“So, what are your elections going to look like?” was the question that members of President Isaac Herzog’s entourage and journalists accompanying the president’s visit to the United States were asked countless times this week in the Capitol. In the halls of Congress, at think tanks, in all the most important bureaus of the administration; everyone was looking to get a look into the crystal ball.
We tried to give them a glimpse, but even our interlocutors knew that a roll of the dice would be just as accurate. “The most likely result of the fifth round of elections in Israel is a sixth one in 2023,” said Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute, summing up the situation.
Katulis lived in Israel in the past and is familiar with its nuances. In September, he traveled to Israel with an AIPAC delegation to learn about the security challenges facing the country, which also paid a visit to Ramallah.
In an article titled, “Israel’s fragmented, dysfunctional politics heads towards elections, again”, Katulis described the situation as “a sort of political insanity of doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome. This scenario is leading more and more voices to call for broad reform of Israel’s overall political system, calls that go nowhere because of the very national divisions that produce repeated electoral gridlock.
Sound familiar, America?
Indeed, just as Israel faces a political stalemate – a situation in the game of chess where a player who is facing defeat puts himself in a position where he has no legal move and thus achieves a draw – so too does America. On Nov. 8, the mid-terms will come to an end. The Republicans are expected to win and take control of Congress, which will put President Joe Biden in a pickle. Any measure he tries to pass will be foiled by his political opponents.
