- Title: MIDEAST: Israeli political parties launch TV and radio campaigns
- Date: 9th January 2013
- Summary: WOMAN WATCHING PEOPLE WALKING IN STREET (SOUNDBITE) (English) JERUSALEM RESIDENT SAYING: "Anyhow I don't think that it will influence someone. it's a big, big waste of money, very boring. And not funny." PEOPLE IN STREET (SOUNDBITE) (English) JERUSALEM RESIDENT FRANCIS KAMER, SAYING: "It's all very mixed. And nobody, there's not one candidate that fits my viewpoint exact
- Embargoed: 24th January 2013 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Israel
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA6RDL4LXGAJBMYEVA3WO43JX3V
- Story Text: Israel's political parties this week launched their television and radio campaign ads, in the run up to January 22 elections.
The advertisements featured the video campaigns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party, Likud, which is running on a joint ticket with the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, led by former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Other parties who launched their campaigns were the centrist Hatenuah party, headed by Tzipi Livni, the left-leaning Labour party, the centrist Yesh Atid party and the far right "Bayit Yehudi" party.
Running under the campaign slogan, "A strong prime minister, a strong Israel", Netanyahu's and Lieberman's Likud-Beiteinu party, has lost some ground to a start-up far-right party led by high-tech millionaire Naftali Bennett.
But opinion polls still count Netanyahu as a shoo-in to enlist right-wing parties after the vote and form the next coalition government. In Israel, no single party has ever won a parliamentary majority.
Bennett, a former settler leader, opposes a Palestinian state and wants to annex about 60 percent of the West Bank.
Netanyahu is still formally committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a peace deal with Israel, while raising conditions - many of them already rejected by the Palestinians - for its creation.
Livni and the Israeli centrist and left-leaning parties have failed this week in an initial attempt to form a united bloc that might have cut into Netanyahu's opinion poll lead before the ballot.
Livni, a former foreign minister and peace negotiator with the Palestinians, declined to discuss details of the negotiations but said she still hoped the three parties could achieve a unity pact.
Israel's channel 10 political analyst, Nadav Perry, told Reuters on Wednesday that the ads were not likely to influence voters.
"I'm not sure whether those Television political adds will make a great difference among undeciders. Usually it's a situation of the dynamics, of the momentum of the last few days. And you can't tell whether a political add showing in the television 10 days or 12 days before elections will do the work. My guess, it won't do the work," he said.
Israelis who walked the rainy streets of Jerusalem on Wednesday morning (January 9) were mostly indifferent to the launch of the TV campaigns.
"Anyhow I don't think that it will influence someone. it's a big, big waste of money, very boring. And not funny," said a Jerusalem resident.
Another resident said she was still undecided.
"It's all very mixed. And nobody, there's not one candidate that fits my viewpoint exactly so I'm gonna have to compromise here and there and I'm still deciding," she said.
In the election, Israelis vote for a party's list of parliamentarians.
After the ballot, Israel's president chooses a party leader to try to put together a governing coalition. That is usually, but not always, the head of the party that won the most parliamentary seats. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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