The 2015 Israeli general election: The triumph of Jewish skepticism, the emergence of Arab faith

The results of the 2015 Israeli election, primarily the sweeping victory of Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, surprised most analysts. In this article we employ political scientist Michael Oakeshott’s distinction in arguing that the campaign dynamics and the consequent electoral results reflect the triumph of a “politics of skepticism” among Jews, and the emergence of a “politics of faith” among Israel ’s Arab-Palestinian citizens. Both derive from a combination of external and domestic circumstances and their effective exploitation by charismatic political leaders.