#11: Hotel Dilemma: hoe houd je het veilig én gastvrij?

[Music] Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of our very first new weekly Harret's election podcast. I'm Allison Kaplan-Summer. Each week, one of our two weekly Harret's podcasts is going to be devoted to discussion and debate with a panel of Harret's reporters and columnists, a different group each week of our All-Star reporters and commentators. We are going to examine the state of the race, talk about the biggest headlines of the past week and look to the week ahead. So when are these Israeli elections you might ask? That is a good question. We still have no official date for the elections. Legally, the deadline is October 27th, which is coming up fast, but it is yet to be officially announced and confirmed. At the same time, it feels like campaign season is clearly underway. New parties are forming, existing parties are merging and everyone's eyes are always on the poles, which we see everywhere. I should point out that on Harret's.com, we already have an election tracker going which averages together. All of the polling from all of the Israeli media outlets at any given moment, so I suggest you check that out for a deeper dive. Joining me for our very first election round table is Harret Senior columnist Esther Solomon and joining me with Esther is Harret's correspondent Naram Zvidat, who specializes in Palestinian affairs and the Arab world. Hello Naram and Esther, are you both ready for elections? Does it feel like your friends, family, the country is ready? Isn't it weird that we're all sitting here when we don't really know when the elections are going to happen? Yes, it is a little bit weird, but on the other hand, it can never be too prepared. For me, I think I'm treating the election as it has already started because, aside from the negotiations between parties, what matters to me is the opinions of voters, of the whole preparation for the election itself. So for me, it has already started. Yeah, all of the wheeling and dealing were so used to war dominating the headlines, and there's still very much in the headlines, but now there seems to be this competing force of politics and the two being mixed politics and war. They say that those are the two big things that happen in Israel, sort of, alternatively a war or an election, and now it seems like we're treated to both of them at the same time. So here we go. As we kick off, let's set the table and start with the basics. Esther, can you talk about it basically how it all works or how it is supposed to work since it never seems to go quite as planned? Sure. I've tried to get, let's start with some very, very basic things. First of all, elections in Israel happen every four years, but that almost never happens here. In fact, the only, the last time that a government actually saw out its full term was in 1988, which is kind of probably before some of you were even born. Weirdly enough, for the government that was in office during October the 7th and the Guards of War and everything that has happened, it looks like they are going to see out their full term. So that's some kind of historic achievement for them. So in general, elections in Israel are supposed to be every four years, they really happen roughly every two and a half years. It's going to be ironic that it will be a historic event if elections happen when they're supposed to. They are and don't forget that the election that brought Netanyahu and this government power came after we had five elections in three and a half years because each time a government couldn't be formed that actually had new stamp. Every Israeli citizen can go to the elections and they cast a single ballot. So this is why Israel is different from the US, which has a presidential system. You cast one vote. There is one legislative chamber in the Kinesa. There's no upper or lower house. There are no regional legislatures and you vote for a list of candidates. Each list, which is roughly similar to a party, receives the same, the proportional number of seats in the Kinesa as however many votes it goes. So let's say you've got 20% of the votes, you basically get 20% of the seats in the Kinesa. In order to get into the Kinesa at all, you have to have got 3.25% of the valid votes. What we call the electoral threshold. So that's the threshold. If you get less than that, your votes just go to the trash. There are 120 seats in Israel's Kinesa. So you have to get over 61 seats, 61 or over. That gives you a governing coalition. And one party has never ever ever in Israel's entire history, right? One, those 61 votes. It's always a coalition. Right. There's always, always been coalition parties, governments in Israel ever since establishment. Now, who can vote? Israeli systems, you have to be 18 years or older. Your name has to be registered in the voters' registry. There are about 7 million eligible voters. And in the last election, 70% of eligible voters turned out to vote, which is quite a reasonable percentage. Now, who can't vote? That is people who have what is called permanent resident status. So there are people who pay taxes, who are part of Israeli society, but they do not have citizenship. And that mostly focuses on several hundred thousand Palestinians in East Jerusalem. So that is one category of residents of Israel, permanent residents of Israel who cannot vote. Obviously in the West Bank, you have a situation where geosatillers can vote and West Bank Palestinians cannot because they are not citizens. So people, you know, with the space of a few meters, some can vote, some can't. Now, then election day has finished. The results are out. Israel's president meets with members of the Knesset who have to recommend a party leader who will form a coalition. And the president basically decides who is most likely to be able to form a solid coalition of at least 61 seats. And then he turns to that party leader and gives them 28 days to form a government. Often that is extended. If no coalition actually emerges, the president may pass the mandate onto another member of the Knesset or the Knesset might dissolve. And then that triggers another election. This is exactly what happened a few years ago when it constantly happened one after the other, the other. There's no mailing votes. There's no absentee voting except for very small number of diplomats and public servants abroad. There is no mandatory voting, but you do get the die off. Yes, vacation day. Vote and go to the beach. Thank you Esther for your explanation. So, as you said, the magic number is 61. Even though we are actually in a government where there are only 60 members of the governing coalition because you need 61 to take power, but you can hold on to your fingernails with power with only 60 seats unless the government actually votes to dissolve the Knesset, which it's not doing because the parties in power do not want to lose their power at least until election day. So right now, if you look at the polls over and over and over again, every single poll shows essentially no clear winner if the elections were held today or tomorrow. Netanyahu is blocked, his Lee Kud party, the El Chororthodox parties and the very far right parties. Despite kicking and screaming by the El Chororthodox because Netanyahu has not passed the law that they really want exempting them from the army service. We don't see them abandoning Netanyahu soon, but that group is polling now at 52 seats and 23 of them in the polls are going to the Lee Kud, as opposed to the 32 seats that the Lee Kud has that is a much much much weaker showing than they had in 2022. So one could say, you know, they're in very bad shape. On the other hand, if you look at how people talk about this government, Netanyahu still being on trial for corruption, most people still holding him in his government responsible for what happened on October 7th. What's now happened with Iran, one of his big selling points with his wonderful relationship with Donald Trump, which seems to be deteriorating fast. One could say that these numbers are surprisingly strong. He hasn't cratered at all. So Esther, can you tell us about that weakness versus strength and looking ahead, do you think Netanyahu is showing signs of having some sort of tricks up his sleeve to boost his status and his strength to, if not where it once was, at least better than it is today? Well, on the one hand, it is kind of phenomenal that Netanyahu can still command those figures bearing in mind for the months after October 7th. Obviously, his numbers were, you know, almost subterranean. So there has been quite an incredible recovery by him. In some ways, that's not surprising because the incumbent always has a huge advantage. And somebody who centralises power as much as Netanyahu does and someone's who has quite so much influence over media coverage or at least a session about his media coverage. And obviously the very, very dramatic events that have happened over the last few years give him an ability to at least talk directly to his base. So where we are now is that Netanyahu is more or less maxed out on however many people will still be loyal to him. So yes, there is a little bit of movement, a little bit more some weeks a little bit less, but he cannot crack the numbers to get anywhere near the numbers that he would need to get to a majority to form coalition. Do we see him trying to do that? Well, he's going to pull out obviously every single stop he can. Now, bearing in mind, you know, this is the prime minister who was basically willing for the country to burn before October the 7th. It's not surprising that he is basically willing to sell and co-earse and control whatever he has in order to change the results on Election Day. One quite visual way that we saw that was just last night on Saturday evening. Netanyahu called a press conference with 14 minutes notice and that's during Saturday evening, prime time, when they say prime time, it was the final of Big Brother. So that is it's really, you know, a prime time TV audience and with extremely small, small notice, he called the TV networks, not all of them actually obeyed when he said jump, but what was he trying to sell during that press conference? The idea that he has recovered his title as Mr security. So there is this new agreement between Israel and Lebanon that he was saying was a historic achievement. This is an agreement that basically tries to solidify the ceasefire that was achieved several months ago, but this is something that still allows Israeli forces to stay in southern Lebanon for now and gives a kind of mechanism for the Lebanese army to disarm his Bala. He is framing this as an enormous triumph because he has to get over the fact that only a few weeks ago he was being assailed within his own camp for a complete disaster capitulation in terms of the Iran deal that Trump negotiated completely without any Israeli involvement. So this is first of all an old trope of Netanyahu that he is victorious and he can keep saying the word victory as many times as he can in the hope that people will actually buy it, you know, again, I'm saying that he has to get every single person in his base who have ever voted liquid to come out and vote. The older than the best messages that he's ever had he's trying to bring them back. Then at the end of this press conference, he talked about the kind of government that he would like to lead after the elections and he talked about wanting a broad national unity government. Now, you have to be able to pass what this means in Netanyahu ease. This does not mean a broad national unity government. Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, everyone sitting around in a Kumbaya. No. This is an attempt to say that he is much more open to a government that would include obviously some of the opposition parties and obvious way to try and divide them rule between them. But he said that every single party has to be agree that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. He was talking about forming a national unity government before the elections. Yes, he does. In some ways, it is a bit of a capitulation in that he's not talking about the fact that I can go out that he himself can go out and win straight out. It's a trick he's tried before. He made that proposal during COVID. He made that proposal after October 7th. And it's a full me once fooled me twice a situation because every time anyone in the opposition decided to join his government, he basically did not do well by them. Right, but not only that, after he won the election in 2022 gave a speech where he said, you know, now is the time for repairing and healing. And I'm here for all of you and all of this kind of thing. He actually in obviously, as we all know, launched one of the most far right government, you know, perhaps the most damaging and disastrous government that Israel has ever seen. So what another message that he had there was he said, enough of the boycotts, what does he mean? He means the parties that have boycotted political engagement with him because he is not only a defender in a criminal trial, but also because of his disastrous record. But you know, this is true nutting our style to throw back the accusations at the opposition. He also said that another key principle of the next government that he aspires to lead is that there would definitely be no two-state solution. In fact, he said there was no place at all for two states. And he said that perhaps before October 7th, there was a significant minority amongst Israelis that did want two states, but that's all changed now. Now, honestly, on that last point, he's probably right. So he has already laid out the fact that he is a new open nutting out. He seems to be signaling that he is not only married to a very far right and already coalition partners, but honestly, you'd have to be a bit of a fool to buy what he's selling. Oh, and the last thing that he said, which really I thought was the height of Hutzbar, he said that people don't want to see a civil war. I'm sure of that. He talked about people who are trying to inflame it and deepen the anger within the public. And then he said, I will do everything to defuse it. This is like absolutely, as I say, I barely have the words to describe what degree of Hutzbar we're talking about here, because there has been nothing, no issue that he hasn't tried to divide and inflame and incite within his right as society. To me, that reads as code as we have the ultra Orthodox blocking the streets and having riots and getting violent over the fact that they are being held to the law to join the army and the way that he's going to calm things down and promote unity is to pass the law exempting them and therefore there will be no more riots and highway blocking right? That is part of it also who's saying that, you know, any kind of protest basically, he's basically saying is the fault is a kind of illegitimate exercise by the public who obviously are deciding that they are against unity, some kind of kind, mythical national unity, the unity is just a phrase that is used to absolutely suppress any kind of descent. Well, we are going to do a deep dive into the opposition block in future podcasts, probably the next election podcast, but just in broad strokes, Esther, it doesn't seem at the moment that the opposition block, neither this United Front of former Prime Minister Bennett and Lapid, nor the new kid in town, former IDF Chief of Staff, Guidee Eisencaught, with his Yashar party who is polling second to Netanyahu, it doesn't really seem that even if we had them all joining forces putting all of their strength together, all of the Jewish Zionist opposition parties are not polling higher than say 55 or 57 at their best. So, you know, again, we sort of have this deadlock situation for now. Yeah, that's also true. There is also a ceiling for those parties as well. And obviously, even though Guidee Eisencaught, who is the latest entry to the very broad center of, he's kind of the shiny new candidate, so he's going quite a bump at the moment. He is in many ways, you know, an attractive candidate for people, even though he is super uncharismatic, and the reason for him being an attractive candidate is because he is the ultimate anti Netanyahu. He is not this smooth talking spinner who constantly talks about how wonderful his relations are with the US or his ex and English. In fact, the Likudas already published quite a racist video against him making fun of his English. And I thought Eisencaught had a very good report to that, which is where was Netanyahu's excellent English on October the 7th. And how does his excellent English help strengthen Israel US relations? This is a candidate whose parents came from Morocco. He lost his son in December 2023 in our operation to retrieve hostages bodies from Gaza. This is someone who shouts authenticity or doesn't actually have to shout it, that's just the personality that he has. And he has been less shalty than some of the other centrist parties about saying that he is dismissing, sitting with our parties out of hand. So he hasn't made some of the comments that other party leaders have had about it must be a Jewish Zionist government. He said he will accept anyone who accepts Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the values of the Declaration of Independence, which let us not forget, does actually say there should be equal rights and mandatory military or national service, which again is perhaps a way out for a variety of different parties from Arab parties and also perhaps for the ultra Orthodox as well. So this is a good point to move to the incredible importance of the group of parties who could be the Kingmakers, the dealmakers in this government when we've got a polling situation in which neither in the Jewish Zionist mainstream either side as a possible majority. Naram, that's where you come in. It's your time to explain how many Arab parties do we have? Who are they? Who are the strongest and who are the ones that you're going to be watching the most? Well, today we have four main Arab parties. We have Hadash, which is a left wing party with the communist roots. It was the first Arab Jewish party and then we have Tal, which is led by Ahmat Libe. We have Balad, it's Palestinian nationalist party led by Sam Abushadeh and then we have Ram who wants to join the coalition that is led by Manzura Besid and Islamist party. While they are grouped as one joint list, they have actually very the like major differences. Whether they are political visions, whether they are strategic intentions from communist socialist Arab party to Palestinian nationalist and then we have the political Islam. It's much more diverse political landscape than the viewers may realize abroad. We also have the bigger differences on how Palestinians, how Arab representatives should join the government and that the coalition where do they stand in this government? Let's just unpack the concept of the joint list for a moment. So the joint list is this alliance of all of the majority Arab parties. It was formed in 2015 and it was considered a big success. More Palestinian citizens of Israel came to the polls to vote for this joint list than they were doing to vote for the smaller parties that made it up. But despite its success, I mean in 2020, it won 15 seats in the Kinesa. That was a huge number. It started to unravel in 2021 and it basically formally dissolved in 2022. So is the plan for the joint list to make a comeback this year? It's not definite yet. So far the joint list has partially returned with the Taliban and the Hadash agreed to run together. Ram has not joined the joint list at this point. The big question is whether Ram Mansour Abbas or our still determined to join the government or not? The first and last time that our party was included in the government coalition, you needed two sides, right? You needed the Palestinian Israeli party to want to join the coalition and you had to have a head of a coalition who was willing to accept them into the government. That was in 2021. The historic Naftali Bennett Ya'ar Lapid alliance that led the governing coalition and that just so interestingly included the most Islamist of the parties, the United Arab List led by Mansour Abbas. So Nalram, this time around, do you see Abbas openly, vocally saying again, I'm willing to join any coalition that will have me? Would he consider also joining a Netanyahu coalition? How is he speaking as we sort of warm up towards the election campaign? Well, we didn't see Abbas abandoning his intention to join the coalition party. We are still having the obstacle of whether Jewish Zionist parties are willing to join Abbas in the government and in the coalition. But he's saying that if they're willing, he's willing to do it. And is that what sort of preventing him from becoming formally a part of the joint list? Is it that willingness to do so? That's why he's standing apart for now and we won't have a completely united joint list at least as we speak as of this moment. Yes, because Hadash Dal and the Belad have set aside so many differences and they are willing to look overlock these differences, but they would join the Israeli government, joining that coalition is like a red line for them that they are not willing to take. Nalram, you recently published an article where you spoke to many Palestinian Israeli voters, most of them young, about their attitude towards the upcoming election. Turn out has always been the issue in the Arab Israeli Palestinian community. What was your sense when you went out there and spoke to people? Is there a higher motivation to vote because everything we've been through with Gaza, with the Iran war, is that making people more likely to show up at the polls or less likely? We know that there's a significant number of Palestinian citizens of Israel who because of their attitude towards the government are boycotting the elections and don't feel that it's something they want to participate in. How did you find the public when you took the temperature reporting your article? While the reactions split between those who still like who lost hope in the kinesit and the outcomes of the elections yet there are still people who are going to vote, who once boycotted the election and now they want to vote with their willing to vote because of everything that has happened so far with the Gaza war, with the Iran, the Lebanon war, with the violence in the West Bank, the new law, fixing security, Palestinian prisoners. So while there are some people who have lost hope and are not going to vote this year, there's more tendency to vote out of desperation, out of despair, out of fear, rather than faith in the election and democracy. But that's still motivation to vote. It is a motivation to vote, it is a motivation to put an end without any further hope, without any bigger ambitions of having something, of achieving something, but rather to put an end to the violence, putting an end to violence in the Arab community, the housing issues, the financial burdens on the Palestinian community in Israel. The former Bennett Lapid coalition did much more historically to address the problems, obviously, due in part to the fact that Mansor Abbas was part of that government, so do you think that is going to try to motivate the community in order to bring back those days when they had a government that was taking the terrible, terrible violence in Arab society more seriously and do more to address it? I believe so from what I read, from the people and their opinions on and hopes of the upcoming election, any solution that would minimize would end the gun violence that is dominating the Arab and Palestinian communities within Israel, will have great and big impact on the votes turnout. Naram historically there's only been one real partnership Arab Jewish party, Radash, and now for the very first time it seems there is going to be another one. Can you tell us about it? It's it comes out of a social grassroots movement, right? Standing together, the reaction to it on the Jewish left has been very negative. Parties need 3.25% of the vote to cross the electoral threshold and there's a real fear of dividing the left to the point where it wastes votes going underneath the electoral threshold. So is there a similar nervousness in the Arab sector over the creation of this new Arab Jewish party? I think introducing a new political party that involves both Arabs and Jewish people is an attempt to introduce also another genuine partnership between the two people which I think Palestinians in Israel have shown excitement for something new, for a new representation, whether it's because of the nationality of the people in it, the gender, the age, which kind of lacks in the Arab parties themselves. So it's more of like a positive feedback on the Arab end. Also because the standing together themselves have been very present, very influential in the Palestinian community in Israel, especially during the previous time where gun violence, the protest, have dominated the Arab villages and towns. So basically the feedback on the Arab society is better. The social movement is called standing together and the new party is called a place for us all led by people emerging from the standing together movement. To wrap up you guys, none of this is happening in a vacuum. Every day we have other news, we have headlines, Esther, we talked about Netanyahu addressing the situation in Iran, in in the next video. Lebanon, all kinds of things can happen between now and election day. What do you think are the events that will most influence the decision of voters A to turn out, as we said, turn out is very important, and B to possibly change the party that they're choosing when they go to the ballot box? I think that obviously there are dramatic things like wall breaking out again, not that we're exactly in a time of peace right now. You know, they were even between the US and Iran, it's not really clear what's going on there, and certainly Israel is still actively conflicting, as we say, with Chesbola, the whole issue of Gaza, obviously. So it's completely unpredictable and something bananas could happen with that. Many Israelis are very, very tired, just very tired. They've had basically three years of war of one kind or another. I'm not sure they have tremendous reserves of energy for very vocal, political activism right now. It's also we're leading into the summer holidays. I think that things will probably wake up a lot more at the beginning of September, but who knows? You know, they're each block, the Netanyahu block and the anti Netanyahu block are fighting for every single person. The main messaging, social media campaigns, video complaints, you know, there's the beginnings of them now, but there's going to be a much, much more, and then we'll see if that's really going to lead to bigger campaign rallies in the streets. They've been pretty small up till now. We'll have to see what happens, you know, we'll see as the campaign accelerates. You know, this is an election that is not exactly between wars, as I say, we are still in the middle of various conflicts, any of which could flare up from time to time. Now, Ram, what do you think is going to really affect what people do? Well, speaking on behalf of the Palestinians in Israel, the gun violence, solving the issue of gun violence in the Palestinian communities, the house demolition, the Israeli settlers, violence in the West Bank, and obviously Gaza still remains one of the dominant topics that is discussed within the Palestinian community. You have your ear to the ground on social media. So those are the areas that you think will really influence, first of all, whether Palestinians in Israel show up to vote. And which party that they'll vote for, do you think that events will influence which Arab Party they choose? It depends on whether there is going to be a joint list after all, or it's not. But the party that will determine the solutions for at least one of these issues will be most likely to have the most voters. Thank you both so much. With that, I am going to sign off of the first of our weekly election podcasts. I strongly encourage everyone to continue tuning in because there's a lot to talk about. Many, many thanks to my distinguished panel, Esther Solomon, Naram Zbidat, and to my producer, Adish Ahmad. Please, everyone spread the word about our new election podcasts, which will appear in our regular Harret's podcast feed, along with our other weekly episodes. Follow us on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. And of course, to keep up with the election news, as well as all of the rest of the news on Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world. And to keep your eye on our election tracker with all of the poll results, all of the time. Don't forget to subscribe to and follow Harret's dot com. As always, I'm Allison Kaplan-Summer. And until next time, Shalom from Tel Aviv.