Photo credit: Wikimedia/יעקב (CC BY-SA 3.0)
With Israelis facing the fourth national election in just two years, and amid a continuing coronavirus pandemic and uncertain economy, voters are fatigued and wondering where the country is headed.
Wednesday, March 31, 202111:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Pacific Time)
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About the Discussion An expert panel will analyze the most recent national election in Israel and address a range of issues, based on the results, including what the election means in terms of Israel's political stability. They will discuss the many challenges facing a new government: the coronavirus pandemic, getting the Israeli economy back on track, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, the panel will look at political participation trends and how they compare with other recent elections.
Sponsored by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Political Science.
Background Israel's national "unity" government took office in May 2020, led by Prime Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud and Defense Minister Benny Gantz's Blue & White. The shaky alliance followed three inconclusive national elections and the most protracted political crisis in the country's history. Yet, the government collapsed after the Knesset – Israel's parliament – failed to approve a national budget in late 2020. New elections were then scheduled for March 23, 2021. Official results from that election will be published on the day of our panel, March 31.
About the Speakers
Oded Haklai is a Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Canada. Haklai teaches and researches the politics of nationalism and ethnicity, Israeli politics, state-minority relations, and population settlements and ethno-territorial disputes. He also has held visiting fellowships at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv University, the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. He is the author of Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel (2011), recipient of the Shapiro Award for best book in Israel Studies.
Menachem Hofnung teaches at the Department of Political Science of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a Visiting Professor at the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies for the 2020-21 academic year. He served as the academic director of the Joint Graduate Program in Public Policy and Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and academic director of the Gilo Center for Democracy and Civic Education. He is an editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society (Hazan R., Dowty H., Hofnung M., Rahat G. editors, New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Liron Lavi is a Research Fellow at the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2017 from Tel-Aviv University, where she studied the role of time in elections and democracy in Israel. Lavi's research interests include elections, democracy, representation, and political communication. During her doctoral research, Liron was also a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the Nazarian Center and UCLA's Department of Political Science. She is co-founder/managing editor of the Nazarian Center's Currents: Briefs on Contemporary Israel – a bi-annual series comprised of timely, research-based analyses of important contemporary issues, trends, and dynamics in Israel.
Dov Waxman (Moderator) is The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies at UCLA, and the director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Previously, he was a professor of political science, international affairs, and Israel studies, and the Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. In addition, he taught at the City University of New York and Bowdoin College. He has also been a visiting fellow at Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Oxford University. His latest book is, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (2019).
Sponsor(s): Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, Political Science
Israel's Four Recent Elections: Policy, Ideology and the State of Israeli Democracy