Election Day

Today is Yom B’chirot, or Election Day for the national Israeli Knesset. Yes, Israel has elections too. It is a democracy. For now.

So, government in Israel does not work the same way in the US. First, Israel is a parliamentary system – it works like Britain or Canada – and the ruling party, which does not have a majority of Knesset seats (total of 120 seats; 61 needed for majority), needs to form a coalition of like-minded parties to form a government. No party has ever had a majority; all governments – under Ben-Gurion, Begin, Rabin – have been coalition governments. So, whereas the US system is a two-party system, there are 33 parties standing for elections tonight.

That means, lots of arguing, lots of negotiating, lots of little voices being heard in a way that isn’t heard in the US system. But the campaign, thus far, has been dominated by four voices – three usual, expected voices, and one very unexpected voice:

Tzipi Livni, the leader of Kadima, a centrist party that is currently leading the governing coalition. She replaced Ehud Olmert, the current PM, as leader of Kadima in September after he resigned due to corruption investigation. Kadima is running neck and neck, in an unexpectedly close race with:
Benjamin Netayahu, the leader of Likud, a right of center party; Netayahu as Prime Minister in the late 1990s. He was expected to win by a large margin, but between the Gaza operation and the success of Liberman (see below) he's doing worse than expected.
Ehud Barak, the leader of Labor, a left of center party; Barak was Prime Minister following Netayahu. Labor has historically been the dominant party in Israeli politics but it looks like they're going to relegated to the 4th largest in the Knesset, behind a relatively new party led by:
Avigdor Liberman, the leader of Yisrael Beiteynu, a far, far right (read: almost fascist) party; Lieberman is projected to win an ungodly amount of seats in a rise that’s surprising a lot of people, including myself. But I guess American elected Bush twice, so who am I to judge?

The campaign up ‘til today has been fascinating. Israeli national campaigns start really a few weeks before the election (which was a refreshing change from the recent 18-month battle for the American presidency), so they really didn’t get going in earnest until Cast Lead (the operation in Gaza) ended mid-January. And it’s been a whirlwind. Lots of ad campaigns, lots of smears, lots of putting the other person down instead of running an issue-based campaign. Actually, there really were no issues discussed; it was all about the personas, and a little about security, and a little less about the economy.

Election day itself is an odd duck. Unlike America, Israel takes her election day very seriously. For starters, everyone has the day off. All schools, national institutions (banks, post offices, government offices) are closed. The buses run (so in that respect, it’s not quite like Shabbat). Most people do not go to work. Some restaurants and things are open, but mostly it’s an off day. People vote. They spend time with their family. It was very weird.

We didn’t have official school, because everyone – from teachers to custodial staff to security staff to the people who run the cafeteria – had the day off, but we did have a special Israel Seminar day where we met, voted in our own “Israeli National Elections” (the left-wing bloc won in overwhelming, astounding numbers, totally NOT mirroring the actually Israeli mood) and then divided into small groups and dispersed into the city to engage in surveying real Israelis about their thoughts. Jerusalem is a right-of-center, predominately religious city, and the results reflected that pretty accurately, but it was still a very fascinating anthropological/sociological exercise.

Now I’m at Meredith’s awaiting election returns. Polls close here at 10PM (which is in about an hour and a half) and then we’ll see who the next leader of Israel will be. Probably not, actually. Israeli exit polls are notoriously inaccurate, and since this is going to be a very close race, we probably won’t know anything until tomorrow afternoon.