ELECTION DAY SCENESETTER AND THE LIEBERMAN DARK

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 000352 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/02/2019 TAGS: PREL PGOV PINR KWBG PINS IS SUBJECT: ELECTION DAY SCENESETTER AND THE LIEBERMAN DARK HORSE FACTOR REF: A. TEL AVIV 346 ¶B. TEL AVIV 342 ¶C. TEV AVIV294 Classified By: DCM Luis G. Moreno. Reason 1.4 (B/D) ¶1. (C) Summary: On the eve of elections to the 18th Knesset, the electorate, the analysts and the candidates are grappling with the confusion of a race that the final polls predict has narrowed significantly between the Likud and Kadima parties to the point where it is anyone's guess which party will win the greatest percentage of the vote. In the course of just a week, the confidence of former PM Bibi Netanyahu has given way to frenetic efforts to keep right-wing voters from voting for the Yisrael Beiteinu Party (YBP) of Bibi's former chief of Staff, Avigdor Lieberman, who has emerged as the dark horse candidate of the campaign. Even as Likud struggles to prevent erosion among its right-wing electorate, Livni's more effective campaigning over the past two weeks may garner Kadima would-be supporters of Ehud Barak and the Labor Party (and other parties further to the left) in Kadima's calculated effort to prevent Netanyahu from becoming the next prime minister. Even if Kadima manages an upset over Likud, however, the overall Knesset will be more right-wing than it is now. ¶2. (C) Summary Cont.: The unofficial election results may become known as early as 2200 (Local) on February 10, when the first exit polls are announced. We anticipate that no one party will be empowered with a decisive win. Instead, as many as three to four parties (Likud, Kadima, YBP, Labor) will win medium-sized chunks of the electorate corresponding to roughly 15-30 Knesset seats each. Three of the leaders of these parties -- Netanyahu, Livni and Barak -- have expressed interest in forming a unity government, but it is not clear whether they would join a government led by someone else in that troika (although rumors of a Netanyahu-Barak axis cannot be dismissed). Lieberman has kept his options open, and could easily fit within a right-wing coalition led by Netanyahu; however, his iconoclastic positions on issues such as Jerusalem (he is amenable to hiving off Arab neighborhoods),a two-state solution (he wants to transfer Israeli territory where large numbers of Arabs live to Palestine in return for West Bank settlement blocs),and his campaign commitment to civil marriage could allow him to marry up with Kadima - if the political price is right. If YBP takes third place, as now appears likely, Lieberman could become the kingmaker of the next coalition. Immediately after the election, the parties will begin haggling over possible coalitions, and President Peres has clarified that he has no intention of beginning formal consultations with the political parties until after the election results are made official o/a February 18. End Summary. -------------- WHAT THE COUNTRY IS VOTING FOR -------------- ¶3. (SBU) In a pre-election "special" Israel Radio went to immense trouble to assist its listeners in making sense of the ideologies and platforms of the major parties contesting Tuesday's elections -- only to conclude that ideology had very little to do with the race and platforms were at best so convoluted, vague and tedious as to be unreadable. Israel Radio's research showed that most Israelis do not read the lengthy texts of political platforms but vote according to personalities or campaign advertisements. (The Israel Democracy Institute produced a "campaign compass" to guide interested voters in finding a party that matched their views, but most users of this web-based tool were residents of Tel Aviv.) Political commentators are agreed that only Avigdor Lieberman has the personality, memorable campaign slogans and a clear and intelligible election platform that may be easily absorbed by the voting public. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni made some inroads in the last weeks of the campaign by using the words of Netanyahu's former critics (and current allies) against him, pitching her candidacy to women voters, and by offering a more hopeful vision of the future of a two-state solution than other candidates. Barak has failed to capitalize on his enhanced popularity following the Gaza war by offering a competing vision, which may explain the absence of further gains. -------------- THE LIEBERMAN FACTOR -------------- ¶4. (SBU) The weekend polls of February 6, the last permitted by law prior to Tuesday's elections, put Likud marginally ahead of Kadima's 23-24 seats with 25 to 27 Knesset members. Likud has dropped ten seats from its all-time polling high of TEL AVIV 00000352 002 OF 003 36 in early December 2008. A prominent pundit privy to internal Likud polling of February 8 said that Likud would win 26 seats; Kadima 24; YBP 18 and Labor 12-13. Until recently, Netanyahu has been inaccessible, un-engaged and overconfident. Pundits and Likud officials alike are agreed that most of the lost support for Likud has been siphoned off to Yisrael Beiteinu, now considered the "dark horse" of this election. Avigdor Lieberman's strategy for garnering the Russian immigrant and Israeli youth vote has been an easily discernible, hard-line platform depicting Israel's twenty-percent Arab minority as disloyal to Israel, a theme which Netanyahu has refused to address. In fact, Netanyahu refused to debate other candidates - a move that pundits believe may have been his worst mistake in the campaign. ¶5. (U) Weekend electronic media repeatedly interviewed first-time Israeli voters, still in their teens, about their choice of Lieberman's party. While it was clear from their accents that most were Russian speakers, their Hebrew was flawless, indicating they were not recent immigrants. Asked to explain their choice of Lieberman's party, the answer came back "He'll make order" or "It's time for a dictatorship" or "He'll deal with the Arabs. " Lieberman's inclusion of prominent, native-born, former Likudniks (such as former MK Uzi Landau and former Ambassador to the U.S., Danny Ayalon) in the YBP has helped catapult the party from the immigrant-only niche that it had been relegated to in previous elections. As many as a third of YBP's expected voters are native-born. -------------- LIEBERMANIA OR LIEBERPHOBIA? -------------- ¶6. (SBU) Avigdor Lieberman's campaign derives its force from the simplicity of his platform, which is summed up in the populist slogan, "Without loyalty, there is no citizenship. " The slogan is a reference to his advocacy of a draft citizenship law which would require all citizens to sign a declaration of loyalty to the state and its laws or forfeit the right to vote and hold public office. The equation of the right to citizenship with a declaration of loyalty to the state is a new approach on Lieberman's part and has largely overshadowed his previous emphasis on the notion of exchanging Israeli territory where Arabs live for Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. -------------- BUT WHAT DOES LIEBERMAN SAY? -------------- ¶7. (C) Three months ago, few political observers took Avigdor Lieberman seriously when he said he was aiming for 20 seats in the 2009 elections. A Lieberman aide told poloff February 9 that YBP predicts it will win 22 seats, and that Lieberman will become the kingmaker of the next coalition. Lieberman is a gifted politician with a highly-developed sense of humor and a reputation for straight talk. The police investigations into his alleged money laundering and other unlawful business practices that threaten to interfere with his political ambitions are the butt of his many jokes. When Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yossef declared that a vote for Yisrael Beiteinu strengthened Satan (because of Lieberman's support for civil marriage and opposition to the power of the Rabbinate),Lieberman was swift to acknowledge that along with the Israel Police (who launched an investigation a short time ago - a move that makes Lieberman appear to be a victim in the eyes of many Russian immigrants) and Israeli Arab Knesset member Ahmed Tibi, Rabbi Ovadia had earned his gratitude for boosting his electoral standing. -------------- KADIMA - KEEPING ITS OPTIONS OPEN -------------- ¶8. (U) Trailing Likud by only two or three seats in the last opinion polls, Kadima is going into the elections with the assumption that even if it does not win the largest number of votes, Livni still has a chance of being asked to form a government. Much depends on whether Yisrael Beiteinu endorses the Likud leader to form the next government. To date Avigdor Lieberman is giving nothing away. Tzipi Livni told weekend television that if elected she would invite Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu to join in the formation of "a real unity government. " She did not, however, rule out the inclusion of Lieberman. -------------- A BARAK-BIBI AXIS WITHOUT LIEBERMAN? -------------- TEL AVIV 00000352 003 OF 003 ¶9. (C) Fighting for political survival, the Labor Party sees the latest opinion polls as both an omen of its ongoing decline but also as a possible herald of a role for Labor in the new political reality created by the rise of Yisrael Beiteinu. Labor's Yitzhak Herzog, who will probably have a key role in any future coalition negotiations, told Israel Radio that no one should assume that "Lieber-mania" had put Labor down and out. In fact, Herzog said, Labor could be in a position to tip the scales between Likud and Kadima. Election results would not be a matter of which party had the largest number of votes but which block of parties could form a government. Herzog did not elaborate but it was clear he was referring to a possible Likud-Kadima-Labor coalition. Another analyst with close ties to Labor leaders remarked that he was skeptical that Netanyahu or Barak would agree to serve in a government led by Livni, but might happily work together. -------------- NATIONAL UNITY GOVERNMENT - STILL AN OPTION -------------- ¶10. (SBU) Many pundits and op-ed writers are advocating a broad national unity government. Right-leaning Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University and left-leaning Professor Shlomo Avineri of the Hebrew University, have both put forth the idea that Likud's Netanyahu is likely to form such a broad-based national unity government. Avineri says Netanyahu would do it because the public wants it, because he needs to do it in order to have a respectable administration with which to do business with Washington, and because it would obviate his dependence on Yisrael Beiteinu. Steinberg believes such a coalition would give Netanyahu the defense minister he wants -- Barak -- and the stability the country needs. On the night of February 9, Netanyahu convened a joint press conference with Yuval Rabin (son of the late Labor PM Rabin),to emphasize the importance of a national unity government "with all Zionist parties." If Netanyahu wins, he may want to broaden his coalition beyond Labor and Kadima - so as to prevent giving either party a policy veto. However, the pieces to such a coalition puzzle do not fit well, and such an effort would be complicated by personality and policy differences. ¶11. (U) All we can say with certainty as of the writing of this report is that the outcome of Israel's elections remains uncertain. The coalition-forming process also promises to be full of surprises, no matter which party wins the most votes. ********************************************* ******************** Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv ********************************************* ******************** CUNNINGHAM