ABSTRACT
The election campaign for the twentieth Knesset was conducted, like all of the elections in Israel since the 1977 realignment, within the realm of the collective identity cleavage. However, this time the cleavage was more glaring and characteristics of symbolic politics were more salient than ever before, especially in the Likud party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign. The election campaign spoke in the language of the cleavage-not necessarily in terms of issues, but in emphasizing identity and loyalty to “our” camp and in rejecting the “other” camp. Moreover, Netanyahu’s surprising victory, contrary to the latest preelection polls, was attributed to this campaign. We analyze here the political cleavage among (primarily Jewish) voters.2 We start by presenting the Israeli political system in terms of theories about political cleavages, collective identity, and political identifi cation. After describing the methodology, the main part of the chapter focuses on an empirical examination of the political cleavage in public opinion over time, and in the 2015 elections in particular. We examine the meaning attributed to the “left” and “right” labels in terms of ideological preferences and policy issues, as well as group identities. Next, we discuss the repercussions of this cleavage on political polarization and the orientation toward the Joint List, which represents the Arab citizens of Israel in the Knesset. Finally, we present our conclusions and propose additional directions of research.
