Elections, and some other stuff

Last time I blogged, back in March, we were staring in the face of another Israeli general election which ended up with a Netanyahu victory (of sorts), a result that the pollsters were simply not predicting 24 hours before people went to the polls. Just this week Bibi has finally managed to put together a coalition government that has seen something of a swing to the right and given him a paper-thin majority in the Knesset. This was curiously mirrored in the UK three days ago when once again we ended up with a result that not only was not what pollsters were predicting, but which has seen the Tories gain a slim majority and which left a considerable amount of egg on the face of most of the political commentators in the country and which also led to the resignation of the party leaders of three of the most significant opposition parties. Well, two and UKIP. It’s been a curious time.

First off, Israel. Clearly I am not really an experienced commentator when it comes to Israeli politics – or, let’s face it, any politics – but the following things struck me during the 2015 elections. Bibi dissolved the government after a massive falling-out with Tzipi Livni, from Labour, and the dashing Yair Lapid, from Yesh Atid, and fresh elections were called. In the run-up to the election it seemed as though there was going to be a swing towards Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Zionist Union party (a joint ticket between Labour and Hatnuah) and a key voice calling for more action towards the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict although, as always with the Israeli political system, the Labour party were never going to get a serious majority. Then the polls opened, and after 24 hours of furious electioneering (and, it has to be said, some slightly unsavory campaigning on Bibi’s part) the Likud ended up with the numbers needed to put together a coalition government – most of those numbers actually gained from other parties with similar ideological platforms.

That’s finally happened this week: the Likud, Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu and Shas have a combined total of 61 seats, giving them a paper-thin majority in the 120 seat Knesset. On the surface, that seems to an unqualified observer like me to be a government which has moved significantly to the right and which is not interested in engaging with the peace process in any meaningful way – the Jewish Home, in particular, actively opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. Actually, it turns out that the 20^th Knesset has fewer groups which support settlements, fewer Orthodox lawmakers, more Arabs and a record number of women. A lot of analysts are also predicting that the government won’t last that long (http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.655471 for example) as it hasn’t created a sustainable political structure, unless there’s another bout of military hostilities and conflict with Hamas/Hezbollah/the PA/anyone which unites most Israelis behind whoever seems to be ‘strong on defense’.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the coming year, not least because the clearest result of the election is the fact that Bibi is still in power. He’s like freaking super-glue – you cannot dislodge him, and he played the game like a pro in the run-up to elections. He is a pro. Say what you like about the man, he’s an outstanding politician and it looks he won’t be moving from the Israeli political landscape for a while yet. Boy, does he play dirty. My least favourite moment of the election was when he took to Facebook on election-day to tell people to rush out to the polls because “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses”. Yes, heaven forbid that Arabs exercise their democratic right. On the other hand, my favourite moment was when I was walking through the shuk past one of the places where I buy vegetables and the Orthodox owner (Chaim) stopped me for a chat about the elections. Which went as follows:

Chaim: So, Hannah (yes, he still calls me Hannah after 6 months and me reminding him EVERY time that it’s Anna) – who did you vote for?
Me: No one. I’m not Israeli.
Chaim: You’re not?
Me: Nope.
Chaim: So, you’re not Jewish?
Me: Nope. Christian actually.
Chaim: Really?
Me: Yes.
Chaim: So, not Jewish? Well, there’s still time…

So. A new government in Israel and just this weekend a new government in the UK. It’s been funny following the elections from a faraway place and hard to stay involved, although I was able, despite the best attempts of Bristol electoral services to confuse me at every stage of the application process, to sort out a proxy vote and my lovely friend Laura trotted off to the polling station in Redland Green to vote for me. General elections when you don’t live in the country are a little weird. The majority of coverage I’ve been exposed to has come from watching Have I Got News For You, reading The Times and following the feed on Facebook which has been saturated with opinion and articles and rants and all the sorts of stuff that people say when they feel passionate about an issue – and as far as I can see this has whipped people up into a frenzy. My friend Rach says that at home people have been emotionally engaged on a much deeper level than in previous years. I wonder if this is because the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government has divided people in a way that I’ve never seen before, with some policies that have been incredibly controversial – welfare cuts, austerity, privatization of parts of the NHS, free schools... Most of my friends sit comfortably on the left of the centre, supporting Labour or the Lib Dems (before they became – perhaps – a little compromised by their role in the coalition government) or the Greens. Very few of my friends have Conservative leanings. So the election of a Conservative majority government – albeit with a very slim majority – has come as something of a shock.

What’s curious to me is that people are so shocked that there’s a Tory majority. To be fair, everyone was predicting another hung Parliament and there was a lot of mud-slinging about potential coalition partners, electoral responsibility, how many seats and coalition partners would lead to a viable government. Why are we so surprised that the country has elected a majority? When I was growing up, we had a Conservative government for the better part of two decades, followed by a Labour government for nearly a decade and a half. Political analysts talk about ‘shy Tories’ who are too embarrassed to say they will vote Tory, because they don’t want to seem uncaring, and they talk about how Tony Blair’s greatest achievement was to persuade the middle classes to vote Labour for the first time. The classic saying that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ seems to me to fit here. The Tories have stabilized the economy – at the cost, it is true, to the poorest in British society, whatever Cameron says about ‘Big Society’ – and people want stability. It’ll be interesting to see the change in British society that comes with 5 years of a Conservative majority. Are we swinging back to the right? Are the Conservatives going to introduce policies which will affect the country as deeply as Thatcher’s demolition of the mining unions? Will the proposed referendum about Europe lead to the UK withdrawing from the European Union? Will there be another referendum about Scotland and the union? If nothing else, the resignation of Clegg, Miliband and Farage (though his exit from party leadership seems temporary) will force a change in the opposition leadership and it will take a while for those parties to re-organise and sort out their political priorities. Once again, I’m no political analyst, but this election seems to have the potential to change the UK profoundly.

Oops...

That’s my tuppeny’s-worth on the whole thing. In other news, now that this horrendously long winter is over we finally made it to the beach yesterday. It was a glorious day with Tamar and Allie with sunshine, sea, a few cold beers, and good food at a restaurant in town that has miraculous gin/ginger/cucumber cocktails.  It was lots of much-needed girl time and sunbathing. People tell me that my complexion is that of an ‘English Rose’ – ‘anaemic Viking’ might be more accurate – so I’m pretty careful with the old sunscreen, but I somehow managed to miss my feet and now have weird blotchy patches. To be fair, this is not an a par with the great sun-burn of May 2005, when I spent two hours sitting on the Downs in Bristol sans-sunscreen, then spent two days sitting in a darkened room covered in yoghurt initially (nothing else in the house) then what can only be described as after-sun goo. But it’s still a little painful and I feel a little stupid.

Summer reading - good to go

We’re in the final countdown to the end of the school year – the past two weeks have been appallingly busy and it doesn’t look like it’s going to ease off anytime soon – so I’m trying to a) finish all the things that need finishing before the holidays and b) get in some decent reading material for the long break. It’s difficult to buy books in Israel, as Steimatsky, the only bookstore that sells English-language books, is over-priced and under-stocked. As a result, I go a little nuts at airport bookstores, and having travelled twice in the last month I came back with a lot of new books, plus I helped out at the Christ Church summer fair and lucked out at the book stall – four books for 20 shekels – so my pile of reading material for the summer holidays is finally at a decent level, even if it is somewhat eclectic.

Previous books recommendations on the blog have been well-received, so in the interests of the public's right to know: I’m in the middle of H is for Hawk, a beautiful book about a woman coming to terms with her father’s sudden death through training a goshawk called Mabel; I couldn’t finish The Miniaturist because I just did not enjoy it at all; and I’m nearly done with Eastward to Tartary, another Robert D. Kaplan book which is a fascinating account of his travels through Eastern Europe and the Near East at the turn of the 21^st Century.  Interestingly, his analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is woefully off: Kaplan was pretty optimistic that a two-state solution would actually happen, and wrote that “The outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks…is predictable and therefore uninteresting”. Sitting in Jerusalem in 2015, with a right-wing coalition government led by a man who days before the election said that “anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel”, Kaplan’s optimism seems wildly mis-judged. But the Psalmist tells us to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you. May peace be within your walls, And prosperity within your palaces.” So that’s what I’ll keep doing.