Were the recent elections an earthquaking change? An upheaval? A respected publicist’s analysis translated from the Hebrew “Besheva” weekly.

Atty. Elyakim Haetzni, INN

No, there was no earthquake, no upheaval. The left-center bloc cannot form a government nor can it block Netanyahu’s chances of doing so.

And even if President Peres tries his best to avoid it, he will be forced to give Netanyahu, albeit a Netanyahu whose wings have been clipped, the task of forming the next government.

And while a great many lessons will be learned from these election results, in this column, we will limit ourselves to elucidating how Netanyahu brought them upon himself.
Read more…

Nearly half of 19th Knesset seats to be occupied by fresh faces; five former MKs return to parliament

Yaron Druckman http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4336191,00.html

Nearly half of the 19th Knesset seats will be occupied by fresh faces. Coming in all political shades, 47 members will enter parliament for the first time, and five will be re-admitted to after previous stints.

In addition, statistics show that the next Knesset will likely include 26 women and 38 religious representatives – a record number for both groups.

Though the list might change after soldiers’ votes are counted, these are the expected new MKs:

Likud-Beiteinu

Yair Shamir (67) – Former PM Yitzhak Shamir‘s son. Former colonel in the Air Force. Former chairman of the Israel Aerospace Industries.

Read more…

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom”, January 25, 2013, http://bit.ly/Y3fD7w 

The political system 

The January 22, 2013 Israeli election highlighted the urgent need to overhaul Israel’s entire political system, not just the proportional electoral system.  

34 parties participated in the proportional election, and 12 parties (including anti-Israel parties) will be represented in the next unicameral 120 member legislature, the Knesset.  The more fragmented the Knesset, the more difficult it is for the Prime Minister to establish – and to manage – the governing multi-party coalition.  The Israeli political system is replete with mid-size and small-size parties, devoid of any large-size parties.  Therefore, the political system tends to be volatile and unmanageable, lending itself to short-lived governments and early elections.  Read more…

ALL THE MORE REASON TO EMBRACE THE LEVY REPORT

Jerusalem rejects ‘biased’ Human Rights Council finding that West Bank Jewish communities are illegal

TIMES OF ISRAEL January 31, 2013, 2:36 pm 4

JTA — A United Nations investigation into the impact of Jewish West Bank settlements on the Palestinian population said that Israel should immediately begin to withdraw all settlers from the territory.

The report issued Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council based in Geneva said that settlement violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions and that failure to withdraw could lead to a finding of war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
Read more…

By Martin Sherman. JPOST

The election results indicate the Israeli electorate has become dangerously detached from real challenges the nation needs to address.
Netanyahu surveys Syrian border,

Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yacimovich join Netanyahu’s coalition without Bayit Yehudi and the ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu will have no option but to follow the path of Begin, Rabin and Sharon and reach a painful agreement – Eitan Haber, Yediot Aharonot, January 23, 2013

It is still too early to fully assess the ramifications of this week’s election results, or to accurately identify what caused them.
Read more…

By Evelyn Gordon, JINSA

When the Palestinian Authority (PA) obtained UN recognition as a nonmember observer state in November, many Israelis feared the consequences for Israel: After all, PA President Mahmoud Abbas stated openly that he sought recognition primarily “to pursue claims against Israel” in international forums. Those fears may yet prove justified. But so far, the biggest victim of Abbas’s UN bid has been the PA itself.
Read more…

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JERUSALEM POST

WASHINGTON – At John Kerry’s confirmation hearings Thursday to be the next US secretary of state, the Massachusetts senator said he hoped the Israeli elections would help restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

“My prayer is that perhaps this can be a moment where we can renew some kind of effort to get the parties into a discussion, to have a different track than we’ve been on over the course of the last couple of years,” he told Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he is the current chairman.

Kerry said he believed there was a possibility of Israelis and Palestinians reaching an agreement, which he described as “an incredibly important issue” that he would work hard on.
Read more…

Netanyahu, Lapid seek compromise deal to enable Bayit Yehudi, Shas, Livni and Kadima to join government.

By GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the heads of all the Zionist parties in the Knesset over the past two days and invited them to coalition talks on the formation of the widest possible government.

Netanyahu hopes to form a coalition of at least 80 MKs to ensure that none of the parties in the coalition could topple him by leaving, including the 19-MK Yesh Atid faction.
Read more…

It is worth noting that this call for negotiations happens on the eve of coalition negotiations, obviously to affect them. Secondly, Obama expects Israel to get them started regardless of the refusal of the PA to join such talks. Finally Carney said “without preconditions”, a Bibi demand, and he was silent on ’67 lines with swaps. Ted Belman

Yitzhak Benhorin, Reuters

WASHINGTON – The White House on Wednesday renewed its call for a resumption of long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in the wake of Israeli elections in which Prime MinisterBinyamin Netanyahu emerged the winner but with a weaker-than-expected showing for his right-wing bloc. 
Read more…

January 23, 2013, NEW YORK — The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized President Barack Obama for providing this week four new, state-of-the art F-16 warplanes to the extremist, anti-Semitic Islamist Egyptian regime of Mohamed Morsi. The four F-16s are part of a package of military aid to Egypt encompassing 16 F-16s jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks that was concluded in 2010 with the previous Hosni Mubarak regime. The Obama Administration is providing this aid package despite the change of government in Egypt and the viciously anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from which he stems.
Read more…

Schanzer is quite right but let me add. The peace process was not an issue of importance because no government in Israel could change it. So the politicians and the people focussed on other issues like equal service and social justice. On these issues Bibi was sure to loose. He also lost to Bennett, those supporters who cared about the settlement enterprise. Ted Belman

by Jonathan Schanzer, Foreign Policy

TEL AVIV – With all eyes on the expected rise of Naftali Bennett, the poster boy of the settler movement, it was centrist Yair Lapid, a former newscaster, who emerged as the rising star in Israeli politics following Tuesday’s election. In the process, he served up an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow to the chattering classes.

To be fair, Israeli elections are hard to predict. The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren noted that polls are deeply flawed in Israel, and dark-horse candidates often surge unexpectedly. But this election’s wrong-headed guidance, mostly forwarded by analysts in the United States, went beyond the numbers — it was wrapped up in their narrative of where Israel was heading.
Read more…

By Gabriel Scheinmann, THE NATIONAL INTEREST

Following the reaction to Israel’s bevy of construction announcements late last year, one would assume that Israel’s right-wing, settlement-crazed government had, once more, managed to thumb its nose at the world and deepen Israel’s already-perilous pariah position. It had just received international support during Operation Pillar of Defense and the Obama administration’s backing in opposing the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN. Yet Israel not only announced construction in East Jerusalem and the large settlement blocks, but also advanced zoning plans in E-1, a barren, 4.6 square mile area that connects Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.
Read more…