of the Likud’s 31 MKs, 11 belong to Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu list, which at least according to Lieberman is still a separate party. If the ambitious Lieberman decides one day to resume his independence – maybe after his trial – Netanyahu will be left with an average Knesset faction, and at least half of his MKs will be hawks and settlers who could desert at any moment. The most important outcome of Netanyahu’s weakness is  a further-reduced chance of an Israeli attack on Iran – and looming cuts in the security budget will work in that direction too.

5. Shift to the left?
Since the elections were called we posted every public poll on our Knesset Poll Tracker page and not a single one predicted Netanyahu’s bloc dropping to 60 Knesset members (one or two polls gave him 61, but not in the weeks leading up to the elections). The previous Knesset had the Right-Orthodox with 65 seats, and the poll average we posted gave the Right 66 seats.

The actual results are a swing of 3-6 seats to the left within the Jewish public, starting from the Likud (plus some changes within the Right). The Likud, Lieberman and the national religious had 49 seats in the previous Knesset – they now have 42-43; the Center (Kadima + Labor) had 41, and the new Center (Lapid + Kadima + Livni + Labor) has 42; the Left (Meretz) had 3 and now has 6, and right now the non-Zionist parties have an additional seat, although they are likely to lose it.

I would speculate that the gradual migration of Jewish voters to the Right that has taken place since 1996 seems to have stopped, and might have even ended. Yet we are still talking small numbers and a long-term process, so don’t expect new policies immediately. I still stand by my view that the Israeli public and the Israeli political system cannot, under the current circumstances, come up with a solution that would end the occupation, not to mention solve the deeper fundamental issues of the conflict.

6. No shared politics for Arabs and Jews
The shift to the left didn’t result in a Jewish readiness to support shared platforms with Palestinians. Personally, this is the most heartbreaking element of politics here (in my polling station only seven votes were cast for Arab-Jewish parties, two of them from my own house. The legalization party, for example, got six votes).

The three Palestinian parties reflect three distinct approaches to politics – religious, liberal and socialist – but Jews vote for their own religious, liberal and socialist parties (so do Palestinians, but it’s harder to blame them – Jewish institutions were always unwelcoming for them) and Jewish politicians, even on the Left, hardly try to bridge that gap.

Extreme-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir at the Otzme LeYisrael party office following election day, 23 January 2013 (photo: Tali Mayer)

7. A positive note
Part of the “success” of the Center-Left was pure luck. While two small opposition factions – Kadima and Balad – passed the Knesset threshold (the latter actually gaining some 11,000 votes since 2009), the extreme-right Otzma LeYisrael party, headed by Michael Ben-Ari and Aryeh Eldad will probably be left out of the Knesset, “burning” two seats that would have gone to the Right.

This is perhaps the happiest turn of event in these elections. There are racists and there are racists, and Otzma was the worst kind. In the tradition of the JDL and Kahane groups – not surprising, considering the fact that most Kahane people ended up in Otzma after their party was outlawed – Otzma’s members used to go to the most sensitive areas of conflict and try to fan the flames. They marched in Palestinian towns chanting racist slogans, and they spent days in south Tel Aviv demonizing and inciting against asylum seekers. MK Ben-Ari played a central role in the incitement that led to the attacks on asylum seekers in south Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood last spring. It won him a lot of media attention and also support – or so it seemed.

Before the polls opened, Ben Ari posted on his Facebook page a video showing him and other known Hebron settlers visiting Rabbi Kahane’s grave; it didn’t help. While the Arab members of Knesset Ben Ari hated entered the parliament with a comfortable margin, Kahane’s heirs were left out.

Related:
Yair Lapid: The rise of the tofu man
Will surprising results stop a status-quo Netanyahu-led government?

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

We have updated out Poll Tracker with the surveys published over the weekend. Election laws forbid publishing polls in the days immediately prior to the vote, so this is likely the last round of numbers we will see from the various polling firms, at least publicly (the parties continue to conduct internal polls sometimes).

This pie represents the average of the latest 12 available polls. The different colors represent the various Knesset blocs. In blue: Right-wing parties; black and grey: Orthodox parties; purple: center parties; red: (Jewish) left-wing parties; green: non-Zionist Palestinian parties, including Hadash, which is an Arab-Jewish party.

>> For an interactive version of this pie and more data, visit our poll tracking page. 

The Orthodox and the right-wing parties are considered “natural allies,” and in the past none of these parties have ever defected from the bloc if they had a ruling majority of over 60 seats (out of the Knesset’s 120). According to our poll average, the right and Orthodox parties now have over 66 seats, meaning that Benjamin Netanyahu is the only candidate who will be able to form a governing coalition following the elections.

A word on election predictions: poll averages have been proven a rather effective way of optimizing predictions, since they increase the polling sample and reduce the margins of error. Still, they cannot overcome across-the-board biases or mistakes, like the one which could be created by a tendency of a population not to take part in polls or the fact that polls are conducted only through land-line phones. There was a lot of writing on this issue before the recent U.S. election, but ultimately the polls were for the most part accurate, and the talks of large-scale bias turned out to be mostly wishful thinking on the part of the Republicans.

Still, it is easier to predict the results in a winner-take-all competition between two sides than in the multiple system Israel has, where it’s not even clear which parties will make it into the Knesset (the threshold is 2 percent of all legal votes, which means that the smallest possible party can have 2 representatives in the 120-seat Knesset). Furthermore, complex calculations determine the allocation of the last few seats, so some variations are hard to predict.

Things could also change in the next few days, resulting in major differences between the final polls and the actual results. This happened in the last elections, when voters from the left rushed to Kadima, making it the biggest Knesset party (here is the poll average I posted in 2009, and here are the actual results).

One thing is clear though: there wasn’t a single poll (not even one!) since the campaign started which had Netanyahu’s bloc with 60 seats or less, hence the working assumption shared by the entire political system is that the prime minister will continue to a third term in office.

Former journalist Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid party (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

Winners and losers

Netanyahu is almost guaranteed to be the next prime minister, but the elections weren’t a smooth sail for him. According to our poll average, his joint ticket with Avigdor Lieberman is about to drop from 42 seats in the current Knesset to 33-34 seats in the next one. The hard right, on the other hand, is predicted to rise from 7 seats to 14-16 seats (depending whether Otzma LeYisrael enters the Knesset or not).

Labor had a bad campaign, which has the party with 16-17 seats, only 3.5 seats more than the all-time low Ehud Barak got in 2009. Meretz, on the other hand, could double its current Knesset representation of three MKs. But Meretz did better in the polls than in the actual vote in 2009 as well.

The last few polls also had former Channel 2 anchorman Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party doing well – he is now polling 11 seats, but he is trending upwards so don’t be surprised to see him end up with 13-14 seats.

The next government, and the next opposition

Following the elections, the various Knesset parties will need to recommend one member of the Knesset as their candidate for the prime minister’s office. As I explained, Netanyahu is likely to win this process and to be assigned the task of forming the coalition.

This is basically a new game, and Netanyahu can turn to any party he wants, including those who didn’t support him. In such cases, prime ministers tend to start by securing their base and then broadening the coalition with other parties. I expect Netanyahu to start with getting Shas and Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) on his side – resulting in 58-59 seats. He then will try to add one or two centrist parties, probably Kadima (if it passes the Knesset threshold) and Yesh Atid. With them, he will have a coalition of 70-72 seats, which is probably the right size for a stable government (a smaller coalition gives too much bargaining power to every other party, and a larger one could be a bit chaotic).

A Netanyahu-Lieberman-Shas-Lapid coalition won’t be able to do anything on the Palestinian issue except continue the colonization of the West Bank. It will have a hard time even entering negotiations, with the talks themselves becoming completely meaningless. The survival of the coalition will be determined by Netanyahu’s ability to bridge the gap between Shas and Yesh Atid, especially on the issue of military draft reform and integrating the Orthodox sector into the work market. I think both are possible, especially with the more conservative United Torah Judaism party (the Ashkenazi Orthodox faction) out of the coalition. So I think we have a fair chance for a repetition of the last four years – a relatively stable hard-line government.

I have more expectations from the opposition though. Kadima was a disaster – it failed to challenge the government on any issue, and its members proved to be more right wing than many of those in the coalition. The next Knesset will have more of the young liberal MKs which could at least use their position to challenge Netanyahu and his partners.

MK Michael Ben Ari (Otzma LeIsrael party) leading a right-wing protest (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

The things to watch in the elections

Arab-Israeli turnout: This is the real wild card. Around 50 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel are expected to show up to the polls  – the lowest figure in Israel. If more Palestinians vote, the results of the elections could change, even dramatically (though this is not very likely).

Likud vs. extreme right: If Likud actually ends up with less than 35 seats this will be a clear failure for Netanyahu. If Bennett gets 14 or more, he could become the most important politician in the next Knesset, after Netanyahu.

Tzipi Livni & Shelly Yachimovich: Former Kadima leader Livni which now heads her own party, Hatnuah, is trending downwards. Less than 7 seats will be a failure on her part. Same goes for Labor’s Yachimovich, who could face serious opposition in her party if she drops to 16 seats or less. Most of the undecided votes are from the center and the left, so results could be very far from the predictions.

Otzma LeYisrael: This is the most racist party to run for elections since Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party was kicked out of the Israeli parliament. The party’s leaders – Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben Ari – were elected to the current Knesset as part of a bloc with another settler group, but right now they are running on their own, with most polls showing them just above the two percent threshold. Radical Kahanist from Hebron, Baruch Marzel, is at number three, and some polls predict him a Knesset seat.

I will be live blogging election night on +972, starting from around 9pm local time. We will also be posting updates and analysis on the site’s Twitter account and on our Facebook page. First exit polls will be around 10pm local time.

Adjusted polls are sometimes published after midnight. Results are usually announced in the early morning, but the soldiers and diplomats who vote are only added in the following day or two, and sometimes they change the seat allocation a bit.

Related:
+972 Magazine’s Israeli election page
Knesset Poll tracker
Analysis: Israelis cannot ‘democratically’ decide to continue the occupation

The first part of the video is text in Hebrew, blaming Arabs for not paying taxes such as income tax and Arnona (a municipal property tax).

The next segment (00:32) opens with Ben-Ari pouring coffee for Eldad from a finjan into a small glass, saying “Tfadal” (please) with a grin on his face. This particular moment reeks from so much racism, it sends a chill down the spine. From then on, it’s all in Arabic. Both the racists read off their messages, intended for Jewish ears, of course, that “without obligations, there are no rights.”

The video and message is very reminiscent of Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s (No. 2 in Likud Beiteinu joint list) election campaign from 2009, whose slogan was “without loyalty, there is no citizenship.” The video below, from 2009, ends with the message “Only Lieberman understands Arabic.” Both these campaigns draw on the old right-wing notion that “we know how to deal with the Arabs.”

An Israeli woman shouts at an African immigrant during an anti-immigrant demonstration organized by right-wing activists in south Tel Aviv on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)

As 2012 came to an end, the situation of the thousands of migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel remains as uncertain as ever. As a grim reminder of the past year and an omen for what is yet to come, MK Michael Ben-Ari and his extreme-right supporters held another protest calling for the immediate expulsion of all “infiltrators” as a supposed solution to all of South Tel Aviv’s problems, leading to the deployment of a massive police force meant to prevent any trouble from spoiling a night of partying.

MK Micheal Ben-Ari shouting slogans during an anti-immigrant demonstration, organized by members of his political party as part of their election campaign, in south Tel Aviv on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)

Israeli police prevent right-wing protestors and residents of south Tel Aviv from marching to Levinsky Park during an anti-immigrant demonstration  on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)

On December 30, police released information about the rape of an 83-year-old that had taken place a week earlier. For reasons unknown, the police also choose to release the suspect’s background, identifying him as an Eritrean national. Oblivious to numerous police statistics indicating that the migrant population has lower crime rates than the general Israeli population, a demonstration against African refugees and asylum seekers was immediately called, sparking fears of another race riot, such as the one that took place last May in the Hatikva quarter.

 

An Israeli confronts at an African immigrant during an anti-immigrant demonstration in south Tel Aviv, on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

A human rights activist (holding the sign), arguing with a right-wing protestor during an anti-immigrant demonstration in south Tel Aviv, on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Ben-Ari, the self-appointed defender of the poor and dispossessed of South Tel Aviv, was at the forefront. It is interesting to notice that many in the protest were heard shouting slogans against Interior Minister Eli Yishai and his Shas party. As right-wing politicians continue to verbally assault Africans in order to score electoral points, and as violent attacks against the migrant community keep on going unpunished, the debate on Israel’s immigration policies keeps shifting further to the right.

 

An African man hiding near his belongings during an anti-immigrant march in south Tel Aviv, on December 31, 2012. At the far end of the frame, a Border Police officer and a right-wing protestor with a megaphone, escorting the march. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

An African immigrant looks at an anti-immigrant demonstration held by right-wing activists in south Tel Aviv on December 31, 2012. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Notwithstanding a year marked by increasingly violent racist demonstrations, arson attacks and even a full-scale pogrom in the Hatikva quarter, many migrants took to the streets of south Tel Aviv to celebrate the new year. For a few moments, between December 31 and January 1, the Neveh Sha’anan pedestrian mall was illuminated with fireworks, as many danced in the streets amid police horses and border police patrols.

 

Immigrants celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tel Aviv’s southern neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan, January 1, 2013. Police forces were patrolling the area following an anti-immigrant right-wing demonstration that took place earlier in the evening. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

Immigrants celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tel Aviv’s southern neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan, January 1, 2013.  (Photo by: Shiraz Grinbaum/ Activestills.org)

 

Immigrants celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tel Aviv’s southern neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan under police surveillance on January 1, 2013. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

Immigrants celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tel Aviv’s southern neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan, January 1, 2013. Police forces were patrolling the area following an anti-immigrant right-wing demonstration that took place earlier in the evening. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

 

Kids lighting fireworks and celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tel Aviv’s southern neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan, January 1, 2013. (Photo by: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

But another story is unfolding before our eyes, and that’s the rise of the extreme right. The National Religious Party – traditionally the political home of the settlers – is now polling at around 13 seats. The more extreme Otzma LeYisrael, led by former Kahane man Michael Ben Ari, passes the Knesset threshold in roughly half of all polls, generally getting between two and three seats. That’s 15-16 seats, compared to the seven both parties have in the current Knesset. The popular leader of NRP, Naftali Bennett, was attacked by almost all other parties this weekend for an interview he gave in which he said he would ask his army commanders to relieve him from evacuating settlements, were he ever to receive such an order. It seems that Bennet only benefited from the controversy.

At the same time, the Likud-Beitenu party (the joint ticket of Prime Minister Netanyahu and resigning Foreign Minister Lieberman) is registering an all-time low since the unification was announced, with 35.5 seats, as opposed to the 42 they have now. Add to that the rise of the settlers and other hawks within the Likud itself, and you get the story of the elections: the rise to power of a new right-wing elite, which is firmly commited to the settlements. Recent developments, like the recognition of the college at Ariel as Israel’s first university in the occupied West Bank, or the refusal of Likud leaders to even pay lip service to a Palestinian state, should be seen in this context.

This graph shows the numbers for the Likud vs. the (even more) extreme right in the last couple of months.

There were some speculations that Netanyahu would try for a centrist and even a secular government after the elections, but if those trends continue, the Likud will simply be too small, and the prime minister will need to return to his “natural allies” at the right. In both cases, it’s clear that the next Knesset will deepen Israeli control over the occupied territories, and more right-wing representatives will fill the ranks of Israeli bureaucracy, justice system and security establishment. What’s happening in these elections is beyond a question of the political fates Netanyahu or Lieberman, and it reflects a deep change Israel has been going through for two decades or more.

Israel’s Central Election Committee disqualified an ad campaign last week by a new party called Otzma Leyisrael (Strength to Israel), citing that it singles out and incites against the Arab sector in Israel and is therefore racist. The campaign ads, posted on buses and billboards across Israel, included the word “loyalty” in Arabic, with a Hebrew caption underneath that reads: “Because without duties there are no rights.”

Otzma LeYisrael election ad that was banned for being racist (Ela Greenberg)

The decision by committee chairman Judge Elyakim Rubinstein was made after a group of civil rights activists, including Meretz MK Mossi Raz, filed a complaint with the committee. One of the petitioners, Ela Greenberg, told me, “none of us did this as an organization or with organizational backing. We are just private citizens and this was for me an exercise in realizing that we do have some power and influence and we need to use it.”

The ad is not surprising when you consider the people behind it. This new party is comprised of violent, hyper-nationalist, xenophobic, Jewish supremacist settlers. Its members are the ones behind the periodic anti-African rallies in south Tel Aviv, the anti-Arab rallies in Umm al Fahm and are responsible for countless incidents of incitement against Palestinians, asylum seekers and Israeli leftists. If anyone is interested in their latest hate speech, here is a video of an anti-African “Hannukah rally” they held last week in Levinsky Park:

Party chairman, Ayreh Eldad, who lives in the settlement Kfar Adumim (close to the E-1 area), made his policy on asylum seekers clear last summer when he said, “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot, a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border – shot.”

The party’s number two, Michael Ben-Ari, is a former member of Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach party (banned in 1988 for incitement to racism) and has become well-known for acts such as defiling a New Testament all MKs were given a gift, as well as calling on the IDF to shoot border infiltrators in the head.

The number three in the party is Baruch Marzel, an American-born settler from Hebron, who I have seen assault Israeli left-wing activists with my own eyes (never been tried) and who is an equal-opportunity bigot, having expressed contempt not only for Arabs, Africans and Israeli leftists, but for the LGBT community as well.  The party list also includes Aryeh King, one of the primary operatives behind the Judaization of East Jerusalem, who runs the Israel Land Fund.

Once you understand who these men are (to the best of my knowledge there is no woman on their ticket), what they have done in the past and what they are capable of, the banned ad campaign targeting Arabs looks like a relatively moderate speck in a much more fundamental and ominous problem. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) issued a statement following the banning of the campaign arguing that “isolated disqualification” is not the solution because “racist speech that severely harms minorities has been legitimized in the current mainstream political discourse.”

Indeed, what could be more evident proof of the institutionalization and normalization of bigotry and fascism in Israel the presence of such a party, some of whose members already have an office in Israel’s Knesset? And It doesn’t stop with this party. MKs from Likud, Kadima and Shas have all gone on record making racist and incendiary statements against either Africans or Israeli leftists, or both.

And let’s not forget about (former) Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his party, Yisrael Beiteinu. Otzma LeYisrael was not the first to propose conditioning the rights of Arab citizens of Israels on the  notion of “loyalty” to the Jewish state. After the campaign was banned last week, MKs Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben Ari noted  that it could not possibly be racist, as Yisrael Beiteinu’s campaign slogan in the previous election, crafted by Lieberman himself, had pretty much the same message: “No loyalty, no citizenship.” Israel’s Knesset even approved the “citizenship law” in March 2011, proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, which gives the Supreme Court the power to revoke citizenship from citizens convicted of treason, espionage and terrorism. At the time, even Israel’s Shabak (General Security Service) warned there was no need for the law, and that its purpose appeared to be the delegitimization of Arab citizens.

Four new election polls were released in the last couple of days. (Five if you count Haaretz, but I don’t.) They all tell the same story. In fact, it’s incredible how consistent the polls are, and how stable they seem. No political maneuvering, nor the recent escalation in the south, has affected the overall picture: Netanyahu’s bloc – consisting of ultra-Orthodox parties and the right, has a solid Knesset majority. Bibi will be the next prime minister.

Some people think that the Orthodox parties might support a centrist candidate following the elections. But as I explained in more detail here, this scenario is possible only if the right and the Orthodox fail to reach the 60-seat threshold for a Knesset majority, and this is clearly not the case now.

Take a look at this pie – it shows the average of the last four polls (hovering over a slice will show the party name and the expected number of seats). As long as the blue-black-grey pieces cover more than half the pie, the game is over and Netanyahu is prime minister. (This chart, and others, can be found on our Knesset poll tracking page.) I know that an advantage of 4-5 seats to the right doesn’t seem like much, but when all the polls look the same, it is highly unlikely that they’re wrong. This was the lesson from the last U.S. presidential elections – we should trust the polls, especially when they all tell the same story. In fact, one could say that the Israeli situation is the mirror image of the American: the demographics have been playing in the right’s favor for more than a decade, and the opposition – the center-left – is in deep crisis and not able to unite around a leader and a coherent ideology.

A few more takeaways from recent days:

- Netanyahu seems to recognize that he has no challenger from his left. The decision to allow the construction of 3,000 units in the occupied West Bank seems like an attempt to prevent voters from deserting the Likud for the National Religious Party (“Jewish Home”) which has been gaining some ground in recent polls under the newly-elected Naftali Bennett.

- Tzipi Livni has formed yet another Israeli centrist party: Hatnuah (“the movement”), and is now polling between six and nine seats – all of them taken from other left and centrist parties. Not really a game-changer.

- The parties will submit their final lists of candidates next week, and we will officially enter the home stretch. My guess is that at least two centrist parties will disappear: Kadima without Livni is a dead horse – Shaul Mofaz will be lucky to enter the new Knesset. Atzmaut without Barak might not even bother to run.

- A neo-Kahanist party called Otzma (“power”) to Israel is getting closer to passing the Knesset threshold. The party is headed by former Kahane man Michael Ben-Ari, today an MK for the National Union.

- In many Israeli election cycles, there seems to emerge a bubble party (or a “trend party”) – one that attracts undecided and less politicized voters – in days leading up to elections. Right now, it seems that Rabbi Amsalem’s Am Shalem party has the potential to play this role. Amsalem – who left Shas and has since harshly criticized the Orthodox leaders for enabling their constituencies to avoid the draft and employment – is polling between two and four seats, all of them from the center. Amsalem is a hawk and he brings with him a group of ultra-nationalists like former IDF general Elazar Stern, but this fact is not likely to hurt him too much given the current political atmosphere in Israel. Still, his positions are unclear, so I don’t count him with any of the other Knesset blocs.

- The best thing that could come out of these elections is a move to ideological, rather than a tactical, voting patterns. In other words, if some voters on the left think that they can beat Netanyahu, they might end up supporting candidates to their right, such as Yachimovich or Livni. But if voters think that there is no such chance, they could move to more ideological parties. The result could be an emergence of a stronger Jewish-Arab bloc within the opposition with a commitment to human rights and to ending the occupation. It will still be far from a ruling majority – very far – but nevertheless, it will have its effect. If voters instead rush to the center, we are likely to end with another disastrous Knesset, just like the current one.

In developed societies, incitement to violence is a punishable offense. Israel’s standards should be no different.

During Thursday’s rally, right-wing Israeli member of Knesset Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) is seen encouraging the chanting crowd with phrases like, “leftist traitors,” and “leftists out.” He then asks:

Why is it only 200 flights and 15 killed? We want 15 flights and 2,000 killed!

Watch: Right-wing demonstrators call for expulsion of leftists

When I posted this video on my personal facebook account earlier today, it had only 300 views, and I noted that, in my opinion, MK Ben-Ari should be arrested. (I still believe that to be the case, and I hope the authorities are reading this.) I got a number of responses from Israeli Jews noting, with some embarrassment, that the clip is disgusting and that Ben-Ari does not represent Jews or Israel or them:

No no no – This is NOT representative of me or Torah or Israel … We’re taught that when we’re angry, part of our neshama [soul or spirit] is chased away.

I advise this friend (a religious Jewish female, raised in the U.S. but now living in Israel) to write about the issues from her perspective, and to not allow the likes of Ben-Ari to hijack the voice of religious Jews. Meanwhile, another friend – a secular Israeli living in the North, noted:

[A]s a Jew, Israeli and Zionist, I am ashamed in each and every single person in this movie. The damage they cause us as a nation is far beyond any missile coming from the Gaza Strip.

The sentiments are reassuring. And indeed, politically, Ben Ari – a self-declared supporter of the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane and a former member of the outlawed group Kahane Chai – has very few followers in Israel, though enough to get him and his party elected. Some of them are seen in the video with him, chanting “Gaza is a graveyard.”

But for me, perhaps more alarming than Ben-Ari and his supporters are the following:

First, that sentiment – even if not as violent in tone – is creeping into Israeli society and institutions, and it is doing so unchecked. Crackdowns on leftists are often spearheaded by the government itself. Few, except for on the Left, have spoken out against this witchhunt. And comments like “we have to get rid of all of the Arabs” can now be overheard in cafes in “liberal” Tel Aviv.

Second, more and more so, these views – and incitement to violence – are being tolerated in Israeli society, rather than purged with the greatest of efforts.

It is not enough to hide in embarrassment. One must do something to counter these calls for violence, spoken through and shielded by an exploitation of democracy and freedom of speech. MK Ben-Ari does not want dialogue. He wants war, domestically and beyond Israel’s border, and is calling for as much using taxpayer money.

Democracy is complicated. Yes, it includes free speech. But democracy also has responsibilities, which include the safeguarding of rights, including life, for everyone. Israelis and their supporters should raise their voices not just to drain out Ben-Ari and his followers, but to defend the very values their claim to cherish.

Click here for more +972 coverage on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Here’s what Ben-Ari wrote today:

Mercy on immigrants = blood of IDF soldiers

Now it’s clear, the IDF inquiry determines: the terrorists waited for the soldiers to give the infiltrators water and then they shot them!

The conclusion that should have been reached long ago:

Infiltrators who want water should go drink in Sudan or Egypt, whoever approaches the border, will get a bullet in the head, this is the only way we’ll save the lives of our children and guard our borders!

MK Michael Ben-Ari’s Facebook page