In the inaugural episode of Haaretz’s new Election Podcast, host Allison Kaplan Sommer welcomes the first weekly panel of Haaretz analysts who will be examining and explaining developments in the intensifying countdown to the fateful elections this fall.

This week, senior analyst Esther Solomon and Palestinian affairs correspondent Nagham Zbeedat assess the state of a race in which neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his opposition currently have a path to victory according to the polls.

At the moment, “Netanyahu is more or less maxed out on however many people will still be loyal to him,” Solomon said. “He cannot crack the numbers to get anywhere near a majority to form a coalition.”

She discussed the ways in which Netanyahu visibly battled for political survival in a hastily called press conference Saturday night – from his reframing of the ongoing bloodshed in Lebanon to an invitation to his opponents to join him in a unity government.

Netanyahu’s call for unity and vow to do “everything to diffuse” a “civil war,” Solomon said, showed an extraordinary “degree of chutzpah” given that “there has been no issue he hasn’t tried to divide and inflame and incite within Israeli society.”

Zbeedat provided an update on ongoing negotiations between Hadash, Ta’al, Balad and United Arab List to run together as the Joint List, as the Arab parties did in previous elections. The four parties – which have the power to tip the balance when it comes to building a government coalition – remain divided over whether they would be willing to join a coalition led by the winning Jewish Zionist party.

The Gaza war and the lack of action to tackle the organized crime and gun violence tearing apart Arab society, Zbeedat noted, is likely to drive more Palestinian citizens of Israel to the polls than in years past.

In her reporting, she said, she has spoken to Arab Israelis who have ideologically boycotted elections in the past and “now want to vote – but more out of desperation, out of despair and out of fear, rather than faith in the election and democracy.”

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