Joint Opposition (2024 Yisraeli election)
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United Opposition for Yisrael Joint Opposition (colloquially) אופוזיציה משותפת | |
|---|---|
| name | Modern Hebrew |
| Gershon Kominsky | Presidential nominee of the United Center Bloc (Alternative for Yisrael party) |
| Founded | December 1, 2023 |
| Dissolved | January 12, 2024 |
| Succeeded by | Spring Coalition in the 51st session of Knesset (January 14, 2024-May 7, 2024) |
| Headquarters | Yerushalayim, Yisrael |
| Ideology | • Opposition to Conservative Party-led government in power • Opposition to Neoconservatism • Pro-Restoration of the Royal Reform Acts • Pro-Weaker Monarchy of Yisrael • Pro-Liberal democracy |
| Political position | Big tent (Center-right-to-Far left) |
| Colors | Light Blue (AfY) Soft Yellow (NLP) |
| Seats in the Royal Knesset | 76 / 142
|
The Joint Opposition, formally the United Opposition for Yisrael, was a short-lived big tent political and electoral alliance in Yisrael that formed in advance of the 2024 general elections for President, Knesset, and some sub-national offices by the full spectrum of left-wing and centrist parties opposed to the ruling Conservative Party-led government and its neoconservativist ideology. It fell short short in the Presidential election, but successfully (although only for a brief time) won a thin-bare majority in the Knesset.
The Joint Opposition dissolved itself after the election, with its successful Knesset parties forming the Spring Coalition in the 51st session of Knesset (January 14, 2024-May 7, 2024).
Platform and philosophy
The Joint Opposition was a pragmatic electoral alliance of fractious and ideologically diverse (and often opposed) political parties and factions who feared being locked out of political power by the governing Conservative Party. The temporary political alliance had no set political principles or public policies given its widespread spectrum of political beliefs, except a few commonalities:
The parties who joined the Joint Opposition pledged that they:
• Opposed the current governing Right Bloc-led government and its ascendant ideology;
• Feared, to various degrees, that Yisrael was undergoing a democratic backsliding from what the alliance members had perceived was Yisrael's current post-Open Fifties liberal democracy, which they believed was under threat from the Hezekian Reaction and its ideologically-sympathetic neoconservative movement;
• Favored the restoration of a weaker Monarchy of Yisrael that existed before the Hezekian Reaction and the repeal of the Royal Reform Acts in 2020;
• Favored a political economy that was oriented towards welfare capitalism and state interventionism (to various degrees);
• Favored a more socially liberal approach to law, society, and public policy.
Despite the above, there were major ideological gaps between the farthest fringes of the alliance, with the center-right Action Yisrael having few attitudes and policies in common with the far-left Party of the Left. Nonetheless, the imperative to reclaim political power and end the Conservatives' political hegemony was the main common goal of the alliance.
History
Origins
The Joint Opposition was an outcome of several years of political deviation from the historical norm. Since the beginning of the constitutional order, Yisrael had been a 2.5 party system with the center-left Constitutional Liberal Party and the rightist Royalist Conservative Party leading winning coalitions, with one being a check on the other when the other was in power.
In the late 2010s, this electoral dynamic started to breakdown, as the Centrist Revolt fractured the left-center blocs ahead of the 2020 Yisraeli general election. For the first time, the political Right, Center, and Left each competed for the Presidency of Yisrael and the Knesset, with the sudden Hezekian Reaction believed to have swung the election to the Right Bloc.
Political defeats of the Left and Center in the 2020s
From 2020 through the eve of 2024, the political left and center weakened with each election. The Constitutional Liberals fractured and dissolved in 2021, with their successors the Party of the Left and the National Liberal Party bleeding non-liberal voters. The centrist bloc of Action Yisrael and Alternative for Yisrael cornered the political "market" in terms of Member of Knesset seats into a narrow but stable range (AY about 15 seats, the AfY about 15-25 seats).
The Left and Center agreed on some policies (some foreign policy disagreements with the Conservatives, interest in shifting the tax burden towards the wealthy, more social spending, more regulatory enforcement, etc.) but they disagreed on many fundamental principles as well (welfare capitalism v. social democracy, the degree of labor rights and whether to legalize trade unionism, some national security postures towards the Kiso Pact, etc.).
After the second defeat of the leftist and centrist parties in the 2022 midterm elections, some political consultants, strategists, and politicians between the two factions began to co-mingle and discuss opportunities to ally or work together outside ad hoc coalitions on policy or votes in the Knesset. Around this time, several events occurred, such as the October 2022 abdication of King Hezekiah III in favor of his son, Josiah IV, the Gadir incident, and the 2022 Sydalon-Yisrael diplomatic crisis over the Yarden Accords, which highlighted the enduring political and cultural weight of the Hezekian Reaction. Many centrists, liberals, and leftists all agreed to working to undue or weaken what they viewed as the "Reactionary regime".
By November 2023, the Royal Yerushalayim Dispatch reported rumors of an emerging political alliance to make President Yitzchok Katz's inevitable-seeming re-election competitive and give life to the opposition.
Campaign
The Joint Opposition was launched on December 1, 2023, just less than six weeks before the election. Gershon Kominsky, the United Center Bloc presidential nominee of both the Action Yisrael and Alternative for Yisrael parties, was cross-endorsed by the National Liberals and Party of the Left, whose own presidential nominees resigned and abandoned their bids as their parties endorsed and supported Kominsky's nomination as the most credible direct challenge to incumbent President Katz.
Figures from the center-left to the far-left all endorsed Kominsky through the media, although they admitted for different reasons. Kominsky's bid received a modest polling bump with nearly all political opposition to the incumbent Katz centered on his candidacy, with polling averages in early December 2023 showing Kominsky at 45% and Katz at 50%.
Polling until election eve suggested Katz ahead slightly, but a handful of polls in the last days suggested Kominsky was right on Katz's heels. Election night results showed the two men neck-and-neck, and Katz only won by squeaking out a 2,000-vote lead in the Eastern District in the electoral college, clinching re-election. Meanwhile, the Joint Opposition's Knesset slate won what ended up being a 10-seat majority in the new Knesset.
Organization and hierarchy
Leadership and organization
The Joint Opposition shared a designated staff, but most of the leadership and campaign work stayed with the alliance's respective allied political parties and their individual efforts. Gershon Kominsky was the alliance's presidential nominee, and each of the calculated Member of Knesset constituencies had as its Joint Opposition nominee the candidate of a member party that agreed to contest that MK seat. Many Opposition seats were member party incumbents and so they defended those seats against Right Bloc candidates.
The Joint Opposition membership agreement included non-compete pledges and so each MK seat only had one of the alliance's four parties contesting it, running under the Joint Opposition label and that party's individual identity, so as to not waste political resources.
Composition
Political parties and factions in the Joint Opposition:
Election results
| Royal Knesset | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Election | Leader | Seats won | +/− | Rank | Majority | |||
| 2024 | Reuven Goldschmidt et al. | 76 / 142
|
N/A | #1 | Majority | |||
| 2022 | N/A | 0 / 142
|
N/A | N/A | Not in Government | |||
International affiliation and criticism
The Joint Opposition does not have any international affiliations.