It cannot be denied that Israel is the world champion in immunization. Half of the population has already received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Coronavirus disease and death rates are declining. Most of the restrictions have been lifted and life is starting again like it was before pandemic. The stores and restaurants are running, people are sitting in restaurants and bars, having fun on the streets. A glimpse of normality.
Bibi won’t leave her
Netanyahu hopes this will win him for the fourth time in two years. Since 2019, he’s been doing his best to stay afloat as prime minister while avoiding jail on corruption charges. In May 2020, a long-awaited trial began, and the incumbent Prime Minister is also appearing in court as the accused. This is the previous situation. The law does not require Netanyahu to resign from the premiership until the end of the trial, and all possible appeals and appeals have been exhausted, although he cannot hold ministerial posts.
If he loses the prime minister position now, his political career will likely end and the chances of him being convicted will increase dramatically. So maintaining the position is of prime importance to him. The problem is that he cannot get enough support from the Israelis to create a stable majority rz ± d. Other parties are also unable to do so. The result is unstable, short-lived coalitions, minority governments, an ongoing political crisis, and an election carnival that sickens Israelis but allows Netanyahu to stay afloat.
The next vote will take place on Tuesday. Polls yet Once Another does not give hope for a breakthrough. Netanyahu’s Likud party could get 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, the Israeli parliament. However, for an independent referee, he needs more than twice that. So they have to come from a number of small parties, most of them conservative and representing the Orthodox community. The problem is that, according to opinion polls, it is not certain if they will lump nearly 30 votes together. Likud and its potential coalition partners have gained ground in the polls in recent days, but there is still a distinct advantage on the horizon.
So the case is back on the knife’s edge. The Israelis could face the fifth elections within two years. The problem is that Israeli politics has now turned into a popular poll conducted by Bibi, who has ruled since 2009, his supporters say of Netanyahu. The prime minister is a very expressive and controversial figure. So he has supporters like the opponents, and it is difficult for him to form broad coalitions in the Knesset, because few parties are willing to cooperate with him.
The next elections are only taking place in Netanyahu’s own interests. Professor Gayle Telsher, a professor of political science at Al-Quds University, said in an interview with The New York Times that I don’t know of any serious commentator who would say otherwise.
Who brought the vaccines?
Netanyahu’s clear intention for this election was to succeed in the vaccination campaign. Initially, Israel handled the epidemic relatively poorly, with one of the highest rates of infection and deaths per thousand in developed countries. The successive closures (the third recently ended), as elsewhere, have caused major economic problems and overstretched society. The future did not look bright for Netanyahu, who agreed a year ago to form a governing coalition with his biggest rival, Benny Gantz. It was supposed to be a kind of National Salvation Government in the face of a pandemic.
Cooperation remained very weak, but it is still, until December 2020. The alliance was broken due to the inability to reach a budget agreement. Netanyahu’s supporters will argue that the reason is Gantz’s inability to compromise. However, opponents will say that the prime minister decided to finally break the coalition because there is a real chance for success, which could turn into electoral success, i.e. vaccines. As a result, Netanyahu did not have to hand over power to Gantz in the fall, as stipulated in the coalition agreement.
Fortunately for the Israelis, Bibi took the vaccinations as if his entire political life depended on them. And that really depends a lot. From the start, he tried to present the entire vaccination campaign as his business. Your success. And it still is. This is what he said in one of the recent rallies.
We are the world champions in the fight against Coronavirus. I’ve imported millions of doses of vaccine and I’m getting millions more!
Last week, the Central Elections Committee banned him from using the phrase “back to life” in the campaign, which is also one of the pillars of the Ministry of Health’s vaccination campaign. It turns out that Likud and Netanyahu are “using the public good” to promote.
However, the prime minister and his party were not prevented from organizing speeches at the vaccination sites. Netanyahu has been actively promoting vaccination from the start, and he regularly appears in places like this. Sam was the first Israeli to accept the vaccine. He did it in front of the cameras in mid-December. It cannot be denied that he played a very positive role in promoting the vaccination.
And he himself draws attention to a person without whom it would not be possible to provide such a volume of vaccine supply. Israel has put on one horse in this matter, the American company Pfizer. Netanyahu says that thanks to his constant contacts with the company, and in particular with its president, Albert Burla, it has been possible to secure rapid shipments of millions of vaccines. Burla, as the son of a Holocaust survivor, has a very positive attitude toward Israel, and apparently, toward Netanyahu. In an interview with Israeli media, he praised him, stressing the unwavering position of the prime minister, who was ready to speak even in the middle of the night and called him dozens of times.
The Israelis also conducted their show entitled “The Prime Minister Welcomes a Cargo Plane.” More than once. Netanyahu performed against the backdrop of delivery machines United States of America And vaccines in December and January.
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The end of the epidemic just before the elections
Now, in the prime minister’s account, Israel has already “won” the coronavirus. Evidence of this is the return of life to its old paths. But Netanyahu’s critics argue that it is difficult to talk about a “win” when virus He killed about six thousand Israelis. Moreover, “winning” and lifting the restrictions, in their view, is essentially a political matter of the prime minister. The number of casualties is clearly declining, but for every million inhabitants it has decreased to a level comparable to the United States of America or Great Britain only in recent days (Poland, due to the rapidly increasing third wave in the past two weeks, has sharply overtook Israel). In addition, critics point to the great danger associated with lifting restrictions on the number of people coming from abroad. It is especially about the risk of introducing new types of coronavirus into Israel, against which the Pfizer vaccine may be less effective.
The topic of sanctions for breaking the epidemiological restrictions by the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community raises a lot of passions. The penalties were very moderate, especially given the extent to which the restrictions were violated by the Orthodox community, who do not universally recognize many of the principles of the secular state of Israel. According to critics of Netanyahu, the sanctions imposed by the government have been deliberately lenient to gain the support of the Orthodox parties. Those that may be of great importance in forming a coalition government.
It remains to be seen in the coming weeks whether all of this will allow Netanyahu to form the desired ruling majority. After the elections, he will have four to negotiate with other parties and form a government. However, it will almost certainly be a difficult task. Bibi has divided Israel very effectively, and there is no indication that the success of the vaccination campaign has significantly changed that. And while the Israelis are grateful to him for that, they have not forgotten who he is and what he did before.
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