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Letter from Jerusalem

Israel’s Lackluster Elections

Elisa Ben-Rafael
World Press Review correspondent
Jerusalem
Jan. 31, 2003

Five elections in 10 years—double the number that would have taken place in calmer times—have left the Israeli voting public exhausted from running back and forth to the polls. The elections held on Tuesday, Jan. 28, saw only a 69 percent voter turnout—the lowest turnout in the nation’s history. This is a country where on the average 80 to 85 percent of registered voters exercise their right to vote.

During the campaign, the parties employed their traditional tool: televised campaign advertisements that are regulated by the Election Propaganda Law and monitored by the Central Election Committee (CEC) chaired by Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin. Typically, these advertisements and their radio equivalent have close to 100 percent ratings, meaning almost all people surveyed have seen or heard them. However, this time less than 15 percent of the public bothered to view or listen to these political commercials. There were no televised debates between the principal candidates, as if they were saying that they weren’t interested in putting forth the effort necessary to prepare for a debate. Instead, the candidates settled for sending truncated messages to the voting public and one another via sound bites in commercials and abbreviated appearances on news telecasts. Legal restrictions also limited appearance time for politicians on current events programs—political pundits commenting on every angle of the lack luster campaigns filled their usual slots.

The electrifying high points of the campaign were provided by the Central Election Committee’s (CEC) decisions related to the legal eligibility of certain candidates and parties to run and the revelation of alleged illegality connected to a loan received by the sons of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. When Prime Minister Sharon called a press conference to explain his sons’ actions, Justice Cheshin ordered the transmission cut citing grievous violations of the Election Propaganda Law. For two days afterward, the story dominated the Israeli media: Never before in the history of the state had a prime minister been silenced in the middle of a press conference.

In addition to enforcing the Election Propaganda Law, the CEC is also charged with deciding whether a party or individual may legally run for election. In early January, the CEC’s members decided, against Judge Cheshin’s recommendations, to disqualify Member of Knesset Ahmed Tibi (Ta’al party), Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara and Bishara’s Balad party, to allow far-right-wing candidate Baruch Marzel to run on the Herut list and to disqualify on technical grounds Likud candidates Moshe Feiglin and Defense Minster Shaul Mofaz. Following the filing of appeals by political parties and good-government grassroots organizations, an 11-member Supreme Court panel heard the appeals. The justices unanimously reversed the disqualifications of Tibi, Bishara, and Balad, and upheld Mofaz’s disqualification. They upheld Feiglin’s disqualification ten to one and allowed Herut’s Marzel to run. The disqualifications and the subsequent appellate decision drew intense international and domestic press coverage. It was, after all, only the second time that Arab parties had been threatened with disqualification from an election. About 200 Israelis showed up to demonstrate at the Supreme Court in favor of the Arab parties on the day the court decision was to be handed down. This was the single largest political demonstration during the campaign. Once it was over and they were satisfied that democracy had been protected, they faded out of the picture.

In the week leading up to Election Day there were no blasting horns or loudspeakers speakers blaring praise for the various candidates. There were no battles over billboard space. It was a far cry from other election years, when party faithful often battled through the night over whose posters would be on the billboards in the morning. This time, many of the billboards that municipalities had refurbished and given a new coat of paint remained clean, gleaming brightly in the sunlight. There were no traffic jams caused by overzealous campaigners blocking intersections with banners and handing out leaflets, flyers, and bumper stickers. There was no need for the special post-Election Day cleanup crews to sweep the streets. None of the parties bothered to litter enough to make a difference. None of the media reported on any high school holding a mock election—a favorite activity for high school juniors and seniors. Presumably not even those whose lives are so directly influenced by the outcome of elections because of impending military service could be bothered to get excited and engage themselves in mock voting.

Israelis, exhausted from two years of intense violence and conflict with the Palestinians, couldn’t be bothered to engage in the campaign process or Election Day. Instead Israelis used the voting holiday as an extra day off: They went shopping, they sat in cafés, they went to the beach, and they created interurban traffic jams, but they didn’t wait in long lines to vote. At the polling stations the busiest people were the security guards who carefully checked each person wishing to enter. The reason for the strict security was that during the primaries for Likud there had been a terrorist attack against a polling station in Beit Sha’an (north of Jerusalem).

The evening of the elections most Israelis tuned in to IBA Channel One at 10 p.m., when the polls closed, to hear the results of the exit polls. Then they turned off the television and continued their regular evening activities. The following morning’s papers with their colorful headlines attempted to inject the atmosphere with excitement. But apart from the continuing commentary of the political pundits and brief balloon-waving by party faithful at election night festivities, Israelis carried on with their daily lives. Israel is in a recession and awaits a war in Iraq. Some Israelis went to register with the unemployment service, some went off to the bank to arrange deferred payment plans on their personal debt; and some went to the civil defense stations to exchange their gas masks, on their way home stopping by the hardware store to purchase tools to create a sealed room in case of war.

The weekend papers in Israel declared the official and final results of the election. On Sunday, Ariel Sharon will receive the mandate to form the next government of Israel from the country’s president Moshe Kastav. He will have 28 days to piece together a coalition. His first choice would be to bring Labor back into a “national unity” government. Writing on Jan. 31, Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn and Yossi Verter anticipated that he would use all that time for one purpose: “to create a breach in the Labor party that will enable it, or part of it, to join his government.”