A Pair Is Not a Bloc

Israeli parties have until Friday 16 October to file surplus-vote agreements with the Central Elections Committee, eleven days before the 27 October election, Ynet reported on 11 October. Israeli law allows the agreements to be submitted until 11 days before election day, subject to the committee’s approval. Most of the big lists have already paired. One that has not is Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit. The agreements are small documents with a narrow job, and they are worth reading closely because the next Knesset may be decided by the last seat or two.

What the agreement does

Israel elects all 120 members of the Knesset from closed national lists, and a list must win at least 3.25 per cent of valid votes to enter, the Jerusalem Post’s election guide says. Seats are first awarded on a per-seat quota, and the seats left over are distributed by the Bader–Ofer method, which divides each list’s vote total by the number of seats it has already won plus one and gives the next seat to the highest result.

A surplus-vote agreement lets two lists be treated as one for that second step only. Ynet gives the arithmetic: the pair’s combined votes are divided by the seats they have already won plus one. In its example, 400,000 votes and 11 seats give a quotient of about 33,333. If the pair wins an extra seat, a further calculation decides which of the two gets it. The method has favoured larger lists since it was introduced in 1973, Ynet notes, and the agreement is void if either list falls below the threshold.

For scale, in 2022 a party needed 154,855 votes to qualify, and the quota for one seat was 36,227 votes, Ynet says. A seat won on a leftover, then, is decided by a few thousand ballots.

Who has paired

As of Ynet’s report, the signed agreements were Naftali Bennett’s list with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu; Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! with Yair Golan’s Democrats; the Joint List with Ra’am; Likud with Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism; and Shas with United Torah Judaism. The Jerusalem Post reported the first two opposition pairings on 10 September, in an account that names Bennett’s list as B’Yachad, Hebrew for “together.” The Joint List now reunites Hadash–Ta’al and Balad, which ran separately from each other and from Ra’am in 2022, the Post reported on 13 September; Balad failed to cross the threshold that year.

Shas and United Torah Judaism, in a joint statement quoted by Ynet from the parties led by Aryeh Deri and Yaakov Asher, said: “In the next Knesset, too, we will continue to cooperate fully on the core issues concerning the preservation of the Torah world and the status of yeshiva students.” Eisenkot’s party said he had “worked in various ways to organize the camp of change and hope as effectively as possible.”

The pair that did not form

Otzma Yehudit’s position shows why the paperwork has consequences. After Likud signed with Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit said: “Unfortunately, Likud refused to sign a surplus-vote agreement with us as part of an attempt to weaken our party and leave Ben Gvir outside the unity government Likud is planning with Eisenkot.” Ynet reports that Ben-Gvir’s list must now decide whether to pair with Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael or run without a partner. The party led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha had also offered Winter an agreement, and he did not respond. If Amcha Yisrael fails to cross the threshold, Ynet adds, a deal with it would have no effect.

That is the mechanism in one case. A pairing with a list that does not enter the Knesset transfers nothing. A list left unpaired competes alone for the last seats and cannot borrow another list’s remainder.

What a pair does not do

The agreements govern seat allocation after the count. Nothing in the sources for this piece says they bind either party on whom to recommend for prime minister or whom to sit with, or that the pairing merges the two lists’ seats, platforms or leaders.

Government formation is a separate process and begins only after the official results. Once those are published, the president consults the new factions, each of which can recommend a member to form a government, the Post’s guide says. The president is not required to choose the leader of the largest party, and must assign the task within seven days of the official results. The candidate has 28 days, extendable by up to 14, and the government needs the confidence of a majority of those voting, not necessarily 61. If the first candidate fails, a second gets 28 days; after that, members have 21 days to put forward a candidate backed by at least 61 signatures, and if that fails the Knesset is dissolved and an election held within 90 days.

The official results are due to be confirmed on 4 November, according to the election timetable the Jerusalem Post published in July, after which appeals may be lodged until 18 November. On that date, the president’s seven days would run to 11 November. The pairs filed on Friday will already have decided who holds the margin by then.