The March 17, 2015 parliamentary elections were held roughly two years after the previous elections. According to the results, the incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed the new government. It controls 61 parliamentary seats, and is a narrow, right-wing and ultra-Orthodox government with the narrowest of Knesset majorities. Its composition shows that it would be one of the most right-wing administrations in Israel's history, and there is hardly a mention or plan of resolving the Palestinian conflict. This article tries to analyze whether the electoral results open up new possibilities for the peace process and Israel's security agenda.
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Likud has mostly formed the coalition governments with its natural partners which are the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties. See Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Governments of Israel-Coalitions 1949 to the Present.” Right-left divisions in Israel indicate positions toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than economic positions. Right-wing parties hold a hawkish stance that objects to any territorial concessions, whereas parties that are termed left-wing are those that are favorable toward a peace agreement based on concessions of some territories to the Palestinians.
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In Israel, usually right-wing politicians attribute themselves as the “national camp.”
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Ralf Hexel, Israel after the Elections: Is the Country Facing Political Change? (Herzliya, Israel: International Policy Analysis, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2013), 3–4. After the capture of West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem in 1967, National Religious Party was the main religious nationalist party in Israeli political life. It was always a member of all coalitions from 1948 to 1992. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the party took a more nationalistic character and its followers believed that settlements in West Bank and Jerusalem were closely associated with divine redemption. See Barry Rubin, Israel: An Introduction (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 166.
Eretz Israel or Eretz Yisrael is a Hebrew term meaning “Land of Israel.” It is used to refer to Palestine and is found in the Bible. It refers to the land of ancient Israel which covers all of Palestine, including West Bank and Jerusalem. See Bernard Reich and David H. Goldberg, Historical Dictionary of Israel (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2008), 156.
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Likud and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu ran together in 2013 elections and got 31 seats (20 for Likud and 11 for Yisrael Beiteinu). At the same time, Labor Party and Hatnuah won 15 and 6 seats respectively. The three parties which formed the Joint (Arab) List were Hadash and Ra'am-Ta'al which won 4 seats each, and Balad which got 3 seats in 2013.
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In 2013 election Likud, the Jewish Home, Shas, United Torah Judaism, and Yisrael Beiteinu won a total of 61 seats in the Knesset.
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