THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 N Anight, estimates based on unoffi-
cial counts showed Mr. Netanya-
hu’s coalition with 56 seats, 5
short of the 61-seat majority, and
Mr. Gantz’s center-left bloc with
the same total, counting Arab
support. Mr. Liberman was re-
ported to have won 8 seats. Offi-
cial results were still incomplete.
Israel now faces an uncertain
period of brinkmanship and
hardball negotiating in which the
possible scenarios are too nu-
merous to list and the outcome
impossible to handicap.
“Right now there are about 428
possible scenarios,” quipped
Abraham Diskin, a veteran politi-
cal scientist.
Mr. Netanyahu still cannot be
counted out. Mr. Gantz still lacks
a surefire path to replace him.
But it appeared increasingly
likely that the way forward
would involve some form of unity
government comprising both
their parties, the right-wing
Likud and the centrist Blue and
White.
“People realize on some basic
issues there is deep division in
the country,” said Shlomo
Avineri, a veteran political scien-
tist at Hebrew University. “But
there’s a feeling one has to over-
come this kind of discourse.
Everyone realizes there will be
disagreements. But this result
shows discomfort with the dele-
gitimization of half of Israel.”
Mr. Netanyahu was still scram-
bling Wednesday to salvage his
coalition.
He met late with his reliable
allies from the hard right and
ultra-Orthodox camps. They
pledged to stick together in
coalition negotiations.
In a sign of the trouble he is in,
he canceled his planned appear-
ance next week at the United
Nations General Assembly in
New York, citing “political devel-
opments.”
And at a party meeting
Wednesday evening, he report-
edly urged Likud ministers to
maintain campaign-season disci-
pline in case another vote be-
comes necessary. After failing to
assemble a majority after the
last election, in April, Mr. Netan-
yahu dissolved Parliament to
prevent Mr. Gantz from getting
the chance to form a coalition,
triggering the election on Tues-
day.
Just the idea that he would
consider putting Israel through a
third election provoked outcries.
For the first time in its history,
Israel has now been on a cam-
paign footing for nearly a year,
which might be acceptable in
Italy or Spain but is not in a
country with enemies across
most of its borders and the threat
of war perennially around the
corner, said Shimrit Meir, a col-
umnist for Yediot Ahronot.
“I think it all comes down to
responsibility,” she said. “Can
you really drag the country to its
third elections in a few months?
It is scary, really.”
President Reuven Rivlin, who
has the authority to choose
which candidate has the opportu-
nity to form a coalition, vowed to
do all he could to avoid a third
election.
The election was also a turning
point for the country’s Arab
minority, whose strong showing
appears to have driven its repre-
sentation in Parliament up to 12
seats, from 10, making the Arab
vote a factor in depriving Mr.
Netanyahu of a majority.
Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to
demonize and intimidate Arab
voters seem to have backfired,
while Mr. Gantz and other candi-
dates who treated Arab citizens
as citizens, deserving of respect
and representation, have gained
an ally. Mr. Gantz, unlike most
major-party candidates in recent
years, avidly courted Arab citi-
zens’ support and promised to
crack down on crime and build
housing and hospitals in their
communities.
Ayman Odeh, leader of the
predominantly Arab Joint List,
has said he would consider rec-
ommending to the president that
Mr. Gantz be asked to form agovernment.
The last time Arab leaders
recommended a prime minister
was in 1992, on behalf of former
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
who won another term. Mr. Ne-
tanyahu, then beginning his
political career, used that fact to
sow distrust of Mr. Rabin among
right-wing Jews, said Yohanan
Plesner, president of the nonpar-
tisan Israel Democracy Institute.
“Ever since, there was a
project, very much led by Mr.
Netanyahu himself, to delegit-
imize Arab representatives as
political partners,” he said. “That
project was successful. But we’re
now beginning to see a sort of
change of direction on that front.”
The Arab Joint List is unlikely
to be part of a governing coali-
tion. In a Facebook post on
Wednesday, Mr. Liberman said
he would never sit in a govern-ment with the Arab parties, “not
in this universe and not in a
parallel universe.”
But the Arab parties could
support a centrist government
from the outside.
Mr. Gantz spoke by telephone
with Ayman Odeh on Wednesday,
and the two made plans to meet.
Mr. Odeh said he hoped to be-
come the first Arab to serve as
opposition leader in Parliament.
The election also seemed all
but certain to delay the long-
promised Trump administration
peace plan.
Before the election, Mr. Netan-
yahu had assured voters that
such a plan was coming within
days, arguing that only he, by
virtue of his close relationship
with President Trump, would be
able to negotiate a deal with the
Palestinians that would ad-
equately protect Israel’s stra-
tegic interests.
But afterward, former Ameri-
can diplomats said that the elec-
tion’s murky outcome meant that
a peace plan had no chance of
gaining traction in Jerusalem, let
alone in Ramallah, where the
Palestinians are sure to reject it.
“It’s out of the question,” said
Daniel B. Shapiro, the United
States ambassador to Israel
under the Obama administration
and now a national-security
analyst in Tel Aviv. “Gantz can
just say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Presi-
dent, I’ll get back to you; I look
forward to consulting with ourAmerican friends, but this is not
the time.’ ”
An administration official said
Wednesday that the plan would
be released “when the timing is
right.”
Israel’s democratic institutions
appeared to gain a reprieve in
Tuesday’s voting.
Mr. Netanyahu allowed watch-
dog agencies to go without
strong, independent leadership.
The right-wing coalition he was
expecting to return to govern-ment had promised to enact
sharp changes to the balance of
power, giving far more to law-
makers in Parliament while
weakening the judiciary and
other rule-of-law institutions,
said Mr. Plesner of the Israel
Democracy Institute.
“That package is now off the
table,” he said. “Which makes me
very happy.”
Finally, the battle over the role
of religion that overshadowed
the campaign appears to have
been won by the secular side but
has not gone away.
Mr. Liberman made statesupport of ultra-Orthodox Juda-
ism a campaign issue when he
refused to compromise with Mr.
Netanyahu’s religious coalition
partners in the last election,
depriving Mr. Netanyahu of a
majority.
Mr. Liberman insisted
Wednesday that he would not
join a right-wing government
that depended on ultra-Orthodox
support, as has Mr. Gantz.
A government without ultra-
Orthodox religious parties, for
the first time since 2015, could
enact a civil marriage law or
ease Sabbath restrictions on
public transportation in less
religious areas.
It could also herald an amelio-
ration of the rift between Israel
and the generally more liberal
Jewish diaspora in the West, and
particularly in North America.
Mr. Netanyahu’s capitulation to
his ultra-Orthodox coalition
partners on matters like conver-
sion and pluralism had brought
the relationship almost to a
breaking point.
Still, the path to unity is mined
with discord and the makeup of
the next government is far from
certain.
Mr. Netanyahu may not have
won Tuesday’s election, said
Ayelet Frish, a strategic consult-
ant who used to work for Presi-
dent Shimon Peres, but he has
not yet lost it, either.
“Israel,” she said, “can end up
in limbo.”NEWS ANALYSISAfter a Divisive Israeli Election, Calls for Unity in Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, above, sought to drive wedges through the electorate. Left,
Benny Gantz, a former army chief, has advocated a broad coalition that governs from the center.ABIR SULTAN/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCKATEF SAFADI/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCKFrom Page AWith no clear
majority, the hardball
negotiations begin.
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