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Polls suggest that there will be a major tilt to the Left in the next Knesset, which could be balanced by a vote for Netanyahu in the second round. (May 9) - If the May 17 Knesset election goes roughly in line with the consistent findings of the most recent public opinion polls, the next Knesset will be much more antagonistic than even the outgoing one - more sharply and variously divided along ethnic, religious, legal-ethical and even personal lines. At the same time, though, the critical divide in the Knesset for generations - Left vs. Right - will soften, as the Right's strength will be devastated. Numerous MKs identified with the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights settler movements will lose their seats. Furthermore, One Israel leader Ehud Barak, if elected prime minister, will be able to form a government of the Left and center - without religious parties and possibly even without Arab ones. If, on the other hand, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is reelected, he will need a collection of religious and ethnic parties that are now at each other's throats. Netanyahu might also need the Center Party, which was formed for the express purpose of bringing him down. "The 'animosity quotient' is definitely going to rise. The 'map of animosities' will be drawn more distinctly," said outgoing Labor MK Shevah Weiss, a Haifa University professor of political science and former Knesset speaker. This is the political fallout of last Friday's public opinion surveys published in Yediot Aharonot and Ma'ariv, conducted by two of Israel's leading pollsters, Dr. Mina Tzemah and Gallup. Pollsters always stress that they do not predict the future, but only reflect public opinion at the time the poll is conducted. Still, Tzemah's and Gallup's findings were almost identical. Each was based on approximately 1,000 interviews - double the normal sample size, which enhances their reliability. Certain unequivocal findings in the surveys reflected what many other polls and commentators have been predicting for weeks. IF THE results of the May 17 election do not vary radically from those of last weekend's polls, the next Knesset will be different from the current one in a number of decisive ways: - There will be not one, but two Russian immigrant parties in the next Knesset. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu will get two or three seats and will be in constant competition with Natan Sharansky's Yisrael Ba'aliya for the allegiance of Russian voters. The two leaders have become enemies in the current campaign, with Lieberman accusing Sharansky of failing his constituency and of shifting to the Left, and Sharansky countering that Lieberman is running a campaign of slander. With Lieberman's entry into the Knesset, there would also be not one but two parties expressing outright contempt for Israel's entire judicial system. Lieberman's views are similar to those of Shas, which, if the election goes according to the polls, will roughly maintain its current strength of 10 seats. Lieberman, Netanyahu's former right-hand man, has called Israel a "police state" and accused police, prosecutors and the courts of endemic corruption and racism. Meanwhile, Shas's assaults on the judicial system have escalated since MK Aryeh Deri's conviction and sentencing on corruption charges. Together in the Knesset, Yisrael Beiteinu's and Shas's voices would be amplified. - Yosef (Tommy) Lapid's Shinui party will get into the Knesset with three or four seats. Before entering politics, Lapid was the most provocative presence on the TV talk-show circuit, and he has used that talent in his strident election campaign against the haredim. In return, the haredim have regularly accused Lapid of "antisemitism," and he has reportedly received death threats. Lapid has replaced Meretz leaders as the haredim's Public Enemy No. 1, noted Weiss. - The Center Party will establish itself as a considerable force in the Knesset with eight or nine seats. The party's top three - former defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai, former IDF chief of general staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and former finance minister Dan Meridor - share deep animosities against Netanyahu, their former boss. "Dump Netanyahu" was the Center Party's founding mission and it is the party's sole campaign message. Mordechai and Shahak have been physically assaulted by Netanyahu supporters while making campaign rounds. - The long-enduring split between Left and Right will end - at least for the span of the upcoming Knesset session - in the Left's favor. Likud will fall to 20-24 seats. Ze'ev (Benny) Begin's National Union will get only two or three seats. Rafael Eitan's Tsomet Party will be out of the Knesset altogether. The Third Way, champion of the Golan Heights and the Golan settlers, will likewise be gone. Many outspoken, veteran leaders of the ideological Right - West Bank Rabbi Benny Elon, Gaza settler leader Zvi Hendel, Land of Israel Front leader Michael Kleiner, plus Moshe Peled and Eitan - will vanish from the Knesset chamber. If the National Union gets only two rather than three seats, Gush Emunim pioneer Hanan Porat will go with them. "This is a continuation of a political trend that began after the Yom Kippur War. The Israeli public has been steadily losing its ideological commitment, its willingness to fight for national causes," said Yisrael Harel, former chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The crucial blow to the Right, however, was inflicted by the prime minister whom right-wingers elected so enthusiastically in 1996. The blow was self-inflicted, said Harel. "It was Netanyahu who broke the ideological back of the Right, not the Left. Netanyahu did it when he signed the Hebron accord and then the Wye accord. That's when the Palestinian state began," he said. The Likud's likely loss of strength is due to Netanyahu's style of leadership, which contributed mightily to the departures of party stalwarts such as Begin and Meridor, and to the flagging political passions of Likud activists, Harel added. - Barak, if elected prime minister, is likely to put together a Knesset majority among One Israel, Meretz, Center, Yisrael Ba'aliya, Shinui and Pnina Rosenblum (who was touch-and-go in the polls between getting in with the minimum two seats and failing to make it at all). This would be a purely secular, Left-center government - without the Right, without the religious, and with only one ethnic party. Adding the two Arab parties, Hadash and the Democratic Arab Party/Balad, would bring a Barak government's total up to about 70 seats. Yet Weiss said he believes Barak would seek to form a broader coalition. "Otherwise all the parties representing Israelis who consider themselves 'oppressed' and 'dispossessed' will be concentrated in the opposition. This would raise animosities to a truly dangerous level. The only way to overcome it is with a broad coalition," he said. - Netanyahu, on the other hand, will be forced to form a coalition that is not only broad, but seemingly irreconcilable. With the Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, United Torah Judaism and possibly National Union as his base, Netanyahu will have to try to bring in Yisrael Ba'aliya - now in an out-and-out ethnic war with Shas over the Interior Ministry, and in bitter competition with Lieberman - and/or the Center Party, whose leaders can't stand Netanyahu, and vice versa, and/or Shinui, which can't stand the haredim, and vice versa, and/or One Israel (see Center Party). HOWEVER, left-wingers should hold off on their celebrations. Prof. Asher Arian, a Haifa University political scientist and senior fellow with the Israel Democracy Institute, said that if the Knesset election comes out roughly according to the polls' early indications, it should give Netanyahu a boost in the expected June 1 second-round runoff for prime minister. "If there is a strong tilt one way or the other from the Knesset elections, there is a likelihood that the public will try to 'balance it out' in their vote for prime minister," Arian said. "This election is a fight for the voters in the middle, who don't want war but don't want too much peace, who don't want religion but don't want too much secularism." And if the voters bear out the public opinion polls in their vote for Knesset on May 17, then balance it out with their vote for prime minister on June 1 - if Israel elects a left-leaning Knesset and a right-leaning prime minister - then there will be a new kind of political gridlock in the land, Arian continued. "This would make government even harder," Arian maintained.
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