Israel: Netanyahu Struggles to Stave Off Election Pressure | Bloomberg

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fought to save his tottering government after his defense minister’s resignation, pinning his hopes on a crucial meeting Sunday with a wavering coalition ally. Netanyahu is set to meet with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who has urged the prime minister to go for early elections after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s departure last week left the government in control of just 61 out of 120 parliamentary seats. It’s not possible to govern with such a narrow coalition, which will be subject to constant pressures from its partners, Kahlon said in an interview Saturday on Hadashot News. Still, he said he would keep an open mind for Sunday’s meeting with Netanyahu. “Maybe he’ll pull a rabbit out of his hat,” Kahlon said. “Although for a long time it seems there has been no rabbit and no hat.”

Israel: Netanyahu faces snap election calls after defense minister quits | Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced calls on Thursday from his coalition partners to hold an early election, a day after the defense minister’s resignation left the government with a razor-thin majority. Avigdor Lieberman quit on Wednesday over what he described as the government’s too-soft policy on cross-border violence with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. The loss of the five seats of Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu faction leaves Netanyahu with control of just 61 of the 120 seats in parliament, raising the prospect that a scheduled November 2019 election would be brought forward. Lieberman’s resignation takes effect 48 hours after being handed in, which he did early on Thursday. Each coalition partner will then have the power to bring down the government.

Israel: East Jerusalem’s 360,000 residents to get just 6 polling stations in local vote | The Times of Israel

The Jerusalem municipality plans to open only six polling stations in the predominantly Arab eastern part of the city for October’s mayoral election, sparking charges that officials are trying to keep Arab residents from voting — as the eastern sector of the city has some 360,000 residents. Jewish neighborhoods, which represent most of the city’s voters, will have more than 180 stations, Haaretz reported Thursday. Each polling station in a Jewish neighborhood will serve approximately 2,000 voters, as opposed to the 40,000 voters expected to use each polling station in Arab neighborhoods. Three polling stations will be opened in the mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood of Beit Safafa, which means that the final three stations for Arab voters, located in the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah and Jabal Mukkaber, will each serve some 80,000 residents.

Israel: Government Eyes Measures To Prevent Election Cyber Sabotage | Vos Iz Neias

Israel is on guard against hacking ahead of the next general election, one of its most senior cyber security officials said, identifying Iran as posing the greatest overall risk to the country’s cyber security. The government is bracing against the risks of fake news, possible denial of service attacks on civic institutions, or efforts to hack the correspondence of politicians or government officials in order to leak embarrassing details. “We are on the way to identifying and assisting from a distance everywhere we find or identify as a vulnerability … and make it tougher for the bad guys to hack,” Yigal Unna, head of technology at the prime minister’s cyber directorate, told a Reuters Cyber Security Summit. Since the 2016 U.S. election, Western countries have been fretting about the possibility of Russian hacking to influence their internal politics.

Israel: Likud to lengthen waiting period for voting | Jerusalem Post

Fear of moderate and centrist members who have joined Likud could cause anyone who has joined the party recently to not be able to choose the party’s next Knesset list, Likud officials said Sunday. The party has embarked on a series of steps against the so-called New Likudniks, a group of centrists who want the party to become more moderate and return to values they say existed when Likud was led by then-prime minister Menachem Begin and are no longer prevalent in the party.

Israel: To avoid cyber attacks, Israel urged to manually count election results | Middle East Monitor

Israel’s National Cyber Authority is expected to recommend the manual counting of votes in future elections in order to prevent cyber attacks “following recent attempts to meddle with elections in the West,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday. Formed 18 months ago, the authority is working on a “defence plan” against possible meddling in Israeli elections through cyber attacks similar to what recently took place in the United States, France and Ukraine. The plan will recommend that votes continue to be counted manually in Israel, as they always have, even if this is an “outdated method”.

Israel: Committee approves prisoner voting rights in local elections | Jerusalem Post

The Knesset Interior Committee unanimously passed a bill on Monday that will allow prisoners to vote in municipal elections while incarcerated. The bill, initiated by MK Ilan Gilon (Meretz) and MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), is similar in its essence to the amendment bill that passed in 1986, which gave prisoners the right to vote in the general – but not municipal – election. The bill now needs to be approved by the Knesset in its first reading. The MKs explained that each citizen holds more weight in municipal elections than they do in national elections, and that the outcome has major implications on their day to day life.

Israel: Will Israelis living overseas gain right to vote? | Al-Monitor

Unlike the United States, which grants all its citizens the right to vote anywhere and under all circumstances, most other countries set certain limitations on the rights of their citizens to vote from abroad. Israeli law grants the ability to exercise this important democratic right only to members of its diplomatic corps and to employees of the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Federation, the Jewish National Fund and the United Israel Appeal. Still, while law enables murderers and other convicted felons serving jail terms to take part in the democratic process, the same law revokes the voting rights of students, university professors, employees of private firms, tourists and other Israelis away from their permanent places of residence on election day.

Israel: Shas Activists Caught on Tape Guiding Voter Fraud | Arutz Sheva

In confirmation of the Yachad – Ha’am Itanu and Otzma Yehudit accusations that Shas activists committed mass voter fraud in invalidating the two parties’ joint list ballot slips, recordings reveal Shas activists instructing how to invalidate the slips. IDF Radio on Monday morning published recordings of a Shas activist from Jerusalem guiding his friends on how to harm Yachad on elections day – Yachad wound up less than 11,000 votes short of getting past the recently raised threshold percentage. “Everyone who goes to vote – let them remove the slips of ‘ketz,’ let them put them in their pocket and put in its place Shas,” the supporter can be heard saying in the recording, referring to the letters on the slip representing Yachad.

Israel: An Insider Tells All on Voter Fraud | Arutz Sheva

Multiple incidents of voter fraud were reported during elections day last week – including several arrests in Arab communities. Arutz Sheva spoke to Yisrael Zelkovitz, a volunteer who served as a member of a volunteer task force funded by the Samaria Residents’ Committee at polling stations tasked with uncovering and preventing voter fraud, to find out more about what really happened on elections day. The project was funded with Likud, Jewish Home, and Yisrael Beytenu support. Zelkovitz stated that he did see incidents of voter fraud, and even caught some suspicious activity on tape – including buying votes and extortion.

Israel: Activists vote on behalf of Palestinians who can’t | Toronto Star

Mousa Abu Maria’s vote will be counted in today’s Israeli elections — but he won’t step foot in a polling station. Instead, the 36-year-old Palestinian activist has asked an Israeli to cast a ballot for the party he thinks will fight for Palestinian rights: the Joint List, the preferred choice among many Palestinian citizens of the state. “Palestine is still under Israeli occupation; that should mean I have the right to vote. I don’t have my own country and Israel still controls everything. Israel has control of our life,” Abu Maria, who lives in the West Bank town of Beit Ommar and does not hold Israeli citizenship, told the Star. Ofer Neiman, an Israeli freelance translator who lives in Jerusalem, is casting his ballot for Abu Maria. He said he chose to give his vote in protest of what he views as undemocratic elections.

Israel: Netanyahu’s last-minute appeal for votes is blocked as Israelis cast ballots | McClatchy

Israel’s election commission chief on Tuesday barred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from broadcasting new appeals to his followers for their support as Israelis cast ballots in a surprisingly close election that threatens to unseat the prime minister. The commission ruled that a broadcast appeal – Netanyahu had planned two television interviews – would violate the country’s ban on political ads on election day. The rejection came as officials reported that turnout by 4 p.m., at 45.4 percent, was lagging slightly behind the rate of the election in 2013. Polls remain open until 10 p.m. In a last-minute video appeal to supporters on his Facebook page, Netanyahu warned that “the rule of the right is in danger” and that “Arab voters are going in droves to the polls” in buses provided by leftist groups. “Go to the polls, bring your friends and family, vote Likud to close the gap,” he said.

Israel: Haredi, Arab Sectors Report Ballot Problems | Arutz Sheva

Polling stations only close at 10:00 pm, but several parties have already filed complaints to the Central Elections Committee (CEC) over allegations of fraud Tuesday – just halfway through election day. Yisrael Beytenu has filed a complaint, representatives stated to the press, after a number of party representatives were allegedly attacked during the voting process. In one incident, the chairman of Yisrael Beytenu’s Nazareth chapter was attacked at the polling station; local police rushed to the scene to break up the fight. In Arab-majority Baka Al Gharbia, Kafr Kara, and Sakhnin, party representatives were prevented from voting by the crowd.

Israel: Some Israelis living abroad are flying home to cast ballots | Jerusalem Post

A trickle of Israelis living abroad has begun arriving in Israel in the days prior to Tuesday’s election, in order to cast ballots for the next Knesset. Unlike the United States, which allows its expatriate community abroad to vote in local, state and national elections, Israelis residing outside of the Jewish state are legally barred from exercising their sovereign franchise. Martin Berger of Brighton, England, is one of them. A sales manager for a media company, he first came to Israel in 1988 as part of a crew filming a movie about the 40th anniversary of Israel’s founding. While he never resided here full time, he obtained citizenship and visits Israel on a regular basis, sometimes as often as once every two weeks.

Israel: Arab parties unite into potent force | Telegraph

As an Arab living in Israel, Ayman Odeh never had the brightest of political futures. His fellow Arab politicians, divided among four parties with radically different ideologies, have always squabbled too much to be counted as a real force. But now Mr Odeh could be on the verge of a major breakthrough, as the top candidate on a united list for all the Arab parties for next Tuesday’s general election. The list, which could give Israel’s Arab population unprecedented political clout, was born of necessity after Right-wingers in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, raised the threshold for representation from two to 3.25 per cent, thus threatening small Arab parties with electoral oblivion.

Israel: What happens to my vote? – Israeli Elections 101 | TLV!

Israel is getting ready for the big day: On March 17th, citizen residents in Israel will vote for the 20th Knesset since the country’s founding. Then, the politicians we see every night on TV will go head to head for 120 Knesset seats. … Each citizen has one vote. Unlike other democracies, this vote is not given to a candidate, but to a list. And this list is either a political party or a union of parties, such as for example the Zionist camp that unified Zipi Livni’s HaTnua and Avoda, the Labour Party. … Anyone with Israeli citizenship and over the age of 18 is eligible to vote: So that’s Arabs, Druze, Christians and Jews alike. People in prison or who currently do their army service are also eligible to vote. However, this does exclude most of the inhabitants of East Jerusalem who only have a permanent residency and not an Israeli ID. This is due to the difficult status of East Jerusalem. Israeli citizens can’t vote from abroad. You just have to ensure you’re in Israel on election day. That is, apart from diplomats and Israeli embassy staff based abroad. These people vote at the earlier date of March 5th to ensure their votes arrive in Israel to be counted on election day. It is debatable, but many parties and politicians think that you need to live in Israel to influence its future because it is much too easy to sit thousands of miles away and make a decision that probably won’t influence your life.

Israel: United Arab party a surprise new force in Israeli election | Reuters

A political sideshow for much of the past six decades, Israel’s Arab minority is hoping to gain much-needed muscle after next week’s parliamentary election, with four Arab parties uniting under one banner for the first time. Surveys show the Joint Arab List could even finish third in the vote and become a factor in the coalition-building that dominates Israeli politics, where no party has ever won a parliament majority. Many in the Arab community, which makes up 20 percent of Israel’s eight million population, see the newfound unity as a breakthrough in battling discrimination and gaining recognition. Though they have full and equal rights, Arab Israelis often say they are treated as second-class citizens.

Israel: Vote to begin at missions abroad | The Times of Israel

hile politicians still have two nearly weeks to win over prospective constituents at home, Israeli officials serving abroad will already have their say Wednesday, officially kicking off elections for the 20th Knesset. Some 6,250 representatives in over 98 missions across the world are eligible to cast their vote, from Amman to El Salvador to Ghana. Overseas voting will begin Wednesday night and will take place over the course of 36 hours, given differing time zones between countries. Israeli representatives at the consulate in Wellington, New Zealand, will be the first to vote, with ambassador Yosef Livneh expected to submit the first ballot. The final vote will be held at the Israeli mission in San Francisco.

Israel: Arab parties angry that election slip printer is in settlement | Jerusalem Post

The United Arab List expressed disappointment Sunday after the printer of election slips was revealed to be in Karnei Shomron, a settlement in Samaria. “It’s long been clear that the Netanyahu government is the settlement government,” the List’s spokeswoman said. “Are there not enough printers inside the Green Line?” The Central Election Committee confirmed that Israphot Ltd. won the tender to print the slips of paper on which parties’ names and letters representing them are printed and that it is the sole such printer. “They’re Israeli; there’s an Israeli flag there,” a committee spokesman said of the printer.

Israel: Election discourse testing limits of democracy | Al-Monitor

On Feb. 17, a short while after the Supreme Court heard arguments against disqualifying Knesset member Haneen Zoabi from running on the United Arab list, participants at the annual Israel Democracy Conference heard arguments from the television anchor Lucy Aharish in favor of Zoabi’s disqualification from the Knesset race. “Zoabi should demonstrate responsibility toward the Arab society and not incite with harsh words, which provoke Israeli society against its Arab neighbors,” said the successful Arab-Israeli journalist. “The minute you know what your words can do to an entire society, to 20% of this state, you will learn how to talk,” Aharish lashed out. “I am a proud Arab living in this state,” she continued, visibly agitated. “I do not apologize for being an Arab. I do not apologize for being a Muslim.” According to the platform of the party headed by Avigdor Liberman, the foreign minister of Aharish’s state, however, had she chosen to live in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm or in one of the villages of the Triangle in the north, even an apology would not have saved her from being separated from her country.

Israel: Arab voters attract greater attention than in previous Knesset elections | Jerusalem Post

Some political pundits are forecasting that the Arab representation in the Knesset will be greater than ever before, not only because of the joint Arab list, but also because there are Arabs on the lists of other parties. And, if the High Court ratifies the disqualification of Balad MK Haneen Zoabi from running in the next elections, the ruling may well provoke Arab voters to come out in far greater numbers to vote for the Arab list, which could result in more mandates than anticipated. Most of the country’s major media outlets are now watching political developments in the Arab sector more closely than in the past and are reporting on them with greater frequency.

Israel: Electoral commission bans Arab MP’s reflection bid | AFP

Firebrand Arab MP Haneen Zuabi, a regular critic of Israel’s right-wing government, was banned Thursday from standing in next month’s general election. The elections committee gave no reason for the disqualification, reported on its website, but Zuabi’s lawyer Hassan Jabareen said it was because she was deemed “hostile to the Jewish state.” The committee also banned extreme right winger Baruch Marzel, a follower of radical rabbi Meir Kahane, assassinated in 1990. A member of the leftwing Arab-Israeli Balad party, the 45-year-old Zuabi was also banned ahead of the 2013 election in a move overturned by the Supreme Court. The country’s top tribunal must also rule in this case.

Israel: Court rules in favor of Likud recount | Jerusalem Post

A three-justice panel of the Supreme Court late Tuesday ruled in favor of former public security minister Avi Dichter and against Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely to continue a recount of votes cast in the December 31 Likud primary. The ruling overturned a decision of the Tel Aviv District Court to freeze the recount in the ongoing saga over who will get the Likud’s 20th slot in the March 17 general election. Justices Elyakim Rubinstein, newly appointed deputy president of the court, Hanan Melcer and Yoram Danziger held that the key consideration was the will of the voters, which could best be realized by recounting votes even if there were other considerations pushing in the opposite direction. The court noted the odd circumstances of the dispute, including that both Dichter and Hotovely, at different times and depending on who was ahead in the latest results, had insisted on a full recount or on stopping the recount.

Israel: State May Tackle Threats on Female Haredi Party | Arutz Sheva

The new female haredi party B’Zhutan has already been threatened with excommunication and other forms of backlash by members of the haredi community, to the point that Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber has decided to get involved. Zilber on Thursday sent a letter to the Central Elections Committee chairperson, judge Salim Joubran, responding to the societal pressure being directed at the party’s three founders Ruth Kolian, Noa Erez and Karen Mozen. “One of the rabbis identified with (the haredi party) United Torah Judaism published statements about women who back a party that is not led by ‘gedolei Yisrael’ (leading rabbis – ed.),” wrote Zilber. Elaborating, she continued “according to the publication, a woman who acts in opposition to the rabbi’s orders will have her ketuba (marriage contract – ed.) removed from her, her income will be harmed (it will be forbidden to study at her educational institutions and to buy products from her), and her children will be removed from institutions of study.”

Israel: Supreme Court rejects petition against increasing electoral threshold | Haaretz

The Supreme Court has struck down a petition against the Knesset law which raised the electoral threshold from 2 percent to 3.25 percent — a change that effectively forces Arab parties to run in joint slates in order to gain Knesset representation. Eight justices dismissed the petition with the only opposition coming from the court’s sole Arab justice, Salim Joubran. The court’s reasons were not specified due to the tight timeline before the March 17 election, requiring that all lists be presented by the end of this month. The majority included outgoing President of the Court Asher Grunis as well as the incoming President Justice Miriam Naor, joined by Justices Esther Hayut, Neal Hendel, Hanan Melcer, Uzi Vogelman, Yoram Danziger and Elyakim Rubinstein. Justice Joubran found himself odd man out on the bench — just as he was in another recent ruling, supported by four other Jewish judges, to suspend MK Haneen Zoabi from the Knesset.

Israel: Allegations of errors in results of Likud primaries | i24news

Prominent Likud lawmaker launches appeal even as Netanyahu is due to present his list of Knesset contenders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to present his Likud party’s list of contenders for the March elections on Monday, amid allegations that the final tallies of last week’s party primaries were erroneous. A recount of the votes from 15 polling stations, the results of which were published Sunday, did, indeed, find mistakes, but party officials said they were marginal and did not affect the overall outcome. However, Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, one of only three women contending for Likud seats in the next Knesset, discounted the recount results and warned that she may go to court to demand a wider recount.

Israel: Alliance Adds Twist to Israeli Elections | New York Times

Isaac Herzog, the leader of Israel’s center-left Labor Party, and Tzipi Livni, the recently dismissed justice minister and the leader of a small centrist faction, announced on Wednesday that they would run on a joint slate in elections next March in a bid to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the conservative Likud Party from winning a fourth term. The move injected an intriguing twist to the start of the election campaign. It also added an element of uncertainty for Mr. Netanyahu eight days after he fired Ms. Livni and his centrist finance minister, Yair Lapid, saying their public criticism of his policies made it impossible to govern the country and calling early elections less than two years after the last ballot. Mr. Herzog and Ms. Livni said that if they won enough votes to form the next government, they would take turns in the role of prime minister, with Mr. Herzog serving for the first two years and Ms. Livni for the second two, in an Israeli political compromise known as rotation. That deal seemed lopsided since the Labor Party, now with 15 seats in the 120-seat Parliament, is likely to win more than Ms. Livni’s Hatnua party, which currently has six.

Israel: Parliament disbands, sets elections for March 17 | Los Angeles Times

Israeli lawmakers voted Monday to dissolve the parliament and hold elections on March 17, making the current government one of the shortest-lived in the country’s history. With some cellphone cameras flashing but no objections, lawmakers passed the motion at the end of an hours-long discussion of last-minute legislation that included no-confidence motions and harsh criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Lawmaker Dov Khenin called the Netanyahu government “bad and dangerous” and said it had blocked all chances for a political solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. Jamal Zahalka accused Netanyahu and his ministers of giving orders that killed thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and called for a no-confidence vote that would be a “harsh indictment against a criminal government.”

Israel: Electronic Voting in the Works for Israel | Arutz Sheva

While no date has been set for elections yet, the Central Elections Commission has been preparing for weeks for the possibility that a vote would be held soon – and one of the ideas it has been considering is the implementation of electronic voting, at least to some extent, in the upcoming elections. However, it’s unlikely that electronic voting will be ready in time for snap elections which are likely to take place in the coming months. Speaking on Channel 10 earlier Tuesday, Attorney Orly Ades, head of the Commission, said that officials were “ready for any and every development.” As the political crisis of the past few weeks worsened, she said, the Commission intensified its preparations. Among the tasks the Commission must now take on is the establishment of 18 regional election committees to handle voting issues.

Israel: Knesset expected to raise electoral threshold to 3.25% | Haaretz

Knesset members are expected to make it tougher for others to join their ranks Tuesday, by voting to raise the threshold for entering the Knesset to 3.25 percent of valid votes in a general election. It was not yet clear how all the Hatnuah and Habayit Hayehudi MKs were planning to vote on the so-called Governance Bill. Monday’s debate on the bill took place without the opposition MKs, who were boycotting the session. Several Hatnuah MKs were critical of the governance bill, which some say will reduce the number of Arab MKs because there are far fewer Arab voters than Jewish ones, making it harder for Arab candidates to get enough votes to push them over the threshold.