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A major campaign rally for the right wing is planned for Sunday evening in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. The “United for the Land of Israel” rally is being organized by Nachala, an organization run by former Kedumim mayor Daniella Weiss and United Headquarters for the Land of Israel. Like everything else to date in the run up to the Israeli elections, it too is fraught with internal conflict. Right wing leaders are opposed to the rally and Weiss has been trying for several weeks to convince them to attend the event. Many of the leaders on the right actually wanted...

Four days before elections, most surveys have Netanyahu’s party 3-4 seats behind Herzog’s On the last weekend before Tuesday’s general election, Israeli media published the final polls for the current election cycle before a four-day moratorium on surveys. The Zionist Union kept its lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in those polls, with most giving Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s joint list a 3-4 seat edge over its competitor. A Maariv poll had Zionist Union with 25 and Likud with 21. Yesh Atid was tied with the Joint (Arab) List for 13, with Jewish Home trailing at 11....

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II on the sidelines of economic talks in Egypt on Friday, US officials said. The talks are likely to focus on the economic crisis facing the Palestinian Authority and could be a four-way meeting which would also include Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a State Department official said. "We continue to be concerned about the PA," the official told reporters travelling with Kerry on his plane to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "It’s really part of the continuous, ongoing conversation we’re...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel will not cede territory due to the current climate in the Middle East, appearing to rule out the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu's comments, which came as he sought to appeal to hard-liners ahead of national elections next week, rejected a key goal of the international community and bode poorly for future peace efforts if he is re-elected.

It would appear from the laudatory coverage in American media that Bibi Netanyahu is a shoo-in for election as prime minister of the United States; in Israel, not so much. At least, this is the only conclusion one can draw from this weekÂ’s polls in the run-up to IsraelÂ’s Knesset elections on March 17.Against all expectations, Netanyahu received only the slightest of bounces as a result of the speech, which was televised and covered on radio in Israel.These are the current numbers of the average of polls for this week:Party This Week Last WeekHaMachane haTziyoni 24 25Likud 23 23United...

A speech by Zionist Union alliance head and Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog was cut off in the middle of a broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 television network due to concern that Herzog’s remarks constituted elections propaganda. “There’s no doubt Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks well, but let’s admit the truth: the speech we heard, impressive as it might have been, did not stop the Iranian nuclear program,” Herzog said on the Tuesday night broadcast regarding Netanyahu’s address to Congress, according to Israel Hayom. “It also won’t affect the deal being put together, either in terms of content or timetable. The...

Senior members of the Likud party – including, some say, even the most senior of them – are keeping their fingers crossed for President Barack Obama. They hope that he won’t fall ill, that he won’t fly off to some distant continent, that a cat won’t get his tongue, and that he won’t become suddenly faint-hearted about the escalating confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As in the well-known joke about the sadist and the masochist, the Likudniks are eager to continue being pummeled by Obama directly or by his secretary of state or by his national security adviser. They’ve...

Herzog vowed that, if elected PM, in his first 100 days as prime minister he would focus on three issues in particular: solving the housing crisis, "renewing relations with the US and the (political) process with the Palestinians." "If need be, I will travel to Ramallah and present to the Palestinian Parliament a vision of hope," he declared.

WASHINGTON — Jeremy Bird, the architect of the grass-roots and online organizing efforts that powered President Obama’s presidential campaigns from Chicago, is advising a similar operation in Tel Aviv. But this time it is focused on ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. His consulting work for the group V15 — an independent Israeli organization that does not support specific candidates but is campaigning to replace Israel’s current government — has added yet another political layer to the diplomatic mess surrounding Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress next week on Iran. The White House has argued...

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog announced Tuesday he will not be traveling to the US to appear before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference, amid growing tensions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress on March 3. "Netanyahu's spin about who is going to Washington must stop," Herzog told a gathering of foreign media in Israel. "My firm position against a nuclear Iran is known by every Israeli and American, including the US president, and I know how to voice it in a sharp, clear manner - from here, not from there." Herzog added: "A...

What is Zionism? The ideological question, rooted in the 19th century, has gained surprising urgency in an Israeli election campaign that seems more open than had been expected. Seeking to take votes from the nationalistic right of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the relatively liberal opposition has rebranded itself as the Zionist Union—sparking a debate about a concept that some considered resolved when the Jewish state was declared and widely recognized in 1948. […] On the left, politicians speak of true Zionism as requiring the establishment of peace and equality in the land, including by making peace with the Palestinians and...

On the surface, the two candidates are as different as can be. Netanyahu is warring with President Obama. Herzog seems to want to be President Obama: The Labor Party leader is campaigning on an Israeli version of “hope and change.” Herzog’s billboards promise Israeli parents an extra teacher in each kindergarten classroom. Netanyahu warns about “the people who want to kill us.” He is fixated on the Iranian mullahs, who he says pose an existential threat to the Jewish state and places beyond. Netanyahu is prepared to risk the ire of the White House and Democrats to make his case...

The head of Israel's election commission acted on Monday to limit any pre-election boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may get from a March 3 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he will warn of the threat from Iran's nuclear program. The speech has caused controversy in Israel and the United States, where the Democrats and the White House are angry that the Republican speaker, John Boehner, invited Netanyahu to speak at a sensitive time in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six big powers including Washington, and only two weeks before Israel's closely fought March 17 election.

According to media reports, one of the prime architects of President Bill Clinton’s political victories, Paul Begala, is arriving in Israel to consult for the campaign of the Zionist Camp party led by Yitzhak Herzog. By all accounts, they can use that help. Not that this week has been a bad one for them. A week ago it looked like the Zionist Camp party was in a free fall and Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was on the rise, with Likud taking the lead in polls for the first time in this election cycle. This week’s polls...

Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have assured the Israeli and American public that Netanyahu's planned address to Congress will not harm the "unbreakable" US-Israel relationship - but a far-left NGO's new campaign Tuesday seeks to reignite sentiment against Netanyahu. The campaign, entitled, "I am a Jew, and Bibi does NOT [sic] speak for me," calls on American Jews to sign a petition against Netanyahu's Washington visit to Israel's Ambassador in the US, Ron Dermer. The language throughout the campaign is unabashedly hostile. "Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be representing all Jews...

EU member states have been readying themselves to enforce sanctions on Israel for Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria, diplomats revealed Tuesday—and will strike hours after the March 17 elections. Israeli officials in recent weeks met with Europe’s most important foreign ministries at the EU headquarters in Brussels, an Israeli official told Walla! News on condition of anonymity, and said that the planned measures in Europe will be focused on “the illegality of the settlements under international law”—without any distinction between “settlement blocs” generally agreed upon to remain in Israel and isolated communities. “The guiding principle is their deepening and emphasizing the...

Opponents in Israel of the American tax-exempt organization-funded V15 campaign effort have laid several complaints against it: one, the foreign funding (including U.S. government funding) of an Israeli campaign violates Israeli election law, and two, an American tax-exempt entity funding a political campaign violates American law. But even V15’s defenses to those charges make it ripe for lethal criticism. V15 and its funder, OneVoice, claim to empower the “majority of Israelis” to change Israeli leadership (that’s what their posters say: “We’re Changing the Leadership”) to reflect that majority’s views. In fact, the goals of OneVoice represent neither the majority of...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to a series of news reports about alleged misuse of public funds at his residences for the first time Saturday night in a video clip his campaign released online.

Memo Reveals Plan of U.S.-Funded Groups to Influence the Israeli Elections Nonprofits targeting populations, such as Arab Israelis, opposed to Likud BY: Alana Goodman - The Free Beacon February 5, 2015 3:30 pm http://freebeacon.com/issues/u-s-groups-funding-liberal-gotv-effort-in-israel/ [For copy of the memo: http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/APDF-GOTV-Arab-Community-MK-12-17-14.docx1-1.pdf http://bit.ly/1DMu8RV http://bit.ly/1AzUEzP http://bit.ly/1FebGCF http://bit.ly/1zo2zOR ] A coalition of U.S.-funded progressive groups has planned a massive get-out-the-vote effort to influence the Israeli elections, targeting communities that are most likely to vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-leaning Likud Party, according to a confidential strategy memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The U.S.-based 501(c)(3) group Ameinu sent out the...

Despite essentially boycotting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress by planning to be abroad when it takes place, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday met with another Israeli official. Biden and Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, head of the Labor party, met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. The Likud party was incensed at the meeting between Herzog and Biden, which also came as leaders from the left, including Herzog himself, were busy attacking Netanyahu and blaming him for Biden’s boycott of the speech. “Buji’s behavior in Munich is an irresponsible crossing of red lines,” the party...