The Election Netanyahu Cannot Lose

Israel may hold a lawful election on October 27, count every ballot correctly and certify the result — and still fail to transfer power.

That is the danger now taking shape: not the cancellation of democracy, but its conversion into a procedure whose outcome is legitimate only when Benjamin Netanyahu wins.

No ballots have yet been cast. Nevertheless, Likud has already begun defining the meaning of the result. A Netanyahu victory will represent the will of the people. A Netanyahu defeat will require another explanation: fraud, institutional conspiracy, Arab manipulation, hostile elites or an illegitimate coalition.

The election is being interpreted before it happens.

Likud politicians have repeatedly attacked senior officials of the Central Elections Committee. Dean Livne, its acting director-general, was portrayed as politically biased. When Yifat Siminovski, a specialist in artificial intelligence and cybertechnology, was unanimously appointed as the committee’s legal adviser, Netanyahu and his party challenged both the procedure and her qualifications.

The committee is chaired by Noam Sohlberg, a conservative Supreme Court justice. That detail destroys the convenient claim that Likud is merely defending itself from a left-wing institution. The problem is not the committee’s ideology. The problem is that it remains capable of issuing decisions Netanyahu does not control.

Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem has gone further. Before a single vote has been cast, he has already identified where the election will supposedly be falsified: Arab communities and kibbutzim.

A governing party that predicts fraud before an election is not protecting electoral integrity. It is manufacturing an alibi for defeat.

The latest polls explain the urgency. Recent surveys place Netanyahu’s bloc between the high forties and low fifties, well below the 61 seats required for a Knesset majority. Some give the non-Arab opposition an outright majority. Others leave Arab parties holding the balance of power. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar is running level with or ahead of Likud in several measurements, while Eisenkot leads Netanyahu in some head-to-head questions about suitability for prime minister.

Polls are not results. But they show why Likud’s geography of suspicion is so precise.

If the non-Arab opposition reaches 61 seats, large anti-Netanyahu margins in kibbutzim and other opposition strongholds may remove him. If it falls short, Arab representatives may become indispensable to the formation of a government. Likud has preemptively marked both routes as suspect.

The electoral map is being redrawn as a crime........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)