This year’s legislative election was Israel’s fifth in the past four years, following the Knesset\u2019s agreement to dissolve the previous government headed by Yair Lapid. The election took place on November 1, 2022. After polls closed and the results of the election were final, the incoming coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu had 64 out of 120 votes, three more than needed to have a parliamentary majority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Netanyahu\u2019s return to power could lead to many \u201cfundamental\u201d changes in Israel’s society, said Hadas Gold, a writer for CNN. The Israeli Parliament is made up of many parties, each with specific values and concerns, but many have overlapping beliefs. The former prime minister, Yair Lipid, belongs to the Yesh Atid party, which sources such as the Israel Democracy Institute call centrist. Netanyahu\u2019s party, Likud, tends to be more conservative (according to the Israel Democracy Institute). Netanyahu has two options to form a coalition, according to USA Today\u2019s<\/em> Jotam Confino: he could ally with the more right-wing parties or the more liberal parties. A coalition with a right-wing party would likely enable Netanyahu to terminate his ongoing trial, which was one of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich\u2019s campaign promises. To partner with the more liberal parties, Netanyahu would likely require that they also put an end to his trials, but these parties have made no such promises. Therefore, an alliance with the right is looking more and more likely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If Netanyahu chooses to partner with his far-right allies, it will likely lead to a large change in the way the Knesset interacts with Arab people in Israel and around the world. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Bassem Eid, a political analyst and human rights activist, believes, \u201cThere is no doubt this will make the [current] situation [with the] Palestinians much worse.\u201d One potential agent of this change is Itmar Ben-Gvir, a leader of the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit Party, which supports Netanyahu,\u00a0 who is likely to fight for the public Security Minister post (managing the police), according to the Times of Israel<\/em>‘s Amy Spiro. Not too long ago, Ben-Gvir\u2019s supporters chanted \u201cdeath to Arabs\u201d and have since changed it to \u201cdeath to terrorists,\u201d but still with the same hateful underlying meaning. Ben-Gvir himself was convicted in 2007 for inciting anti-Arab racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Looking at Ben-Gvir\u2019s history, he does not have the best track record when it comes to interacting with Arabs in Israel. Otzma Yehudit, Ben-Gvir\u2019s party, is often described as Kahanist, which means they follow the beliefs of the late Meir Kahane, a man who was known for his Violent relationship with Israeli Arabs. Ben-Gvir says he does not agree with all of Kahane\u2019s beliefs, however. For example, unlike Meir Kahane, Ben-Gvir does not believe that all Israeli-Arabs should be deported. Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount earlier this year, the site of several Israeli-Arab conflicts. As Public Security Minister, his duties would include policing and access to the temple mount, stated NPR\u2019s Daniel Estrin. Since Ben-Gvir is far from accepted as a political figure by the Israeli Arabs, his policing of the majority Arab-populated site would lead to increased strain on Israel’s relationship with Arab citizens.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Yoel Smotrich leads a party that has expressed staunch support for Netanyahu, the Religious Zionist party. Smotrich hopes to acquire the position of Defense Minister, though \u201cLikud officials indicate that he may instead be in line for the position of Education Minister,\u201d said Amy Spiro. Whichever position Smotrich ends up with, he and Ben-Gvir have stated that they are a package deal if Netanyahu wants to form a coalition with their parties, according to Spiro. According to David Makovsky of The Washington Institute (TWI), a pro-Israel think tank, if Ben-Gvir becomes Public Security Minister, \u201cthe US is likely to boycott him\u201d because of his anti-Arab beliefs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The far right\u2019s rise to power would likely also affect Israel\u2019s LGBTQ+ community, which in recent years, has been greatly supported by the government, allowing it to take major strides. Israel is not only home to one of the largest annual gay pride parades in the world; they also have given same-sex couples the ability \u201cto jointly adopt and legally access surrogacy,\u201d according to Jotam Confino. A self-proclaimed \u201cproud homophobe,\u201d Smotrich would likely seek to hinder or even reverse this progress, as he compared recognizing the LGBTQ+ community to \u201cdriving through a red light,\u201d reported Confino. However, Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party does in fact support LGBTQ+ rights, so this will likely be a point of tension between Likud and The Religious Zionist Party if they form a coalition. With Smotrich looking more and more likely to acquire the position of Minister of Education, only time will tell if his homophobic beliefs will affect Israel\u2019s education system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Following Netanyahu\u2019s election, Israel is coming closer and closer to drastic change. As he chooses who to align himself with, Netanyahu\u2019s government, if successfully formed, will have many important decisions to make and priorities to assess when it comes to the range of ideologies within the coalition, as well as their possible effects on human rights within the country and its relations with its allies. It is but a matter of time until it is clear if the drastic change in this government is for the better or worse of Israel. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Effects of PM Netanyahu and the Right Wing\u2019s Rise to Power This year’s legislative election was Israel’s fifth in the past four years, following…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[59,57,54,56,58,55],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aja-persepctive","tag-election","tag-israel","tag-october-7th","tag-politics","tag-war","entry","rows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2511,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/2511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}