Israeli Press
Maariv's poll drops Likud to 21 seats and lifts Eisenkot ahead
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Benjamin Netanyahu's party has fallen to 21 seats in a poll published by the Israeli daily Maariv, taken on 12 and 13 August among 506 respondents with a margin of error of 4.4 points.
The prime minister's bloc reaches 48 in the same survey. The Zionist opposition — the parties that would form a government without the Arab lists — reaches 61, one more than the majority a Knesset coalition needs.
On the question of who is fit to be prime minister, Gadi Eisenkot leads Netanyahu 49 per cent to 38.
The Democrats, led by Yair Golan, gain a seat to 10. Hadash-Ta'al, the joint list of Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi, also gains one, to 6.
Maariv attributes the week to internal Likud primaries fights, the disorder in the West Bank and the movement on the Gaza file.
The arithmetic matters to Palestinian citizens of Israel for an unfamiliar reason. Through most of this election cycle the change bloc has needed the Arab lists to reach 61 while refusing to sit with them — the paradox that has defined every campaign since 2021.
A Zionist 61 removes that need. It also removes the leverage.
One poll two and a half months before the vote, with a 4.4-point error and a sixteen per cent response rate, decides nothing. What it shows is the shape both blocs are now arguing about: a Netanyahu camp short of a majority, and an opposition majority that has no seat at the table for the sixth of the electorate that is Palestinian.
