Israel’s surprise elections have thrust one man and one issue into the spotlight: Avigdor Lieberman, a bitter right-wing rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who says he is trying to stop the country from becoming a religious state.
The rift between the pair is laying bare the tension between religious and secular Israelis that has pulsed through Israeli society since the country’s 1948 founding. Mr Netanyahu is a secular politician, but Mr Lieberman and others have seethed as the Prime Minister has relied on support from ultra-Orthodox parties to keep him and his Likud party in power and advance efforts to shield him from corruption charges.
Mr Lieberman, a Moldovan-born former bouncer who was once a top aide to Mr Netanyahu, refused to join the Prime Minister’s coalition, leaving it one vote shy of a majority by a Wednesday deadline and forcing new elections scheduled for September.
He is betting big on many Israelis’ frustration with religious rules driven by a growing ultra-Orthodox population, such as bans on public transportation and open businesses on the Sabbath, and strict laws on and marriage and conversion to Judaism.
Mr Lieberman’s decision to abandon Mr Netanyahu is likely to shift the election narrative to religious-versus-secular issues rather than the right-left paradigm that has buoyed Mr Netanyahu’s career.
“What happened last night was a seachange in Israeli politics,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington and deputy minister in Mr Netanyahu’s last government.
Read the article by Felicia Schwartz in The Australian (from The Wall Street Journal).