Is Bibi done?

It will take weeks if not months to find out.  Bibi first one out?  Trump next?   


No results yet? I thought it would be announced this morning. Heard he was losing last night.


It’s complicated!  Neither can form a coalition no matter what the final outcome.  Looks like Bibi is a seat shy of his opponent.  Now the horse trading begins.  But there’s real hope that he’ll be out. 


jeffl said:

It’s complicated!  Neither can form a coalition no matter what the final outcome.  Looks like Bibi is a seat shy of his opponent.  Now the horse trading begins.  But there’s real hope that he’ll be out. 

 Hoping the new PM will be Trump resistant. Happy to have great relations with Israel but not looking for another Trump bestie.

So if Bibi is out and Boris Johnson gets floated out on the ice Trump's only Valentines will be coming from "the Kingdom", Putin and perhaps Kim. Poor little rich boy.


61 seats are required for a majority. With 95% of the votes counted, theses are the results: 

Blue and White (Benny Gantz's party) - 33 seats 

Likud - 32 

Arab Joint List - 12 

Shas (Ultra-orthodox Sephardic and Mizrahi party) - 9

Yisrael Beiteinu (Avidgor Lieberman's party, right- wing secular) - 8

United Torah Judaism - (Ultra-orthodox) - 8 

Yamina (far right, led by Ayelet Shaked) - 7 

Labor-Gesher - 6 

Democratic Camp - 5 

Likud's natural right- wing allies are Shas, UTJ and Yamina, giving it 55 seats, 6 seats shy of the required 61. 

Lieberman is the kingmaker - he has proposed a national unity government of Likud and  Blue and White. Gantz has ruled out sitting with a Netanyahu-led Likud.  But that would only provide a narrow margin if three members defected. Thus, a national unity government would need Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu  provide a comfortable margin and Lieberman won't join if  Netanyahu is PM. Lieberman was the person responsible for the second election since he refused to join Likud in the previous election. These things usually take weeks in Israel to be decided and there is no reason to think this will be any different. 


cramer said:

61 seats are required for a majority. With 95% of the votes counted, theses are the results: 

Blue and White (Benny Gantz's party) - 33 seats 

Likud - 32 

Arab Joint List - 12 

Shas (Ultra-orthodox Sephardic and Mizrahi party) - 9

Yisrael Beiteinu (Avidgor Lieberman's party, right- wing secular) - 8

United Torah Judaism - (Ultra-orthodox) - 8 

Yamina (far right, led by Ayelet Shaked) - 7 

Labor-Gesher - 6 

Democratic Camp - 5 

Likud's natural right- wing allies are Shas, UTJ and Yamina, giving it 55 seats, 6 seats shy of the required 61. 

Lieberman is the kingmaker - he has proposed a national unity government of Likud and  Blue and White. Gantz has ruled out sitting with a Netanyahu-led Likud.  But that would only provide a narrow margin if three members defected. Thus, a national unity government would need Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu  provide a comfortable margin and Lieberman won't join if  Netanyahu is PM. Lieberman was the person responsible for the second election since he refused to join Likud in the previous election. These things usually take weeks in Israel to be decided and there is no reason to think this will be any different. 

 Have there always been this many parties? Each with its own leader? Interesting and yes complicated.


Morganna said:

So if Bibi is out and Boris Johnson gets floated out on the ice Trump's only Valentines will be coming from "the Kingdom", Putin and perhaps Kim. Poor little rich boy.


 We can tell one story where Netanyahu in Israel, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary, and the Law and Justice party in Poland have been part of a rising tide of illiberal democracy, culminating in Trump and, in a way, Brexit. And if Netanyahu is really defeated, maybe we can start to see the beginning of a story where the tide is now going the other way. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'd like to think it might be.


Morganna said:

Morganna said:

cramer said:

61 seats are required for a majority. With 95% of the votes counted, theses are the results: 

Blue and White (Benny Gantz's party) - 33 seats 

Likud - 32 

Arab Joint List - 12 

Shas (Ultra-orthodox Sephardic and Mizrahi party) - 9

Yisrael Beiteinu(Avidgor Lieberman's party, right- wing secular) - 8

United Torah Judaism - (Ultra-orthodox) - 8 

Yamina (far right, led by Ayelet Shaked) - 7 

Labor-Gesher - 6 

Democratic Camp - 5 

Likud's natural right- wing allies are Shas, UTJ and Yamina, giving it 55 seats, 6 seats shy of the required 61. 

Lieberman is the kingmaker - he has proposed a national unity government of Likud and  Blue and White. Gantz has ruled out sitting with a Netanyahu-led Likud.  But that would only provide a narrow margin if three members defected. Thus, a national unity government would need Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu  provide a comfortable margin and Lieberman won't join if  Netanyahu is PM. Lieberman was the person responsible for the second election since he refused to join Likud in the previous election. These things usually take weeks in Israel to be decided and there is no reason to think this will be any different. 

 Have there always been this many parties? Each with its own leader? Interesting and yes complicated.

 Israel has an extreme form of proportional representation, which grants representation in the Knesset to any party that clears a 3.25% threshold in general elections. This encourages the formation of a large number of political parties, each of which has their own platform and goals. Israeli society is very diverse and political parties are formed along ideological, religious and ethnic fault lines. The result is that major parties can never obtain the required 61 votes and have to make deals with the smaller parties to form a coalition. I'll refer you to the explantion in Wikipedia, which is a little outdated, but is a good explanation.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Israel


Looks like he's done.

Good Riddance.


drummerboy said:

Looks like he's done.

Good Riddance.

 Woohoooooo!


ridski said:

Don't break out the Manischewitz just yet...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/joint-list-members-reject-benny-gantz-endorsement-190923105454745.html 

 The Joint List is an alliance of the four dominant Arab-dominated political parties in Israel: Balad, Hadash, Ta'al and the  United Arab List. These four parties formed an alliance a few years ago in order to consolidate their vote so as to get over the 3.25% threshold required to win a seat in the Knesset. The Joint List won 13 seats and Balad has 3 of those seats. Balad won't endorse Gantz, so there are 10 seats which count towards an endorsement of Gantz. Gantz has 54 seats to Neatanyahu's 55 sets, so the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, will probably give Netanyahu the first crack at forming a coalition of 61. Rivlin has made it clear that he wants a unity government. Now the fun begins. 

eta - Neither Likud or Blue and White want to be first in trying to form a coalition, since the first attempt will probably fail to get the required 61 votes. They both would prefer to be second, figuring there is a better chance. What Rivlin wants to avoid by all means necessary is to avoid a third election, including the possibility that there is some kind of sharing arrangement between Gantz and Netanyahu. This is predicated on Netanyahu not being indicted before the unity government is formed. 


ridski said:

Don't break out the Manischewitz just yet...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/joint-list-members-reject-benny-gantz-endorsement-190923105454745.html 

 yeah you're right. I misread the headline and thought it was a done deal.


If that MFer survives this I will have no hope.  


jeffl said:

If that MFer survives this I will have no hope.  

I would not count him out just yet. He is in the same position as Trump, if he leaves office he will most likely go to jail. That's a powerful motivation to figure something out.



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