However, it fell apart following the March elections, when Gantz decided to negotiate with Netanyahu about forming a coalition government. Blue and White presents itself as a centrist party that aims to unite Israeli society. It argues for an eight-year term limit for prime ministers, and supports Israel as a Jewish, democratic state that balances its Jewish identity with individual freedom.
At the same time, it argues for economic development in Palestinian areas and increased freedom of movement, to set the stage for a potential peace deal in the future. The party proposes a new national service arrangement in which those who do not serve in the IDF will perform civil service in security, law enforcement, rescue, and agricultural bodies.
Blue and White supports limited public transportation on Shabbat, and reforms of the kashrut and conversion authorities.
The party supports a legally recognized partnership for gay couples, and surrogacy for gay couples. It also pledges investment in social welfare, infrastructure, and health. Polling: The Blue and White party has spent the better part of the past month polling just above the 3. In his best polls, Gantz wins five Knesset seats. He has held steady above the four-seat minimum over the past month, perilously close to the threshold but consistently above it.
Something you may not have known: If this election fails to produce a government and the next one does as well, Gantz will become interim prime minister in November, regardless of how he does in the elections, thanks to the power-sharing deal he reached with Netanyahu last year assuming no loophole is found.
He will be the first person not named Netanyahu to hold the office since What the party is pitching: Meretz is the only mainstream party that defines itself as left-wing, offering unbridled support for a Palestinian state along with minority rights and religious pluralism within Israel. The party, headed by former newsman Nitzan Horowitz, is once again fighting to cross the 3. As well as calling for immediate negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and the loosening of restrictions on both the Gaza Strip and Palestinians living in the West Bank, the party has an extensive platform of progressive domestic proposals.
The only party to openly call for raising taxes on top earners, Meretz wants to vastly increase both the education and health budgets to provide better facilities and significant hikes in salaries for teachers and nurses. It specifically calls for introducing free education from the age of 1, and for recalibrating the health budget so as to increase investment in public medicine. Devoting the longest section of its platform to LGBT rights, Meretz also wants to introduce budgeting for the activities of gay community organizations, financial support for surrogacy arrangements, and adoption services for the transgender community.
A special chapter in the platform is dedicated to cracking down on violence in the Arab community. Key figures: Nitzan Horowitz has been head of the party since , when he won a primary following the first election round.
Former party leader Tamar Zandberg is second on the party slate. Polling: The party has consistently hovered near the 3. Most polls have shown it getting enough votes for four seats, but rarely any more than that, and sometimes less. Something you may not have known: Nitzan Horowitz is the first openly gay leader of an Israeli political party.
He was the second openly gay elected Knesset member, following fellow Meretz lawmaker Uzi Even, who served from to What the party is pitching: The United Arab List is, first and foremost, a socially conservative Islamic party. It also seeks the repeal of the nation-state law, which defined Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and demoted the official status of Arabic. Another key priority is the repeal of a law that drastically increased penalties for illegal Arab construction.
More controversial than their policies, however, is what Abbas and his cohort have said they are willing to do to achieve them. In fact, Abbas has even gone as far as to suggest that he would vote to provide Netanyahu immunity from prosecution as part of a legislative quid pro quo. A dentist from Maghar, a Druze-majority city in central Israel, Abbas entered the Knesset for the first time in Abbas has pledged to pursue a new path in Arab Israeli politics, one that would enable Arab Israelis to be genuinely influential in Israeli decision-making.
His detractors call him unprincipled, shady, and power-hungry. It polls strongly among Bedouins in the south, and has some support among conservative Muslims in central and northern Israel.
The slate offers representatives from both faiths, including a Messianic Jew, David Friedman not the former US ambassador. The party is known for silly pranks, like dressing up to file its registration, but has also championed the use of the internet in democratizing society.
That issue became personal this year, when it nearly missed out on registering for this election because party chairman Ohad Shem-Tov was stuck abroad and authorities rejected a request for him to file over Zoom. The party has run in every Israeli election for the last 15 years, but has yet to come close to raising the Jolly Roger in the Knesset plenum. Most of the wives have never renounced Ambash, a Bratslav ultra-Orthodox Jew.
They still live together, view themselves as his wives and revere him. Despite having nine MKs, it failed to enter the Knesset in the elections. In Hetz was taken over by Tzipi Livni to form the basis of her Hatnuah party. It is running independently this time around under the leadership of Lior Shapira. It calls for tougher restraints of government power to reduce the possibility for public corruption and to enshrine free speech protections in Basic Law.
In the April election, his ran with the far-right liberalist Zehut party, failing to enter the Knesset; he sat out the past two elections. The party, which has run in three previous elections since , is currently headed by tour guide Yaron Regev. Amazingly, the previous record was also held by Meshicha who in the elections won votes — then the lowest ever — with his now-defunct Tradition of the Fathers party. In Streetwise Hebrew for the Times of Israel Community, each month we learn several colloquial Hebrew phrases around a common theme.
These are bite-size audio Hebrew classes that we think you'll really enjoy. This month, we're learning phrases on the topic of strength and power. The party currently holds seven seats in the Knesset. UTJ is an alliance of Ashkenazi haredi political parties. The party is non-Zionist and its principal concern is the protection of the religious status quo in which Orthodox men are exempt from mandatory army service and the Orthodox rabbinate retains control of Israeli religious life.
Formed in , this party represents the interests of Russian-speaking Israelis, a largely secular community that leans to the right on issues of diplomacy and defense policy. The party has sought to expand its base beyond the Russian-speaking community and takes a hard line on Israeli-Palestinian peace and supports land swaps in any eventual peace deal that would deprive many Israeli Arabs of their citizenship. The remaining parties currently seated in the Knesset are small, with six or fewer seats.
But since Israel is a parliamentary democracy that necessitates coalition building to achieve power, small parties can sometimes exercise outsized influence. Religious Zionist : This hard-right Orthodox party opposes territorial concessions to the Palestinians and is led by Bezalel Smotrich, a controversial figure who opposes gay rights and made incendiary statements about stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship. Joint List: Formed from an alliance of several majority-Arab parties, the Joint List supports equal rights for Israeli Arabs , the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Meretz: Formed in the s from a merger of several secular left-wing parties, Meretz occupies the left-most flank of the Jewish Israeli political spectrum, remaining staunchly opposed to the occupation and the settlement enterprise and in favor of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It supports Palestinian statehood, but has focused largely on bread-and-butter issues facing the Arab Israeli community. The Israeli Electoral System. On February 22, former senior military and defense establishment figures wrote an open letter to Gantz calling on him to withdraw from the race—a devastating blow to a former IDF chief of staff. He has since called for a broad center-left coalition to replace Netanyahu.
This union was facilitated by Benjamin Netanyahu in order to ensure that no right-wing, pro-Netanyahu parties fall below the electoral threshold. Likud and Religious Zionism have since signed a vote-sharing agreement.
Otzma Yehudit, however, is poised to be a key supporting player in the government should the pro-Netanyahu bloc emerge victorious, although Netanyahu has promised that Ben Gvir will not receive a ministry. The party has a solid base of support among the Sephardi and Mizrahi Haredi community, as well as a contingency of non-Haredi Mizrahim.
It supports eroding the boundary between religious authority and the secular Israeli state and is staunchly socially conservative. It generally leans right on non-religious issues but has historically been open to territorial concessions to the Palestinians. The party does not take an official position on the conflict. Like its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism, Shas has historically functioned as a kingmaker in Israeli politics by agreeing to sit in a government with whoever will fulfill the narrow interests of its constituency, such as exemption from military service and generous government subsidies for those who choose to study Torah rather than work.
Recently, however, these two parties have closely aligned themselves with Netanyahu and it is unlikely that they would recommend a different party leader for the premiership; indeed, both have pledged not to do so. The two factions, both of which represent Ashkenazi Haredi Jews ultra-Orthodox Jews of Eastern European ancestry , are associated with distinct Haredi rabbinic traditions and sages, but speak with a singular voice within the context of Israeli politics.
The parties have occasionally run on separate lists as well, due to internal disputes on the distribution of Knesset seats, but have run together in the previous few elections. UTJ advocates for many of the same positions as Shas, its Sephardi counterpart, including an erosion of the boundary between religion and state and basing Israeli law on Halacha and general social conservatism. It has previously been open to territorial concessions to the Palestinians.
Like Shas, UTJ played a kingmaker role by agreeing to sit in a government with whoever will maintain the status quo of generous government subsidies and exemption from military service for Haredim. Currently, both parties are closely aligned with Netanyahu and they have promised not to recommend another leader for prime minister. The Joint List is an alliance of Arab Israeli and leftist political parties.
These separate Arab parties formed the Joint List in , after the electoral threshold to enter the Knesset was raised to 3. While the Joint List represents a broad spectrum of ideologies, it generally seeks to advocate for Arab citizens of Israel and supports an end to the occupation via a two-state solution. The separate parties have their own specific policy platforms. In the March elections, the Joint List managed to garner 15 Knesset seats, the most for any Arab party in history, making it the third largest party in the Knesset.
With the anti-Netanyahu holding a slim majority of seats, the Joint List took the important step of recommending Benny Gantz for prime minister in an effort to depose Netanyahu, marking only the second time in Israeli history that an independent Arab party has recommended a Jewish-Zionist candidate. However, key members of Kachol Lavan announced that they would not under any circumstances sit in a government supported by the Joint List, thus foiling any attempt at turning the anti-Netanyahu majority into a governing coalition.
The Joint List also faced criticism for voting against ratifying the normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates, despite widespread support for the deal among Arab citizens of Israel.
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