While Israel's legislative election occurred over 5,000 miles away on Tuesday, former presidential advisor on Middle Eastern and North African affairs Steve Simon brought the election and its implications to Hanover. The election installed a parliament that lacks a clear majority, potentially signalling a bleak future for Israeli politics, Simon said in a lecture Wednesday.
The rise of two formerly overshadowed parties, the far-right Jewish Home party and the centrist Yesh Atid party, introduced new dynamics to Israeli politics, Simon said. Although the Knesset, Israel's legislature, was formerly dominated by the right-leaning Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud party lost several seats in the most recent election. The conservative party will still control a majority of seats, but it will have to share power with a more diverse parliament.
Security issues that once dominated Israeli politics, such as the Iranian nuclear threat, the implications of Egypt's political transformation and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, were not discussed in the lead-up to the election, Simon said.
"Issues that we thought were hugely important never came up in the campaign," he said.
The campaigns instead focused on "bread and butter issues" such as income equality, housing prices and household goods. Even the Labor party, which was most expected to address security issues, "simply walked away from them," Simon said.
The centrist Yesh Atid party, which received the second-most votes, also prioritized domestic issues, like reducing privileges for the ultra-orthodox Jewish population, Simon said.
The relationship between the United States and Israel will remain strong, he predicted. Despite recent clashes between the two allies regarding new settlements on the West Bank, the relationship is "deep and undivided," he said.
The legislative campaigns' shift in focus mirrors Israel's changing perspective about its position in the world, Simon said. He specifically pointed to the pessimistic attitudes of Israeli youth regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Here's the catch-22: 67 percent of Jewish Israelis don't see what Israel does as relevant to the two-state solution outcome," Simon said. "There's a self-conception of Israel as a completely helpless actor."
He said that the same percentage responded that they saw no chance of progress in the future.
"Israel's passiveness will negatively alter its prospects for success," he added.
This negative perspective, along with the diverse composition of the newly-elected Knesset, has negatively affected the political elite, according to Simon. Now, the consensus among the Israeli policymaking elite is to "hunker down" and avoid enacting dramatic policies.
Simon predicts that Netanyahu's government will not last more than a few years.
College Rabbi Edward Boraz attended the lecture and said he values Israel, particularly as a Jewish leader. He is interested in seeing how Israel's change will "manifest in the following years of this new coalition," he said.
Jiyoung Sohn '14, an exchange student from Seoul, Korea, said that the most intriguing part of the lecture was Simon's data about the Israeli worldview.
"It was interesting to learn more about the internal dynamics," she said. "But then again, like he said, we will never know what will happen."
The lecture, "Interpreting the Results of Israel's Elections," was held in Haldeman and hosted by the Dickey Center for International Understanding.
