A letter from Tel Aviv

Israel's (likely) next government will have hardly any women in it.

I am still in Israel, where I have been visiting family over Christmas and New Year. It’s a busy time politically here, with a new government, headed by ex and soon-to-be-once-more Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expected to be voted in tomorrow (Thursday 29th December). Elections took place in November. Wrangling over the new coalition dragged on for two months.

The path to this government, which comes after a record-breaking five elections in less than four years, has been fraught with dangerous compromises and damage to whatever semblance of democracy Israel might have had. Netanyahu, the PM on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, refuses to let go in his attempt to stay out of prison. In order to govern again, Netanyahu and his Likud Party have signed coalition agreements with ultra-Orthodox, Religious Zionist, and Jewish supremacist parties to form the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with gender equality. Well, alongside the various anti-democratic steps to which Netanyahu has in theory agreed, the incoming PM also looks to have formed a government with very few women in it. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, do not allow any women members. Meanwhile, the other religious parties in the coalition have few women members. These parties don’t tend to represent very progressive views on women, either. Incoming coalition member Avi Maoz, head of Noam, a religious nationalist, anti-LGBT and anti-Arab party, has said, for instance, that the chief role of women in society is (you guessed it) to marry and reproduce.

The last government, formed after the elections in June 2021, had a record number of women, and the outgoing Knesset had a record number of female lawmakers, 36 out of 120. Out of 64 MK’s who are members of Netanyahu’s coalition — if it does get voted in on Thursday — only nine are women. Fewer than that will end up in the cabinet. That is a major drop from the last governing coalition, where nine out of the 27 cabinet members were women — not equality but still another record.

The last government wasn’t perfect by any means, but at least it had more women and even a Palestinian coalition member. Alongside the sharp drop in women, after November’s elections, Arab representation in parliament has also shrunk — to its lowest levels in two decades.

This is terrible news for women, the Arab minority and for the country in general. Representation in policymaking matters. Women and other minorities are unlikely to find their needs prioritised by a majority of religious Jewish male coalition members. And of course, representation matters on its own terms, too. In a country that likes to tout its supposedly democratic, liberal and progressive credentials, the message this new coalition sends is that equality in politics is an optional extra.

There is a more general point, too, about the future of Israel/Palestine. It seems almost trite to mention it, given how much of a non-issue the conflict and Israel’s occupation is to the average Israeli voter, but various studies show that peace processes where women were involved as negotiators have been more durable. Higher levels of female participation in politics have also been “associated with a lower risk of civil war and of conflict relapse.” This is a domestic matter, too. Internally, Israel is splitting at the seams. There is division between right and left, between religious and secular Jews, between Jews and Arabs. In May 2021, as war broke out between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, horrendous violence broke out between Arabs and Jews on Israel’s streets.

Those who defend Israel say it is the only real democracy in the Middle East. There are a number of reasons why that has long been far from the truth. Excluding women from government only adds to a growing list.