I'll admit the thing that surprised me most this week is that Likud, the party that has run this country for most of the last two decades, hasn't published a platform since about two thousand and nine.
That's this whole episode in one fact, and we haven't started yet. Last time we did the map, who's running and how the seats add up. This time Daniel wants the substance. What each of these parties actually says it will do. And the problem, as you've just found, is that a lot of them don't say.
A lot of them don't write it down. Which isn't the same as having no positions. You can read most of these parties off their record. But it does mean that when we say a party stands for something, we have to be clear whether that's a document, a quote from the leader, or just what they did last time.
Who actually wrote something down?
Eisenkot's Yashar has a real one. A ten-point plan plus policy papers on the economy, national service, education, aliyah, pensioners. Liberman published one that the business paper Calcalist called the most detailed of the opposition platforms. Smotrich's party has a judicial plan. Feiglin's Zehut has a full libertarian manifesto, because of course it does. Ben-Gvir has a Gaza plan and not much else. Bennett and Lapid have a set of papers but no single document.
Leaving Likud, Shas, UTJ, the Joint List and Ra'am with nothing.
Nothing formal. Shas's list is chosen by its Council of Torah Sages. You don't need a manifesto when you have a council.
It's a very efficient way to run a party. You just skip the part where the voters read anything.
Let me try organising this by issue rather than going party by party, because if we go party by party we're here until the election.
Do the one that decides who can even form a government.
The Haredi draft. It's the hinge of the whole thing. On one side, Shas and UTJ have both said, in public, in the last few days, that they will not join or support any government until a law protecting the status of yeshiva students has passed. Not as a negotiating point. As a precondition, before ministries, before budgets. Aryeh Deri said it on the fourteenth.
Before the government even forms.
Before it forms. And on the other side, almost the entire opposition, plus Ofer Winter on the right, has made the opposite a precondition. Universal service, legislated, or they don't sit.
So two sets of parties have each made the other side's red line their entry fee.
Which is why the Haredi parties are hard for anyone to seat. Including Netanyahu. Remember, Shas walked out of this government over the draft in July of last year.
What do the opposition versions actually look like? Because universal service can mean anything from boot camp to a form you fill in.
They differ in teeth. Eisenkot's plan is called National Service for All, it covers Haredim and Arab citizens, with the army first. The press reporting adds an exemption for roughly three percent, an elite tier of yeshiva students. And for draft evaders, the loss of a list of benefits. The purchase tax discount on a first home, daycare subsidies, property tax discounts.
That's a draft policy enforced through the property tax office.
It's a draft policy enforced through your wallet, which is the only enforcement anyone thinks will work. Bennett and Lapid go further on the numbers. Mandatory Haredi enlistment, aiming at twenty thousand more soldiers, and no state money for any school that doesn't teach the core curriculum. Liberman is the same in spirit, and he's actually done it. As finance minister he cut daycare subsidies for children of full-time yeshiva students.
The right, though?
That's the more interesting split. On paper, Smotrich talks about a consent-based framework. On the record, his party shelved the draft bill in March, backed the freeze on arresting draft evaders, and six of his seven MKs voted for a Basic Law on Torah study. Feiglin, sitting on the same list, wants a militia-style universal draft.
Same list, opposite policies.
They've said themselves they'll split after the vote. It's a technical alliance. You're voting for a bus with two drivers.
What about Likud?
Here I have to be careful, because the reporting conflicts. One outlet says Likud now calls for more enlistment, another says it resists drafting yeshiva students. What I can tell you from the record is that the exemption bill was shelved in March by Netanyahu and Smotrich together, and nothing replaced it.
Herman, can I ask you something? You and I are both fairly sympathetic to the right on security. Does the draft issue sit on the left-right line at all anymore?
I don't think it does. That's what struck me. Ben-Gvir, of all people, sent a letter on the eighth blaming UTJ's leadership for the draft crisis. Winter won't sit without a draft law. Sharren Haskel quit as deputy foreign minister over the arrest freeze and started her own list. The draft has become a fight about whether you served, not about where you sit.
Second hinge. October seventh.
Clean split. Every opposition list, both Arab lists, and Hendel's Reservists support a full state commission of inquiry, the kind headed by a judge with legal powers. Bennett says he'd establish it on his government's first day. Liberman says first decision, exactly according to the existing law. The coalition parties either resist it or say nothing. The government set up its own ministerial panel instead, which Liberman calls a whitewash.
Even the Haredi parties won't say?
Shas and UTJ both declined to answer when Ynet asked. A couple of Shas MKs backed a state commission earlier, individually. Which tells you it's not a theological objection, it's a coalition one.
My one hesitation about this, and I think it's a fair one, is that a state commission is also going to become a campaign weapon. Half of these lists are run by people whose case for office is that the other man was in charge that morning.
That's fair. Eisenkot's line is that anyone who held office on October seventh is unfit to lead. Which is also, conveniently, a description of everyone he's running against.
Though he was in the war cabinet, wasn't he? After.
After. He joined after. Which is the distinction he leans on.
It's a very precise distinction.
Third, the courts. The judicial overhaul hasn't gone away. It's been redrafted. Smotrich and Simcha Rothman put out a plan in September called Law and Justice two point oh. An override clause so the Knesset can re-pass a law the court struck down. Narrower judicial review. Splitting the Attorney General's job in two. And politically appointed legal advisers in each ministry. They've called implementing it a coalition condition. Feiglin wants elected judges and no judicial review at all.
And the opposition's answer is to reverse it?
The answers range. The Democrats want to reverse the overhaul entirely, including the changes to how judges are chosen, and amend the Nation-State Law. Bennett wants a written constitution and to define the court's powers more clearly, but no curb on its power to strike down laws. Eisenkot talks about an independent judiciary and a Basic Law on legislation. And three of them, Eisenkot, Bennett and Golan, want term limits on the prime minister.
Close your eyes. Breathe. A whisper of constitution. A hint of override. Something that lasts two terms. Or eight years. Whichever comes first. Basic Law. By no one. Available now as a forty-pack of ordinary kitchen sponges.
A Basic Law isn't a scent, and Basic Law Legislation would set out how all the others get passed. It's the missing one. Israel's never written down the rules for making its own constitution.
Let it go.
It's genuinely a big gap.
Term limits, though. How long?
Eisenkot says two terms. Bennett and Golan say eight years. Notice none of that would bind anyone retroactively, as written, except the Democrats, who want a law specifically preventing Netanyahu's return.
That's not a term limit. That's a restraining order.
That's how the right reads it, yes.
Fourth. The Palestinians. I assumed this was where the bloc lines would be sharpest.
It's where I was most surprised, actually. Because the sharp line isn't between the two blocs. It's between almost everyone and two small groups. Eisenkot, the man leading the opposition, told Israel Hayom in August that the two-state solution is a grave mistake. He prefers what he calls a state-minus. Palestinian autonomy, under Israeli security control. He opposes formal annexation, but he's not offering a state.
Bennett?
Bennett has always said no. Lapid, his number two, has said possibly. So that list is unresolved inside itself.
Very on brand for that partnership.
The only Jewish party that says two states for two peoples is The Democrats. Gilad Kariv has floated a demilitarised Palestinian state. Plus the Joint List. Ra'am's Mansour Abbas says a Palestinian state is already a reality, but reportedly told opposition leaders it wouldn't be a coalition condition.
And the far end?
Ben-Gvir's one written policy document is a Gaza plan called Disengagement seven-ten. It proposes what it calls voluntary emigration of Gazans, through a dedicated ministry, a quarter of a million people in the first year and nearly the whole population over seven years. Zehut's text is blunter still. Smotrich wants to cancel Oslo, dismantle the Palestinian Authority, and apply sovereignty.
A ministry of voluntary emigration is a phrase where every word is carrying a different load.
The word voluntary is doing the most work and getting the least scrutiny. Liberman, meanwhile, has a Gaza idea nobody else has. Hand responsibility for Gaza to Egypt, and bring Jordan in on parts of the West Bank.
Has anyone asked Egypt?
Not that I've seen. The Democrats want an internationally supervised technocratic administration in Gaza, Gulf-funded reconstruction. Bennett wants security zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and a central role for Egypt. So Egypt is popular. Egypt might be the most popular party in this election, and it isn't running.
What's your read on Iran, across the board?
Iran is the one place there's close to consensus. Everyone from Likud to Bennett to Eisenkot talks about continued pressure. The Democrats are the outlier only in emphasis. Golan wants a new nuclear deal while keeping the military option, and he called the killing of Khamenei a strategic mistake because nothing was built on it diplomatically.
That's a line that'll cost him votes.
In this climate, almost certainly.
Before religion, I don't want to skip the Arab lists, because we keep talking about them as seats in somebody else's arithmetic. What do they actually want?
Something much more domestic than the rest of this conversation. Crime, first and foremost. Ra'am's slogan is that there is no value higher than human life, and the count from the Abraham Initiatives is a hundred and eighty-four people killed in Arab communities so far this year.
A hundred and eighty-four. In ten months.
It's a staggering number, and it barely makes national news. The Joint List's leader, Yousef Jabareen, set out conditions on the eleventh for supporting any government from outside. A funded, time-limited plan against crime. A halt to home demolitions through proper zoning. Land for young couples. Recognition of the unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev. Plus a political horizon for the Palestinians.
Land for young couples is a housing policy. That's more of a housing policy than Likud has.
It's more of a housing policy than most of the Jewish lists have, which is a point we'll come back to next time. And the posture is support from outside, not joining. The Joint List says it will not join a Zionist coalition but would, say, abstain on a confidence vote, with no blank check. Ra'am wants back in government, as it was in twenty twenty-one, and names no exclusions. Its number two is Yoav Segalovitz, a former police commander and former Yesh Atid MK. Ra'am's first Jewish candidate.
A former Yesh Atid MK and police commander, running on an Islamist list to fight crime. That's not a sentence I expected to say.
Who will actually take their support is the other question. The Democrats are the only Zionist party that openly says including Ra'am would be natural. Eisenkot has been quoted saying Ra'am won't be part of his government, though he's floated a minority government that would need someone's support from outside. Bennett's position has been reported both ways.
So the party most likely to decide whether there's an opposition government is the one most of the opposition won't be photographed with.
That's the shape of it. Fifth, religion and state, and here the opposition is unusually united. Civil marriage, including for same-sex couples, from Bennett and Lapid, from Liberman, from the Democrats, and in press reporting from Yashar. Shabbat public transport decided city by city, which Bennett, Golan and reportedly Eisenkot back. Liberman wants it outright. Competition in kosher certification, so the Rabbinate loses its monopoly.
Civil marriage has been promised in every Israeli election since I was napping in the eighties. Does anybody think it happens this time?
What do you think? You're the one who reads the history.
I think it's the first promise that gets traded away the minute a Haredi party is needed for sixty-one.
I'd normally agree with you. The difference this time is that the draft fight might make the Haredi parties unseatable anyway. If they're out regardless, the price of civil marriage goes down. That's the real mechanism, if it happens.
Last one. The economy.
Here the platforms are thinnest, which matters for next episode. Likud is pro-market and lower taxes in general but has no cost-of-living plan anyone could find. Shas has no economic platform at all. Liberman's is detailed but unfunded. Twenty-five billion shekels a year more for defence, three billion for policing, and abolishing coalition funds, which are about five billion. No total, no funding sources.
He's costed the spending and left the income as an exercise for the reader.
Very much. Bennett and Lapid have the most concrete consumer pledges. Break up food monopolies, force Shufersal to sell off some stores, bring food prices down to the OECD average. Eisenkot talks about breaking up monopolies and adopting international standards, and benefits for reservists and working families first. The Democrats want a bigger state. Shorter work week, public childcare, public housing, stronger unions. And then Hendel's partner, Yaron Zelekha, wants to scrap import tariffs and quotas, cut VAT by a point a year to twelve percent, and cap income tax at forty.
That's the most libertarian economic offer from a list whose name is the Reservists.
The Reservists and the Economic Party, to be fair. It's in the name.
Herman, was there ever a point when a secular couple here could just walk into a town hall and get married?
Not in the eighties. You couldn't have done it through the Rabbinate in the eighties either, Corn. You'd have had to go to Cyprus.
I was asking Herman about now.
I know. I'm answering about then. Larnaca. The registry office by the marina. In the mid eighties the Jerusalem Bridge and Backgammon Society ran a coach and a ferry there every spring for members who wanted to get married without a rabbi. Members only. You had to have played in two tournaments. The society's minutes record a dispute about whether backgammon counted as a tournament game, which split the membership for eleven years. The bridge players said it was dice. The backgammon players said bridge was cards. Both true. Nobody resigned. They just sat at opposite ends of the coach. In the spring of eighty-six the committee voted, nine to seven, to have the treasurer marry the society itself, to settle who owned the coach. It's in the minutes. The registrar in Larnaca was a man called Andreas and he said no, politely, in three languages. The treasurer took it hard. He'd bought a suit.
The Cyprus marriage loophole is very real. Israel recognises a civil marriage performed abroad, so people have been flying to Cyprus for decades.
I went as a witness. Every year. I have twenty-three Larnaca marriage certificates with my name on them as witness. That's not counting the year the coach broke down in Ashdod and they did four of them in the port, on the ferry ramp, with the captain reading from a card. Those didn't count. The society still argues about whether they count. Here's what I want to know. If one of these parties gets civil marriage through, who's allowed to perform one?
Why?
I'd like to know.
That would depend on the law. Most proposals I've seen would make it a state registrar. Somebody employed by the state or a municipality.
Not the secretary of a society.
Not as written, no. The society's secretary would have to become a municipal employee.
Which means he'd have to get a job at the Jerusalem municipality, and then the municipality would be marrying people.
Then you're back to the city deciding, which is exactly how they'd do Shabbat buses. City by city.
Whatever passes, then, the real question for anyone who wants it is whether their own city council wants it.
Then he'll apply to the municipality. He's seventy-nine. They'll take a while.
He's put his finger on it, Hilbert, though he won't take credit for it. Almost every religion-and-state promise in the opposition platforms, transport, marriage, kashrut, gets pushed down to the city. Which means the national election decides whether you're allowed, and the local council decides whether you get it.
For a secular voter in a city like Jerusalem, that's a big asterisk.
It's the biggest one on the ballot. And it's worth bearing in mind for next time, when we get to housing, because housing is almost entirely a local planning question too.
The misconception I'd name is that this is a left-right election. That the bloc you're voting for tells you the policies you're getting.
Not even close. The man leading the anti-Netanyahu bloc opposes a Palestinian state. Ben-Gvir is attacking the Haredi parties over the draft. The real lines are the draft, the inquiry, and the courts, and they cut across the blocs.
Which means next episode is the hard one. Holding all of this up against what Daniel actually cares about.
Where the platforms are thinnest. Rent, prices, how you actually live day to day.
Our thanks to Hilbert Flumingtop, who produces this show and keeps it running on time.
This has been My Weird Prompts. You can find every episode, and the rest of this series, at my weird prompts dot com.
See you tomorrow.
