Israel election 2015- Israel News

LIVE BLOG: Netanyahu to Fox News: I didn’t retract support for two-state solution - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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“I didn’t retract any of the things I said in my speech six years ago, calling for a solution in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes a Jewish state,” Netanyahu said to Megyn Kelly, host of “The Kelly File.” "I said that the conditions for that, today, are not achievable for a simple reason: [Mahmoud Abbas], the leader of the Palestinians, rejects consistently the acceptance of a Jewish state. He’s made a pact with the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, that calls for our destruction. And the conditions in the Middle East have changed to the point where any territory we withdraw from is immediately taken up by Iranian-backed terrorists or by ISIS."

Netanyahu and Likud won by taking poorer Jewish towns, West Bank settlements - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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Segmenting the voting by socioeconomic levels reveals a major and probably decisive difference between Likud and Zionist Union; the former got lots of votes in wealthier communities, but the latter did very well almost solely in those richer areas.

Zionist Union got its highest rate of support – 53 percent - in Kfar Shmaryahu, one of the three towns in the 10th and wealthiest decile. The rate of support for Zionist Union in the 33 towns in deciles 8 through 10 was 34.8 percent. The party came in first in 85 percent of these towns; the five exceptions were Alfei Menashe, Oranit and Mevasseret Zion, where the Likud came in first, and Elkana and Givat Shmuel, where Habayit Hayehudi ranked first.

In most of these 33 wealthier towns, the pattern was similar – Zionist Union first, Likud second and Yesh Atid third. Overall, Likud got 22.9 percent of the vote in these economically strong towns.

It was there that Yesh Atid lost a lot of its strength. In 2013, the party’s support in the top two deciles was 26.2 percent, with 24.4 percent in the 8th decile. But on Election Day the party got only 16.5 percent of the vote in deciles 9 and 10, and only 15.1 percent in the 8th decile.

The 7th decile is considered the most middle-class; it includes locales like Ramat Gan, Nes Ziona and Haifa. Here Zionist Union won seven of the 12 cities, while Likud took the other five. Moving further down the scale, however, the Likud took almost all of the towns considered middle- and lower-middle class, winning in 13 of the 15 cities in the 6th decile, 31 of 33 in the 5th decile, and 15 of 17 in the 4th decile. The towns not won by Likud in this range were generally won by Habayit Hayehudi.

Likud did not just win decisively in the West Bank, but also in the socioeconomic periphery within the Green Line, scoring decisive wins in places like Sderot (42.8 percent), Ashkelon (39.8 percent), Or Yehuda (40.5 percent), Ramle (39.8 percent), Tiberias (44.5 percent) and Kiryat Shmona (39.9 percent).

Support for Likud actually rose in the middle-class and peripheral towns compared to the last election, despite the social agenda pushed by the center-left camp and the fact that these voters didn’t benefit much, if at all, from the economic policies promulgated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It seems the messages Netanyahu broadcast in the days before the election made a grea

Among Joint List’s many tasks: Convincing Arabs it was worth voting - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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The low turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel in the 2015 election is both sobering and painful (much as it delighted Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman). Even if they disagree with the ideological arguments advanced by those who call for boycotting the Zionist enemy, Palestinian citizens of Israel have trouble believing that the Israeli political system truly intends to listen to their voices. They have been given no reason to believe that Jewish-Israeli society can free itself of the racist arguments it offers for the extra rights it has claimed – and continues to claim – for itself at the Palestinians’ expense.

The Joint List is the one truly refreshing thing to emerge from this election – and the low turnout rate among its target population doesn’t change this fact. It merely adds one more task to the many facing its elected representatives in the coming years: to convince its electorate that it’s worthwhile to vote, that it’s worthwhile to up their turnout. Not because elections are the be-all and end-all, but because they’re a tool that must be used.

The Joint List cracked a deterministic “idee fixe” – that the Arab parties were incapable of overcoming their internal disputes in order to thwart the plot to curtail Arab political representation. Now it will have to shatter another deterministic conclusion that is even more firmly set – that there’s no point in trying to influence the Israeli political system.

Israeli Palestinians’ brothers and sisters in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip observed Tuesday’s election with great interest, and they were especially interested in the Joint List. The low turnout rate on the other side of the Green Line also disappointed them – the ones deprive of the right to vote in elections that determine their fate.

The broader Palestinian public sees no difference between a Likud-led government and one led by Zionist Union. But it’s no secret that the Palestinian Authority leadership was hoping for some arithmetical miracle that would topple the Likud government. It was very careful not to say anything that would be perceived as supporting a government led by Zionist Union, but the PA leadership is still sunk in delusions about the past: It still thinks that under a Labor-led government, the Oslo Accords would have had a chance of becoming a real peace process that would have resulted in a Palestinian state.

And this returns us to the many and weighty tasks awaiting the Joint List, with all its progressive potential as a representative of the oppressed: waging a battle over the allocation of resources and budgets to Israel’s Arab population; giving a presence to all the weakened members of Israeli society – Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin), women and the disabled – without regard to their national or ethnic origins; and making the eminently logical linkage between social justice and the demand that Israel withdraw from the territories and dismantle the settlements.

One additional task – perhaps by the very fact of its existence – is to provide inspiration for the Palestinian political system in the West Bank and Gaza. No weakened and oppressed population is merely a passive bystander in the course of its own life. Every oppressed and passive group has the possibility and the responsibility of striving to influence the existing situation that works to its detriment (the same existing situation that works to the benefit of the ones with the power to oppress). The Palestinian political system in the West Bank and Gaza must undergo deep internal changes in order to lead the difficult battle against Israeli colonialism.

Netanyahu a définitivement pété les plombs: il a déclaré qu’il n’y aurait pas d’Etat palestinien s’il venait à être élu, ce pour attirer les voix de Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi). Au moins, c’est clair...

L’écart entre le Likoud et le camp des anciens travaillistes continue à se creuser. Le likoud est aujourd’hui accrédité de 21 sièges contre 25 pour l’Union sioniste. La liste unie Hadash et partis arabes reste toujours en troisième position avec 13 sièges. Intéressant et nouveau pour ce qui concerne les partis arabes israéliens, même si l’espoir d’une paix et l’établissement d’un Etat palestinien ne sont pas à l’ordre du jour

Netanyahu: If I’m elected, there will be no Palestinian state - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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Netanyahu: If I’m elected, there will be no Palestinian state
In a definitive disavowal of his Bar-Ilan two-state speech, prime minister makes last-minute attempt to draw voters from Bennett’s Habayit Hayeudi.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau said Monday that if he were to be reelected, a Palestinian state would not be created, in a definite disavowal of his 2009 speech, in which he had voiced support for the principle of two states for two peoples.

Netanyahu’s remarks in an interview with the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi.

“I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel,” Netanyahu said. The left has buried its head in the sand time and after time and ignores this, but we are realistic and understand."

During the interview, Netanyahu declared that if the Zionist Union were to win the elections, “it would attach itself to the international community and do they bidding,” including freezing construction in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, and cooperate with international initiatives to return Israel’s borders to the 1967 lines.

During a visit to the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa earlier Monday, Netanyahu warned that if he were not elected, “Hamastan B.” would be established in Jerusalem. “If Tzipi [Livni] and Bougie [Isaac Herzog] form a government, Hamastan B will be established here.”

He also slammed Jewish-American businessman Danny Abraham, one of the primary financiers of the V-15 campaign to flip the Israeli government. Netanyahu did not mentioned Abraham by name, but said that the primary financier of V-15 has come to his office in the past and tried to convince him not to build in East Jerusalem.

“I said to him – have you ever been in Har Homa? He said no, and that it was a dangerous settlement. I suggested he go there and said he would make it in time, that he wouldn’t be late to the meeting. They took him to the car, returned to the office, and rolled on the floor with laughter. The man was prepared to go to Sinai and couldn’t believe that the car stopped after seven minutes and that he had reached his destination. These are the people telling us who needs to be in government, these are the people who think Har Home is in Sinai.”

Face aux sondages catastrophiques pour lui et à quelques jours seulement des élections, Netanyahu se livre à son jeu préféré : la théorie du complot contre lui :
le camp sioniste aurait orchestré une campagne contre le Likoud et contre lui, en collaboration avec des organisations et ONG avec le soutien de gouvernements étrangers, notamment pour promouvoir un retrait d’Israël aux lignes de 1967, la division de Jérusalem, la création d’un « Hamastan B » sur les hauteurs de Tel Aviv et l’acceptation par Israël d’un Iran nucléarisé)… Quand on pense que des Israéliens boivent les discours empoisonnés de cet homme...

Netanyahu accuses leftists, media of conspiring to bring him down - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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“Numerous testimonies by Yedioth Ahronoth employees that have reached us recently indicate that [Yedioth Ahronoth publisher] Noni Mozes is leading an orchestrated campaign against the Likud and against me, in collaboration with organizations and NGOs that are acting for that purpose with the support of tycoons in Israel and abroad and also the support of foreign governments,” Netanyahu wrote.

He went on to accuse the newspaper of “cooperating and coordinating fully” with the leaders of Zionist Union. The Zionist Union platform, he added, “implicitly commits” the party to closing down Yisrael Hayom, a newspaper that supports the prime minister.

“The public needs to know the truth,” Netanyahu wrote. “Noni Mozes is leading a campaign against the Likud and against me out of commercial interests, with the objective of reviving the dangerous and undemocratic monopoly it enjoyed in the past.”

“The goal of Mozes is to bring about the rise of the left. He is joined by left-wing elements in Israel and abroad who are streaming tens of millions of dollars to NGOs running an ’Anyone but Bibi’ campaign in its various guises.”

The reason for the mobilization of the unnamed NGOs, the prime minister said, was not social or economic – but diplomatic: To bring about “a withdrawal to the ’67 lines, the division of Jerusalem, the establishment of Hamastan B on the heights overlooking Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport and Israeli acceptance of a nuclear Iran.”

En Israël, le discours de Netanyahu au Congrès américain semble avoir été plutôt contre-productif, alors qu’il pensait en faire le levier essentiel de sa victoire aux prochaines élections.

En venant dicter aux sénateurs américains (et aux juifs des US) leur politique sur le nucléaire iranien alors qu’ils sont en pleine tractation diplomatique, il a tout d’abord servi les intérêts des opposants à un accord et non le peuple israélien.

Mais rien n’est encore perdu pour Netanyahu, car le Likoud pourrait encore constituer une coalition et gouverner sans être le premier parti du pays.

On apprend aussi que la campagne israélienne dépasse ses frontières nationales et que des fonds américains viennent alimenter la campagne des opposants de Netanyahu (certains de ses proches soutiennent que les groupes qui ont organisé les grands rassemblements anti-Netanyahu sur la place Yitzhak Rabin de Tel Aviv seraient financés par des hommes d’affaires étrangers).

A force d’agiter le drapeau de la menace iranienne au lieu de répondre aux réelles préoccupations des Israéliens, dégringolade de leur pouvoir d’achat, hausse de l’immobilier, etc., Netanyahu s’est infligé une claque à lui-même.

Senior Likud sources : Netanyahu may not win election - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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“There is a huge global effort to bring down the Likud government,” Netanyahu told supporters at a meeting Monday in the Haifa Bay suburb of Kiryat Motzkin. “This is a very close battle,” he added. “Nothing is assured.”

Over the past few days members of Netanyahu’s inner circle have echoed his charges, citing foreign businesspeople who have invested funds to bring about a change of government in Israel, by funding organizations like V15, which is conducting a campaign against Netanyahu, or One Million Hands, the group that organized the anti-Netanyahu protest in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

Political parties in Israel are banned from accepting money directly from overseas donors during an election campaign. But such funding is allowed under Israeli law for non-profit organizations espousing political viewpoints, and U.S. consultants have advised Israeli candidates for years.

Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz spoke on the same issue on Tuesday, enumerating what he believed were the elements stacked up against Netanyahu: “The media is enlisted against him, the Palestinian Authority as well as elements in the United States. I see something that looks like support for the other side.”

Speaking in an online chat on Tuesday with Haaretz readers, Steinitz said: “All these forces come to bring about the absurd situation in which Netanyahu gives up his place to someone who has never proven anything,” he said.

“I think that most of the opinion polls show that despite this delegitimization, most of the public still prefers Netanyahu and his leadership talents,” said Steinitz.

C’est la panique au Likoud. Les sondages donnent au parti trois sièges de moins que la “gauche” de Herzog et Livni. Mais Netanyahu pense qu’il va rester “le roi d’Israël”

Likud officials blame Netanyahu for poor poll results ahead of Israeli elections - Israel election 2015 - Israel News | Haaretz
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Likud officials blame Netanyahu for poor poll results
Officials in PM’s party aren’t waiting for the election results: To them, it’s already clear the campaign was a ’colossal failure,’ thanks to Netanyahu.
By Jonathan Lis | Mar. 13, 2015 | 8:14 AM

Likud officials aren’t waiting for the election results. On Wednesday, following less than favorable polls, senior officials labeled the election campaign a failure, and blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the party’s poor showing in the polls ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.

“The Zionist Union will be larger than Likud after the election. This, it seems, is already a fact. The question is what the gap between the two will be. Even if we manage to form the next government, this campaign was a colossal failure. Netanyahu is primarily responsible,” said a senior Likud member.

“Everything went through him during this election season, and the situation isn’t good. The election campaign didn’t function. Netanyahu kept Likud ministers far from decisions,” the senior party figure said. “His excessive focus [on himself in the campaign] and his lack of faith in the party’s Knesset members prompted him to staff the campaign with people who haven’t proven themselves.”

Another Likud official said, “Netanyahu was shown to be a very weak card in this election. He decided to put himself at the front, and forgot that he has an excellent team of ministers and MKs behind him. The public hardly saw them. It turns out the public is weary of Netanyahu, but he didn’t think that was a good enough reason to scale back his presence in the campaign.”

But Likud members don’t think all is lost. “As of right now, Netanyahu is the only one who can forge an independent coalition based on the latest polls. Herzog will have to include Likud in his government if he’s asked to form a coalition, and Netanyahu has already said he won’t allow that,” said one party official.

In an attempt to reverse the party’s downward trend in the polls, Netanyahu decided to grant interviews to Channels 1 and 2, as well as the Walla website, after refusing to do so for weeks. He called on right-wing voters who have shifted to other parties to return to Likud to prevent the emergence of a left-wing government.

Other Likud officials suggested that Netanyahu debate Herzog, believing it could only improve Netanyahu’s image. One of Netanyahu’s associates said, “TV interviews can be decisive in turning the trend around. If it turns out that Netanyahu didn’t manage to convince the public and improve his standings in the polls, we might as well say congratulations to Tzipi and Bougie.”

Netanyahu doubled down Wednesday on his opposition to a national unity government. After vowing previously that he wouldn’t form such a coalition, he declared he would not serve as prime minister in a rotation with Isaac Herzog. Addressing the idea of dividing the prime minister’s tenure, he said in his Channel 2 interview, “I don’t think there’s such an option. I don’t intend to do it, because I think there is a clear choice here between two paths. I will not be prime minister in a rotation, and that should be prevented.”

Regarding the recent polls, which show Likud running three seats behind Zionist Union, Netanyahu said there was a chance he won’t be prime minister again. “If we don’t close the gaps in the coming days, there’s definitely a danger that Bougie Herzog and Tzipi Livni will be the prime ministers,” but said he would win if enough of his supporters get out and vote.

Netanyahu declined to say he would leave politics if he is unable to form a government after Tuesday’s balloting. But behind the scenes, Likud members are already jostling to be the heir apparent.

“There are enough candidates in Likud who aren’t excited about the prospect of an election win, and who are actually waiting for Netanyahu to lose, in the hope of inheriting his place and running for prime minister in the next election,” said one party member.

« Les citoyens arabes déloyaux envers Israël devraient être décapités à la hache » déclare le ministre AE Lieberman lors d’un meeting électoral - Haaretz et Newsweek

L’info n’a pas été reprise en France.

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