My three minutes guide to the different parties
For the Israeli public, the elections are our Grand Finale. The election season produces for us the audience, an action that engages in the daily routine of demanding and boring with a little bit of piquancy, change, and especially the activation of "gray cells" in the brain.

Early morning on the banks of the Yarkon River in Yehoshua Park, passing with the bike as I listen to pedestrians, runners, and cyclists while listening to the people around me, the ear whispering to me what is happening around Benjamin Netanyahu, Victor Lieberman, Moshe Kahlon, Benny Ganz, Yair Lapid, and members of the Likud party , and the religious parties.

Leaving in Israel, we can point to five different issues that there are in Israelis lives, and we can associate different parties with each of them.
1. The economy – Many find the cost of living in Israel too high, due to a mixture of taxes, monopolies and bureaucracy – this led to large protests on the streets a few years ago.
2. Chareidim – Many Israelis are angry that the Chareidi sector encourages its children not to serve in the army, or work for a living, but encourages them to study in Yeshivot for their whole lives. The Haredim want representatives who will help them financially, and allow them to live a lifestyle in which they can maintain their religious standards.
3. Israeli Arabs – about 20% of Israel is Arab. Israeli Arabs have been accused of not having a true commitment to the State of Israel, but Israeli Arabs often feel that they are on the receiving end of racism from Israel`s Jewish citizens.
4. The Palestinian question – There are millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, who currently do not have a state. There is a huge debate in
5. Israel and worldwide as to when/how/if the Palestinians should get a state.
6. The Iranian bomb – Iran is currently developing a nuclear program which Israel fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb to attack Israel with, and many Israelis are worried about this scenario.


Israel is a small and relatively young country, but its turbulent history has placed it squarely at the center of the world stage for most of this century.
For two millennia the Jews, dispersed all over the world, prayed for a return to Zion. Until the nineteenth century, that dream seemed a fantasy, but then a secular Zionist movement was born and soon the initial trickle of Jewish immigrants to Palestine turned into a flood as Jews fled persecution in Europe. From these beginnings, Martin Gilbert traces the events and personalities that would lead to the sudden, dramatic declaration of Statehood in May 1948.

From that point on, Israel's history has been dominated by conflict: Suez, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Lebanon and the Intifada. Using contemporary documents and eyewitness accounts, drawing on his own intimate knowledge of the country and its people, Martin Gilbert weaves together a seamless, page-turning history of a powerful and proud nation. (less)

Netanyahu has failed to form a government, sending Israelis back to the voting booth
Netanyahu’s attempts at a coalition fell apart, so Israel will host elections again in September to try to break the stalemate.
The development comes barely two months after Netanyahu declared victory in the April 9 elections, where he appeared to have secured a record fifth term.
The Knesset (Israel’s parliament) voted to dissolve late Wednesday local time after a political stalemate among Netanyahu’s allies thwarted his attempt to cobble together a coalition before the deadline. It’s the first time in Israel’s history that the expected prime minister has failed to form a government.
Now Israel is set to hold another round of elections on September 17, which means it likely won’t form a government until November. The fallout from this political drama is still unfolding, but it’s an unexpected twist in the results of one of Israel’s most consequential elections in years.

Why Netanyahu failed to form a government, briefly explained
Despite facing looming criminal charges in multiple corruption scandals, Netanyahu managed to hold on to power in Israel’s elections in April, with his Likud Party winning 35 seats.
As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explained, Netanyahu’s party didn’t win the election outright, but that’s the norm in Israeli elections:
Party leaders generally become prime ministers by cobbling together a parliamentary majority with the help of smaller parties. In this case, a group of smaller right-wing parties expected to back Netanyahu seems to have captured 65 seats, enough to give him a 10-seat majority over the rival center-left bloc (the exact numbers could change as the remaining two percent of votes are tallied).
Netanyahu had six weeks to form a government, and that’s where he hit a roadblock.
The main problem is a political dispute between ex-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, who’s the leader of the secular ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, and ultra-Orthodox parties — and Netanyahu needs both to form a coalition government.
At issue is a bill that would require ultra-Orthodox men studying the Torah to participate in the country’s mandatory military conscription (they’re currently exempted). The ultra-Orthodox parties are against the proposal and wanted Netanyahu to modify it.
But Lieberman, who promoted and strongly supports the bill, argued that every Israeli should share in military service. And he refused to join Netanyahu’s coalition government unless the bill stayed in its current form.
That led to a political stalemate that effectively crippled Netanyahu’s chances of forming a government. “Bibi needs the ultra-Orthodox for the coalition, but he also needs Lieberman, and he’s not able to find a middle point right now on this,”
Lieberman, and some of the secular conservatives whom he represents, bristle at the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox, especially within Netanyahu’s coalition. So, in some respects, this is just an expression of that larger debate.
While Netanyahu remains politically popular in Israel, not everyone is thrilled about his iron grip on government that’s essentially preventing anyone else from getting a chance at being prime minister.
“I think the bigger issue is Lieberman’s calculation that, ‘What do I get sitting in another Netanyahu government? Do I really want to do this?’” Goldenberg noted.
Netanyahu tried to salvage things by making overtures to the opposition Labor Party, but it refused to join in his government. He also tried to compromise with Lieberman, according to the news outlet Haaretz, but Lieberman wouldn’t budge. And the centrist parties won’t enter into a coalition with him because of the charges of bribery and corruption that the prime minister is facing.
So, Netanyahu was stuck, and the deadline was coming fast. And if he’d hit the midnight deadline without having formed a government, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin would then have had the option of tapping the leader from another party to try to form a government instead.
This would have effectively ended Netanyahu’s premiership, so he tried to preempt it by calling for a vote to dissolve the Knesset, essentially betting on voters rather than his fellow politicians.
With the first dawn light, I set off on a quick hike cycling in the countryside, a combination of riding land field and road. I started from Hamashtella neighborhood area, to the fields of Tel Baruch North, along Hayarkon Park to the Tel Aviv port. I continued along the beach promenade to the port of Jaffa. Along the Tel Baruch promenade to A-Zouk beach, and through Pi-Glillot junction area, I cut through the fields of Ramat Hasharon, back home to Hamashtella neighborhood.
I returned home happy, after a challenging ride in spring weather, I felt the essential difference between the weather in some areas, the temperature was 29 °, extremely hot.

The full reward was a few more kilometers to the repertoire:
Length of track: 54”01 km - Cumulative height: 210 m - Extended time (4:06) Four hours, six minutes.

Wish you a continues week my friends, see you again on the paths.



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