Solution Nation 
Alex Traiman
The Jewish News Syndicate
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This extremely thorough and insightful podcast discusses Israel’s recent elections and presumptive incoming coalition government. Alex Traiman of the Jewish News Syndicate provides an overview of the composition of Israel’s ballots and Israel’s voting procedures.
This podcast also provides a rare opportunity to learn about the composition of Israel’s Supreme Court, its interaction with Israel’s Knesset (parliament) and proposed reforms. Finally, the session covers Israel’s agreement with Lebanon for extracting natural gas from the nearby Mediterranean Ocean.
Among the questions answered by this podcast include:
- How much time does the political party with the most seats have to form a new government? What happens if a new government is not formed within that deadline?
- Which political parties are likely to form a coalition government with Likud? Which portfolios will such political parties be responsible for?
- In what ways is the Biden administration meddling in Israel’s internal affairs?
- How are Israeli elections administered? How much elasticity is there in voting in Israeli elections in terms of time and place?
- How are Israeli Supreme Court Justices selected?
- To what extent can the Israeli Supreme Court override legislation? To what extent can the Supreme Court require the Knesset to promulgate legislation?
- To what extent can NGOs put cases before the Israeli Supreme Court? To what extent does the Israeli Supreme Court look to foreign precedent?
- What is the history and likely economic and political consequences of Israel’s new agreement for natural gas production with Lebanon?
This podcast also provides a rare opportunity to learn about the composition of Israel’s Supreme Court, its interaction with Israel’s Knesset (parliament) and proposed reforms. Finally, the session covers Israel’s agreement with Lebanon for extracting natural gas from the nearby Mediterranean Ocean.
Among the questions answered by this podcast include:
How much time does the political party with the most seats have to form a new government? What happens if a new government is not formed within that deadline?
Which political parties are likely to form a coalition government with Likud? Which portfolios will such political parties be responsible for?
In what ways is the Biden administration meddling in Israel’s internal affairs?
How are Israeli elections administered? How much elasticity is there in voting in Israeli elections in terms of time and place?
How are Israeli Supreme Court Justices selected?
To what extent can the Israeli Supreme Court override legislation? To what extent can the Supreme Court require the Knesset to promulgate legislation?
To what extent can NGOs put cases before the Israeli Supreme Court? To what extent does the Israeli Supreme Court look to foreign precedent?
What is the history and likely economic and political consequences of Israel’s new agreement for natural gas production with Lebanon?
Alex Traiman, CEO & Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The Jewish News Syndicate
The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) is the fastest-growing news agency covering Israel and the Jewish world. JNS provides briefs, news, features, opinions and analysis to as many as 100 print newspapers and digital publications on a daily basis.
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Speaker 1 04:37
So basically it’s going to be a right wing and religious friendly government with the Likud being the most secular slash traditional party in the alignment the two what are often referred to as Ultra Orthodox parties, the Ashkenazi religious party called United Torah Judaism. As well as the Sephardic Jewish party called Shas, those are two of the major partners and then also the Religious Zionist Party which is a nationalist religious party. The difference between those parties typically is that the would call the Orthodox parties their constituents generally don’t serve in the army. Religious Zionists are active participants in the army. That should be noted that. The left is hysterical in Israel over the election loss and the fact that Netanyahu is returning back into the Prime Minister’s seat. And all the more so that he’s not forming a government that is a centrist government, but rather that he’s forming a government with his natural and ideologically aligned right wing partners. And so they are referring to the rule design is to have been in government, you know, many times and over the last many decades are referring to them as far right. Extremist and but these are our parties that are well known to the Israeli electorate and most Israelis are not really buying that spin and they just know this is these are the religious nationalists and they’re the ones that are forming the government together with Netanyahu.
Speaker 2 06:22
So which portfolios do some of the other parties wish to take in the coalition government?
Speaker 1 06:29
Right, I mean this is the there’s there’ll be about 3030 portfolios. Give or take you know it’s a it’s a kind of bloated cabinet. So some of the major portfolios will remain inside the liquid that will most likely include the defense portfolio which is probably the most important portfolio and also very important for Israel’s relations with the United States which are based on the release very strong security and defense alliance between the two allies also acute will keep the Foreign Ministry. But other big ministries other we could also probably keep the Justice Ministry, the Environment Industry Ministry and several others. Some of the big ones that will go to the coalition partners include the Finance Ministry which will go to religious Zionist head but sell Smotrich, the Public Security Ministry which is in charge of the police, which will go to also to religious nationalists that Itamar Ben Javier, who was probably the biggest story. Of this election cycle. And you’ll see Aria Derry, the head of the Shas party, become the interior minister, and the head of the United Torah Judaism party will take the housing and Construction ministry. But there are several other of the minor industry, minor ministries which will be given out to the to the various parties, you know.
Speaker 2 07:57
So if the different parties take the portfolios that you expect you think life in Israel will change where the Orthodox parties clamp down on Shabbat and things like that let furlough limit travel on the Shabbat or what will life change very much depending on who takes maybe the interior portfolio.
Speaker 1 08:22
No, I don’t think life is going to change dramatically here in Israel. And I don’t think Israelis perceive that their lives are going to change dramatically. I know that you might be seeing a lot bandied about in the press about the end of democracy. Most Israelis don’t think this is the end of democracy. Quite the opposite. I mean, this was a democratic result. There’s not anybody that’s really challenging the democratic results of this election. The majority of Israelis actually voted for this government. It was there’s no coup. Going on over here and again these the members of these parties of all sad and governments, you know for many years. And when they get into those offices they deal with those offices responsibly. Now we’ll do there be differences in policies? Sure i mean if you look at the recent change government that was led by Naftali Bennett, Europia brought many members of Israel’s left into the seats of important ministries. And what you saw is that, for example, in the environmental industry, in ministry rather they advanced a lot of the climate change agenda, you know, that’s being pushed by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. You saw in the energy ministry that they actually cancelled or delayed expiration projects for natural gas off the coast. You saw the health minister was the head of the far left merits party, you know, instituting changes to allow the National Health baskets to be paying for gender. Transition surgeries, you know, so it was actually the many changes were made when the left wing got into office. I think that you know, the right wing parties will keep the truth many of the traditions that have been in place in Israel in place for a long time such that I don’t think that most Israelis perceive that their life is going to change very much.
Speaker 2 10:20
Ok. Just as far as the elections, you mentioned that the elections were not contested that’s good to hear. Were the elections, do they take place strictly on one day or when were there any mail in ballots or extended time to vote?
Speaker 1 10:37
Right so there’s no such thing as mail in ballots in Israel. You have the lowest tech possible election. And I think for a long time in Israel we thought, wow, how could this startup nation have such a low tech? Election and you see if you look at what’s going on in the United States right now and the way you know people question election results and the counting of ballots in the mail in ballots and the systems you know are very old fashioned system seems to be a good system. So what happens on Election Day is first of all each individual gets assigned to specific polling station that they must vote at. You cannot vote at any polling station you want you have a specific one that you’re assigned to in your neighborhood. You must bring your identification, your national identification, to the voting booth. You cannot vote if you do not show an identification. Your identification is checked off by multiple people in the polling station that are representatives of various parties such that there are multiple eyes and representatives of various parties in every single voting station. They manually check off your name on a list and they cross reference that. Did you get number XXXX this person? Yes OK, good, they check it off. They take your identification. While they’re holding your identification, they give you an envelope. You take your envelope, you go behind the little cardboard barrier inside. Behind that barrier are the call letters of the parties, and there’s about 35 parties that were vying to get into the Knesset. You select one party that you want to cast your vote for. You put that piece of paper inside the envelope. You seal it. You come outside of the barrier. You put the envelope in the box in front of the witnesses. Ok, they can’t see who you voted for. Your envelopes already sealed. You put it in the box, then they give you back your identification, then you leave. Now polls close at ten PM from ten PM every voting station with those witnesses there start manually counting ballots. And they’re counting on multiple lists and everybody’s cross referencing, you know. Ok, I got one for this party. I got one for this party. It takes until them at ten PM actually, you get the first indications from the media. Because the media conducts exit polls and they announce their exit polls at ten PM the second that the polls close and those are your first indications. But those are not final results by any stretch. And the way you have this proportional counting of votes where you have 120 seats out of 100 % of votes. So votes can shift. So you get a you get an initial idea of where the election is holding but the elections are close and it takes. About 24 you takes until the morning to get through about 5060 % of the votes and that’s when you get a pretty good indication of really who’s won or lost the election and then it takes another even an additional 24 hours. So I think it takes like really between 36 and 48 hours to get. 100 % complete results from the election, and then those hundred and twenty seats are divided according to the number of votes that each party got. And because you can be in between, you know there’s a whole system for your rounding up and down accordingly, and that’s how you figure out how many canescent members from each party are in.
Speaker 2 14:11
During the last elections was the only thing that was voted on was the party in the United States. You know when you go to vote there’s other issues on the ballot, other positions, Mayor, City Council, school board, things like that. You know how is that taken care of and are there any accommodations for people that are not mobile, the elderly or the infirm or people that are outside of Israel during Election Day right so there’s a lot of questions. They’re so in terms of making accommodations. I they do try to make a hand handicapped accessible. You know, stations in general, you do have to actually show up at a station. The only absentee ballots that are permitted in Israel are for diplomats abroad and representatives of the State of Israel, who by their nature of their job that the state has sent them. Abroad, they’re allowed to vote. It’s something like between maybe one and 2000 people, Israeli citizens who are abroad, living in the United States or elsewhere, cannot vote unless they actually come to Israel to vote on that day and show up at their polling station. There’s no mail in ballots, there’s no real absentee ballots. The only exception to the rule is actually soldiers. Soldiers are permitted to vote on their base, and so it actually takes the this is called like the double balloting. Because they actually are permitted to vote on their base as well as at the polling station. So for each ballot that gets counted at an Army base, they have to do a double check to make sure that they didn’t also vote at their at their. Polling station, the local polling station.
Speaker 2 15:59
Ok. And then like other candidates, other offices are those are those elections?
Speaker 1 16:04
Held at different times. Few questions there. So the only thing that you do is you vote for the party that you want to represent you in the Knesset. So you don’t vote for your directly for your representatives, you vote for a party slate, and you don’t even see the names of the people that are on the slate in. And each party has its own methodology for deciding who its canescent member list is consist of. So for example, Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Labour Party and maybe one or two others have a primary among their members to decide who will be the parliamentarians representing them on the list. Other parties including yet you’re appreciation tea party, the those Knesset slates are handpicked by the party leader, which means that those Canessa members that get in, you know, basically have a constituency of 1. Because the only person that they really need to represent or please in their in their position is the head of the party because of the head of the party doesn’t like them. And the next election they’ll get booted off of the list. So you don’t pick your representatives, you pick the parties. And then after the parties get counted, it’s the parliamentarians themselves who actually select the Prime Minister. You don’t vote for the Prime Minister, nobody cast the vote for Netanyahu or your OP or any other individual. You pick the party and then the parties are the ones who select the Prime Minister. So in the last government what you had was the parliamentarians. Basically colluded to prevent Netanyahu from becoming the Prime Minister. So even though his party had 30 seats and the second largest party had only 17 seats, which is an almost landslide gap between the number one and the number two parties, Netanyahu, his block of right wing partners only got 59 seats together and as such all the other parties basically colluded to create a blocking coalition. And they actually wound up putting enough tally Bennett as the as the initial head of that coalition as the Prime Minister, even though he had only received seven seats out of 120 only 5 % of the of the electoral vote. But the parliamentarians basically selected that he should be the Prime Minister in order to prevent Netanyahu from forming a coalition.
Speaker 2 18:29
So what do you think the relationship will be like between the Biden administration and the presumptive new Israeli government?
Speaker 1 18:37
Well there’s no doubt that the Biden administration preferred that you have your yet your lapide would have emerged as the Prime Minister it didn’t happen in fact the Democrats for years and Netanyahu writes about this in his book and discuss this recently in an interview with me you know Democrats and presidents including Clinton and Obama had. Often sent over not only their election consultants, but even in the case of Obama, designated State department funds to create an NGO called V 15 and 2015 to promote Isaac Hertzog, who was running against Netanyahu as the head of the Labour Party back then, as the Prime Minister. So they’ve done everything that they can to try to keep Netanyahu out of office, with little with limited success in doing so but. You know, Netanyahu is a is a trained professional. You know, he’s been in the seat for 15 years. He’s just was longest serving Prime Minister. You know, many of those years were with as I mentioned with Clinton and Obama at the head, there was four years with Trump and now there’s going to be years with Biden, Netanyahu. They’re not knows that knows Biden for over 40 years he’s dealt with him as a senator. He’s dealt with him as a vice president. And, you know, I think there’s going to be pressure. There’s already pressure that we’ve seen, for example, the opening of an investigation by the FBI into the killing of Al Jazeera journalists to Shireen Abu Aqua in the middle of a gunfight between this really the IDF and Palestinian terrorists. And in Nablus earlier this year now the promotion of. Hattie Ammer is a special envoy to the Middle East to deal specifically with the Palestinians. We definitely have. There was. A tremendous amount of pressure on Netanyahu, you know, even from the moment that he won, regarding who he would pick as his defense minister and as his public Security Minister, and warnings not to place different people in the in the different positions. You know, this is some of the pressure that Netanyahu is going to have to deal with.
Speaker 2 20:43
Ok, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that under the Obama administration they set up an NGO to compete with the BB Netanyahu. But i did hear about the Biden administration pressuring Israel not to allow Itamar Ben Kavir in the cabinet, especially with the portfolio of public security. Ok. Maybe we can shift gears and talk about the Supreme Court. So, you know, most supporters of Israel I think would naturally assume that the Supreme Court of Israel is a very just institution. Very intelligent people serve on it. And because we know that Israel is a democracy, we sort of naturally assume that the relationship with Israel Supreme Court is similar to that in the United States, Visa V the executive branch and legislative branch. But that is not necessarily the case, right? In Israel, the Supreme Court sort of claims more jurisdiction than the US Supreme Court.