Israeli Elections: It's the Small Parties Game All Over Again

On March 28, Israelis are going to elect a new parliament. 31 lists competing for 120 seats in what is suppose to be the ultimate game of democracy. The question is not who is going to win – Kadima, Sharon's new centrist party, is going to receive the largest number of seats and comprise the coalition and the government – but rather what kind of coalition is Kadima going to build. With 3 large parties, many analysts predict the stakes are going to be different and this time the biggest party is going to rely on another big party; however the question is which one. And as this writer predicts, this question will once again be decided by the small parties.

During Israel's two big parties era (Likud and Labor), the whole matter of the coalition was left to the smaller parties. The head of the party that won out of the two had to please as many small parties as he could for the other big party was just too different ideologically; however today things are different. The two big parties compete with a third party comprised out of the combined ideology of the two extremes. What is more neither of the classic two, as a big party, has sufficient seats to extort the bound-to-win Kadima. Labor with a predicted 20 along with Kadima's 35 predicted seats comes to 55 seats, just short of the 61 needed majority; and Likud with predicted 16 seats comes up to 51 seats – once again short of the needed 61 seat majority. So once again the game will be decided by the small parties and the number of seats they are going to get.

If Kadima is ever to comprise a majority, it will have to include one of the two big parties in addition to the small parties with similar ideology in order to comprise the coalition. The logic is simple: if the majority of the rest of the seats going to smaller parties would be to right wing parties, then Kadima is going to seat in coalition with Likud. If the majority of the small parties' seats are going to go to left wing parties, Kadima is going to seat with Labor.

This simple logic will mean that nothing has changed to a large degree in Israeli politics. Though the number of big parties has increased; it has not increased sufficiently to render the small parties powerless and they will take advantage of that. Once again the small parties are going to take advantage of the situation and demand far reaching benefits for their publics at the expense of others much like Meretz or Shas did. However there is still a chance that something will be different. That difference will only occur if a number of the small unaffiliated lists like the pensioner's party, or green leaf party, will win a sufficient number of seats. Olmert should count his blessings if that ever happens for it means he would not be constrained to choose his big partner according to seats, but rather according to the foreign policy he believes in for the small unaffiliated parties would be too busy with their own agenda to seriously threat a big parties' coalition on foreign policy issues.