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Photo: Gil Yohanan
Lapid, Herzog and Livni. 'Focusing on social-economic issue is a certain recipe for losing election'
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Sever Plocker

Binational state is this election's critical issue

Op-ed: Instead of an anti-Bibi front, centrist and leftist parties should create a front focusing on saving the Jewish state from a violent future.

What will the election campaign – which was unofficially launched last week – focus on? The way things look now, the voters' attention will be split between two camps with two points of focus: The rightist side will focus on diplomatic, security and national issues, and the centrist-leftist side will focus on society, economy and Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

 

If this will indeed be the division of labor in the camps' election campaigns, I believe the right will score a huge victory and establish the next government on its own.

 

The centrist and leftist parties' chance of gaining strength in the upcoming elections and turning into a bloc capable of creating a stable coalition depends on their decision to focus on the exact same issues the right has appropriated: Diplomacy, security, nationality.

 

There is proof of that from Israel's political history: Yitzhak Rabin led the Labor Party to a victory based on a security-political platform. Ehud Barak won elections in which he promised to pull the IDF out of Lebanon. And although Israel's social-economic situation was much worse those years than it is today, the Labor Party mentioned it in its successful election campaigns as one issue out of many, leaving all the economic populism to the Likud.

 

The largest centrist party in the past few decades, Kadima, won the 2006 elections thanks to the disengagement from Gaza and not because it implemented the (hateful) recommendations of the Bachar Committee on reforms in the capital market. It maintained some of its strength in the following elections because it put the right emphasis, as far as it was concerned, on "foreign and security affairs" in the wider sense of the word.

 

The parliamentary power of the centrist and leftist parties, on the other hand, almost always grows weaker when they launch election campaigns with a social-economic focus and consciously avoid dealing with the gloomy diplomatic-security horizon, leaving the national future to the right-wing camp.

 

Social protest of 2011. 'A diplomatic-security initiative comes before a social-economic initiative. Without it, the gap between Israel and developed Western countries in the standard of living will grow wider' (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
Social protest of 2011. 'A diplomatic-security initiative comes before a social-economic initiative. Without it, the gap between Israel and developed Western countries in the standard of living will grow wider' (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

 

The 2013 elections were held some time after the social protest, and the centrist and left-wing camps focused on it. Nonetheless, the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu-Bayit Yehudi bloc scored an impressive victory in those elections. The centrist block disintegrated into three parties, only one of which – Yesh Atid – was related to the protest.

 

We are seeing here a failure of strategy and tactics, of reality and an agenda. Strategically, the left and center should tell the voters the truth: Apart from the Arab-Muslim and Jewish-haredi communities, the economic life in Israel is relatively good. It's true that it can be improved and it's true that key public systems are outrageously under-budgeted, but the anticipated changes will not take place without a diplomatic move which will pave the way to a deep change in the list of priorities.

 

A diplomatic-security initiative comes before a social-economic initiative, and without it, the gap between Israel and developed Western countries in the standard of living, in the level of public services and in the productivity rate will grow wider.

 

Tactically, the most brilliant move an opposition party can make in an election campaign is to take over the rival ruling party's agenda. That is definitely true in Israel: I doubt the right-wing parties have a convincing answer to the question "what next" when it comes to the foreign, security and nationality policy. On the other hand, they do have plenty of programs for economic and social reforms.

 

The Israelis will not vote in masses for the leftist and centrist parties if they compete with the populist right in making promises to reduce the "cost of living" and housing prices. But they do a chance to convince the voters that their way is the right one if their election campaign focuses on a serious warning and intimidation – yes, intimidation – against a violent binational state filled with terror attacks, which will be isolated by the world. Because this is the critical choice of 2015, and there is no other.

 

The centrist and leftist parties should not be creating an anti-Bibi front, but rather a front to save the Jewish state. It's very unfortunate that these parties' leaders have already begun (again) talking about "empty fridges" and "a collapsing middle class" and Netanyahu being "out of touch." This is a certain recipe for not winning the elections.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.08.14, 00:07
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