The fifth election in Israel in just three and a half years, with record voter turnout, has finally made stable conditions possible. Benjamin Netanyahu emerged as the winner, having perfectly orchestrated his national-religious bloc to secure a clear majority of 64 seats.
The political stalemate between the blocs has not changed. However, with two parties from the left narrowly failing to clear the 3.25% threshold, the seat distribution in the next Knesset is now considerably more pronounced than the distribution of votes at the ballot box.
Netanyahu and his Herculean tasks
With the largest mandate of the national-religious bloc in the last 20 years, Netanyahu now faces truly Herculean tasks: In foreign policy, a return to a "policy of strength" towards Iran and its terrorist allies Hezbollah and Hamas is both expected and overdue. Domestically, a struggle between the judiciary on the one hand and the legislative and executive branches on the other is imminent. The powers of the judiciary in Israel are so unusual and far-reaching that its activist and left-liberal politicization has recently severely undermined the balance of power between democratic branches. Without normalizing the power of the democratically illegitimate Supreme Court justices, efforts to curb crime in the Arab sector, the increasing terrorism by Palestinians, and their EU-funded, illegal settlement construction in Judea and Samaria will be thwarted by their veto and, despite being urgently needed and politically desired, will be impossible.
This article first appeared on the website of the Evangelical news agency IDEA.
