‘What if there aren't free and fair elections in Israel in October? What are we going to do?’

**Allison Kaplan Sommer** (0:06)
Hello and welcome to the Haaretz Podcast. I'm Allison Kaplan Sommer.
Well, we've been diving into the election campaign in Israel now for the past month on the Special Election Podcast, but we've done it without an actual date for the election. So this is the first podcast in which we actually know when it's going to happen on October 27th, which is its originally scheduled date, four years from the previously held elections. Now, in a normal country, this would be normal having the date on which it's scheduled. In Israel, it is highly abnormal. There has not been an election taking place on its scheduled date, not an early election because of some sort of crisis within the government since 1988 So it's been a good run, 38 years of abnormality. And finally, we're back to normal or as close as it can resemble here. Anyway, here to discuss the election with me, all of it, the polls, the events of the previous week is this week's panel. First, Haaretz crack columnist and analyst, Joshua Leifer. Josh, thanks for coming to the podcast.

**Joshua Leifer** (1:12)
Thanks so much for having me.

**Allison Kaplan Sommer** (1:14)
And our very special election correspondent on the road. We'll talk soon about what she's up to as she crisscrosses the country. Haaretz correspondent, Judy Maltz.

**Judy Maltz** (1:23)
Great to be on, Allison.

**Allison Kaplan Sommer** (1:25)
It's the first time that both of you have come to the podcast, so welcome to all the fun.
So the joke's on us. We've all been speculating for the past four years how the situation in the country, October 7th, the Gaza war means for sure this government is going to come down. It's been polling so badly, and we are going to have some kind of elections before the scheduled time now, as I've just explained. It is going to happen on time. There was a lot of talk about how Netanyahu was going to strategically choose another date in the fall. None of that came to pass. I personally am interpreting it as being because Netanyahu feels like he needs every single moment possible in order to maneuver, manipulate, as we say, his tricks and schticks to try to figure out how to possibly win victory out of this election when the polls are not in his favor. Do you have another reason why he would let it go until the very, very end?

**Judy Maltz** (2:24)
No, and he may actually try to start another war with Iran. He probably wants one.

**Joshua Leifer** (2:28)
Yeah, I mean, we know that Netanyahu is famously a procrastinator, and so he waited till the last minute for this, but I also think that the polling created a kind of disincentive in the sense that the current coalition knew that if they went to early elections, they would be guaranteed to lose power, and so there was no reason for them to let intra-coalition bickering, for instance, about the ultra-Orthodox draft bring them down, and so then they managed to stick it out to the end of the tenure, which is pretty disgraceful considering how long it has been since a government lasted its full term, and that of all governments, this one is the one that did it. It's pretty damning.

**Allison Kaplan Sommer** (3:05)
With that said, let's look at the reason why he feels like he needs as much time as possible to raise his standing. Taking a quick look at the polls from the Haaretz election tracker, which averages all of the polls taken by all of the media outlets together, the opposition's fortunes continue to rise. The Jewish opposition parties against Netanyahu now are polling at 59 seats, which is kind of within scratching distance of the 61 seats they would need for a definitive victory. They are in striking distance. Netanyahu's block is only polling at 52 seats. That's a very, very large gap. But still, the bottom line is it's a deadlock with no winner unless either side is willing to join with the Arab parties to form a coalition. Also notably, for the first time, the average of all of the polls shows Gadi Eisenkot's Yishar party pulling ahead of the Likud with Yishar at 23 seats and Likud only with 22
So all of this is happening, of course, while the US or rather I should say Donald Trump and his whim of the moment, lost patience with the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran and war is really heating up again. Not particularly here, but the US. We just heard that two US servicemen were killed at a US base in Jordan. Things are really happening between the US and the US bases in the Gulf and again right next to Israel, even though the US forces are using Israel as a place, as a base for their weaponry and for refueling, etc.