Despite the buzz generated by his Iran speech to Congress last week, polls show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly likely to be ousted in elections Tuesday by voters who say he overplayed the threat from the Islamic republic while ignoring economic problems closer to home.
A growing number of analysts say Mr. Netanyahu, a moderate conservative by Israeli standards, and his Likud Party are about to finish behind the Zionist Union coalition put together by Isaac Herzog, the 54-year-old lawyer, lawmaker and son of a former two-term Israeli president. That would represent a striking turnaround in a campaign that many expected Mr. Netanyahu, in office since 2009, to win with relative ease.
“The Israeli elections looked to be a foregone conclusion as little as a few days ago,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk said Tuesday. “Today, however, the situation looks a little bit different, and one never knows with Israel.”
Mr. Herzog was, until recently, a relatively unknown figure on the world stage. But a week before the vote, polls showed the Zionist Union coalition that his left-leaning Labor Party formed with former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s centrist Hatnuah party was on track to win at least four more seats than Likud in the 120-seat Knesset — presenting the first chance to put together a governing coalition.
Postelection maneuvering still leaves open the possibility that Mr. Netanyahu will come out on top. He could form a dominant coalition with far-right parties after election day. The battle over who can cobble together a majority government — and ultimately become prime minister — is likely to come down to the wire.
“This is not only a really close election, Netanyahu is in real trouble,” said Neri Zilber, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy scholar who has spent recent weeks monitoring the shift in Israeli public sentiment.
The election has turned into a “referendum on Netanyahu himself,” Mr. Neri said, with growing signs of “Bibi fatigue” — a reference to the prime minister’s personal nickname — from voters across the ideological spectrum.
Mr. Netanyahu cuts an outsized figure on the world stage, on display yet again with a contentious but forceful address to Congress about Iran last week in defiance of President Obama.
Mr. Herzog, meanwhile, has capitalized on meat-and-potatoes domestic issues.
“The main policy issue on this campaign, and polls bear this out, isn’t Iran or security or even the Palestinians. It’s economics,” said Mr. Zilber. “And within that, the primary issue is the cost of living, specifically housing costs, which have skyrocketed under Netanyahu’s reign.”
Focus on housing
While Washington focused on Mr. Netanyahu’s speech in the House chamber, many in Israel were griping about a scathing report on the housing market.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the report placed “substantial blame” on the Netanyahu government for a 55 percent rise in housing prices over the past five years. Some housing units take 12 years to build because of heavy bureaucratic red tape, said the report, which the nation’s state comptroller released in late February.
Mr. Netanyahu’s often-abrasive personal style and the housing report played “in combination to Herzog’s advantage,” said Mr. Zilber. “No. 1, he isn’t Netanyahu, and No. 2, the Labor Party has been very much emphasizing the cost of living and economic issues in its campaign. They have a proactive plan to lower the cost of living and increase supply in the housing market.”
On the big foreign policy issue, the more dovish Mr. Herzog has made the shrewd move of quietly agreeing with Mr. Netanyahu’s position on Iran — just not the way the prime minister has gone about promoting that position.
In a New York Times op-ed that appeared just days before Mr. Netanyahu arrived in Washington, Mr. Herzog asserted that it was “a major mistake” for the prime minister to have agreed to give an Iran speech at the invitation of congressional Republicans without consulting with the U.S. president.
Mr. Herzog said there “is no daylight” between him and Mr. Netanyahu on Iran or any other Israeli security issues but it was dangerous for Israel to create “the false impression that our interests are allied with only one American party or interest group.”
“We should be reaching out to all Americans — Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves,” he wrote.
Mr. Herzog, the father of three, is seen as a family man, a shrewd lawyer and an able domestic politician who has served in the Knesset for the past decade. But even his supporters say he lacks the charisma of the colorful and blunt-talking Mr. Netanyahu. He was elected leader of the Labor Party in mid-2013, becoming the de facto head of the opposition in the Knesset.
He has the political bloodlines for the top job: His father, Chaim Herzog, was the sixth president of Israel — from 1983 to 1993 — after having served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.
But Mr. Herzog’s background and platform may be of secondary importance when Israelis head to the polls.
Mr. Indyk, who hosted a panel on Israel’s elections at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, observed that “this election has been about Netanyahu.”
Mr. Herzog, he said, “perhaps because he can’t do anything else, [is] basically not trying to make any mistakes.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.