Israeli voters give big gain to centrists

Netanyahu alliance loses 11 seats, early results show

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman greet their supporters  in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013.  According to exit polls Netanyahu's Likud Party emerged as the largest faction in a hotly contested parliamentary election on Tuesday, positioning the hard-liner to serve a new term as prime minister. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman greet their supporters in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013. According to exit polls Netanyahu's Likud Party emerged as the largest faction in a hotly contested parliamentary election on Tuesday, positioning the hard-liner to serve a new term as prime minister. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged weakened and facing a redrawn political map Tuesday after early results showed a surge for a new centrist party, Yesh Atid, in Israel’s elections, making it a key element of a future coalition.

With 95 percent of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s ticket combining his rightist Likud party with the ultra nationalist Yisrael Beitenu faction was poised to take 31 parliamentary seats, a sharp decline from the combined 42 seats held by the two parties in the outgoing 120-member legislature.

The faction remained the largest in the parliament, but its shrunken size meant that Netanyahu will be more dependent on smaller coalition partners to cobble together a parliamentary majority.

Addressing cheering supporters early today, Netanyahu pledged to work for a broad-based government. Also he said he would show “responsibility in striving for a genuine peace.”

The surprise result was the surge to 19 seats for Yesh Atid, or There is a Future. Its leader, former television news anchor Yair Lapid, based his campaign on a demand to end the exemption of tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory military service so they can pursue religious studies with government stipends.

Lapid’s campaign for equal service and easing the burden on Israel’s struggling middle class resonated with many secular Israelis who pay high taxes and serve in the military. He has also called for a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians.

“The message is that there is a new agenda,” said Ofer Shelah, a Yesh Atid candidate, on Channel Two television.

“Lapid will determine how Netanyahu’s government will look,” said Amit Segal, Channel Two’s political reporter, adding that Netanyahu “will now have to pay a heavy price.”

A Likud official said Netanyahu phoned Lapid after the results and told him, “We have the opportunity to do great things together.”

Lapid and other centrist parties have said they would not join Netanyahu’s team unless the prime minister promises to make a serious push for peace with the Palestinians.

“We have red lines. We won’t cross those red lines, even if it will force us to sit in the opposition,” Yaakov Peri, a former security chief and one of Yesh Atid’s leaders, told Channel Two TV.

The rightist and religious parties that make up Netanyahu’s current coalition combined for 60 seats, according to Israel Radio, equal to the total won by the center, left and Arab parties, pushing the prime minister toward a partnership with Lapid and perhaps some of the groups that had been in the opposition. The left-leaning Labor Party took 15 seats and Jewish Home, a new religious-nationalist party, 11.

“We’ve returned to the center of the political map,” said Jewish Home’s leader, Naftali Bennett, who extended the party’s appeal to secular Israelis. Bennett opposes a Palestinian state and has called for annexation of most of the West Bank.

Meretz, the left-wing propeace party, was to double its three parliament seats, with six, according to early returns. But Kadima, which earned the most seats - 28 - in the last election, had shrunk to two seats. The party collapsed last year after briefly entering Netanyahu’s coalition only to fail in its promise to end draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Some predicted Netanyahu might even fail to form a government.

“Netanyahu’s victory is a Pyrrhic victory, and it is not clear he will be the next prime minister,” said Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi. “Netanyahu will face difficulty in constructing a viable coalition,” Ezrahi said, estimating the life span of the next Israeli government at no more than 18 months.

The parliamentary elections occurred after a lackluster campaign that failed to generate much passion on the streets.

Turnout was reported to be higher than the last election, in 2009. Opinion polls before the voting indicated that Netanyahu’s ticket and allied rightist and religious parties would emerge with a majority in the parliament.

Netanyahu, 63, has been prime minister since March 2009. He previously held the position from June 1996 to July 1999.

At one polling station in Jerusalem, pocketbook issues rather than weighty questions of war and peace seemed to be at the forefront of voters’ minds.

Miriam Engel, a 29-year-old dance teacher, said she had debated up to the last minute among several centrist parties before casting her ballot.

“It’s all shades of gray,” she said after voting. “No one is talking about peace. Social issues are more prominent, but there’s a feeling that nothing will change.”

While Netanyahu focused his campaign on foreign affairs and security, his main challengers concentrated on economic concerns of ordinary Israelis, such as rising housing and food prices and more affordable health care and education. The issues were thrust to the top of the national agenda during a wave of social-justice protests that swept Israel in the summer of 2011.

Erel Margalit, a venture capitalist and first-time candidate who was elected to the parliament as No. 10 on Labor’s list, described the high turnout as a “protest vote” and “a clear demonstration of how many Israelis feel like something needs to be done and something needs to change.”

“It was not a fringe phenomenon - it was a mainstream phenomenon,” he said of the 2011 movement.

Avinoam Rosenbaum, a 27-year-old student, said he had voted for the opposition Labor Party, which campaigned for socioeconomic change. Echoing the general disillusionment with prospects for a peace deal with the Palestinians, Rosenbaum said the time had come to look inward and correct the economic disparities in Israelisociety.

“Peace with whom?” he asked. “There’s no partner. As long as things are frozen we should take advantage of it and do good things internally. With all the talk about security, soon there won’t be anything left to defend because we’re disintegrating as a society.”

Rosenbaum said he was most concerned about growing gaps between rich and poor and exemptions from compulsory military service granted to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The demand for universal national service has become a battle cry of several candidates in the campaign and could figure prominently in negotiations to form the next governing coalition.

Outside a polling place in south Jerusalem, Lisa Barkan, 51, who runs a nongovernmental organization that helps new immigrants, said she had voted for Likud “because I believe in a strong economy.”

“That’s what keeps the state strong, gives people jobs, makes people happy to get up in the morning, because they know they can feed their families, and allows us to absorb immigrants,” she said. “Peace will come when it is ready, no matter what party is in power.”

But hours before the ballots opened, some longtime Likud supporters expressed their frustration with the departing Netanyahu government, saying it had not offered a clear path forward for Israel. One said he would still be voting for Likud in the same way that he remained loyal to his soccer team. Another said he would not support Likud this time but was still undecided aboutwhom to vote for instead.

The protracted impasse in efforts to reach an agreement with the Palestinians made it a virtual nonissue in the campaign and helped boost the popularity of Jewish Home.

Reut Frenkel, a 31-year-old events coordinator who voted for Jewish Home, characterized herself as a skeptic about peace prospects. She said she was attracted to the party because it brought in “new blood” and stands for “values I was brought up on.”

Neta Shami, 35, a dance therapist, said she was planning to vote for a left-leaning party inthe hopes of improving living conditions for Israel’s struggling middle class. She listed “the economy, health and education” as her chief concerns and did not even mention the festering conflict with the Palestinians.

“I’m tired of it already,” she said.

Palestinians viewed the election results grimly, seeing it as entrenching a pro-settlement government.

“Even if Netanyahu brings some center-left parties to his coalition, he will continue building in the settlements, he said that clearly, and that is what we expect him to do,” said Mohammed Shtayeh, an aide to the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Though elections are meant to take place every four years, unstable coalitions resulted in five general elections between 1992 and 2009, plus an additional direct ballot for the post of prime minister. Experts said that voter fatigue partly explained the steady drop in participation over the years, from nearly 80 percent in the 1990s to less than 65 percent in 2009.

Nahum Barnea, one of the country’s most prominent political columnists, wrote in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Tuesday, “One of the reasons for the despondent atmosphere is anxiety about the future. Young people are anxious because of the high price of apartments and the loss of job security; older people are anxious about Israel’s isolation in the world and an economic crisis that might wipe out their savings.

Everyone is anxious about war.”

The pre-election campaigns “failed to provide a calming answer to any of those anxieties,” he added. “At the end of the day, when the results are in, there will still be no answer. The sense will be that the story is over. In fact, it will only be beginning.”

Several commentators saw Tuesday’s vote as an “interim” election, predicting that the new coalition, whatever its makeup, would not be able to withstand the pressing challenges ahead, including a $10 billion budget deficit and the question of whether to launch a military strike against the Iranian nuclear program.

“This is a government that will not be able to make decisions on anything - on the peace process, on equal sharing of the burden or on budgetary matters,” Emmanuel Rosen, a prominent television analyst, said early today on Channel 10. “The next elections are already on the horizon.” Information for this article was contributed by Joel Greenberg of The Washington Post, by Josef Federman of The Associated Press and by Jodi Rudoren, Isabel Kershner, Myra Noveck, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Gabby Sobelman of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/23/2013