Israelis go to the polls on March 23 in the fourth election since April 2019. Despite a general mood of public weariness, these elections promise to be something other than another stale rerun. A change, indeed, appears to be underway, which may result in a transfer of power. For the first time in Israeli electoral history, the main challengers to a Likud party prime minister’s continued reign will come from further to the right—not from the center or left.
While all polls have the centrist Yesh Atid list running second to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, a Feb. 24 statement by former Defense Minister Naftali Bennett that his right-religious Yamina party would not sit in a government with Yesh Atid’s leader Yair Lapid as prime minister means that the latter will have difficulty forming a coalition. The latest polls suggest that Netanyahu and his natural allies in the religious parties, plus the United Arab List, and excluding Yamina are set to achieve a total of approximately 51 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
