From our special envoy to Israel and the occupied West Bank,
This may be the end of an era in Israel. With the legislative elections organized this Tuesday, the place of Benyamin Netanyahu - in power for more than eighteen years - at the head of the government is in the balance. There are many contenders, with 37 lists trying to obtain seats in the Knesset. It takes 61 out of 120 to govern. These elections are an immense game of alliances and negotiations between parties which sometimes defend opposing ideas. And in a “very fragmented” society with “real political battles”, the electoral period can give way to “real violence”, explains Jean-Maurice Cohen.
So for Franco-Israelis - who represent less than 3% of the electorate - accustomed to French elections, the choice is sometimes difficult. Jean-Maurice Cohen, a 68-year-old retiree, left his French countryside for Tel Aviv six months ago. There, he discovered a politics very different from that he experienced in France. In Israel, “ecological and environmental issues are not a subject,” he explains in the hubbub of a Parisian café before returning to his new homeland. Even economic concerns “come far behind on the list,” he adds. However, 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the National Insurance Fund, and the “cost of living is around 35% more expensive than in Paris”.
Military service, a central measure
What is at the heart of all concerns is October 7. In a society still traumatized by the Hamas attack on its soil, which left some 1,200 dead in 2023, everything is experienced through the prism of these attacks. Whether it is the security of the country and the Jews of Israel for Rivka*, or compulsory military service for all, say Jean-Maurice Cohen and Alexandre Bensoussan. The latter made aliyah in 2021 when he was 18 years old, after the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy against François Hollande and the attacks by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse against a Jewish school.
For this lawyer hired in a large Tel Aviv firm - which notably defends Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant before the International Criminal Court - the military question is at the center. An Israeli army reservist with training as a sniper – or “high precision shooter” – this is a “cap” that he cannot ignore in his electoral motivations. Sheltered by the walls of a meeting room in one of the towers in the center of the Israeli capital, he insists on having been called “seven times” for “more than 430 days” in three years in the Gaza Strip.
He saw the fact that ultra-Orthodox Jews “who eat state aid” were exempt from military service – three years for men and two years for women – as an injustice. It is also on this point that Jean-Maurice Cohen, who has “always been on the left in France”, made his decision. His vote will go to the party which will take this measure - at least a civil service - in the name of equality between all citizens. “They cannot have rights without participating in the national effort, without exposing themselves like everyone else,” he justifies, recalling that many families have lost loved ones called to the army.
A for or against which complicates the vote
The investigation into the events of October 7. Judicial reform. What will or will not happen in Gaza and the Palestinian question as a whole. That of equal citizenship for all its inhabitants, Arabs, Jews and Christians. All these questions arise in the campaign. But ultimately, this election “revolves around a subject, a person: for or against Benjamin Netanyahu? », summarizes Alexandre Bensoussan.
The game of alliances can force some to abandon their initial demands. Alexandre Bensoussan says he is in “a terrible dilemma”. Impossible for this 32-year-old sniper to vote for a list that could ally with Arab parties, as is the case of Gadi Eisenkot, former chief of staff of the Israeli armies and candidate best placed to eject Benjamin Netanyahu. Parties which, according to him, denounced a genocide in Gaza and made “ambiguous comments on October 7”. The former student of the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, with an imposing build, will undoubtedly have to put his conviction on military service to the wayside by “turning a blind eye to the potential alliance” with the ultra-Orthodox.
Safety first
“There are social issues. Israel has been threatened in its existence and in its future, so the criterion of choice is security,” says Jean-Maurice Cohen. Like Rivka. On the terrace of a café on a peaceful square in the center of Tel Aviv, this 34-year-old former Parisian admits to being little informed about Israeli politics and plans to find out more in the coming days. A former marketing student, she decided to leave France in 2018, after civic service in childcare in Israel. Despite threats from neighboring countries, despite almost constant war, despite “exorbitant” rents and the difficulties of finding work in her field of expertise, Rivka finds that in Tel Aviv, “it is good to live”. And would like it to stay that way.
Coming from an Ashkenazi Jewish family who were victims of the Shoah, where they always preferred “to live hidden to live happily”, the first motivation for her vote will be guided by “the security of the country”. First on October 7 then, more recently, the attempted hijacking of a Dubai - Tel Aviv flight, “it marks everyone”. “We are in danger, we are not really liked, so I would like the people who live here, in Israel, to be safe and that we are not targets,” Rivka explains. No result will make him leave the country.
*The first name has been changed
