May 09, 2021 11:57 pm
By Jonathan Feldstein
I was at a social gathering recently. In Israel, social events can easily become political events, or even indistinguishable from one another, especially in the turbulent period in which we find ourselves, hovering on the verge of a potential broad coalition government, or another, fifth, national election in 2.5 years.
In the course of conversation, someone I was standing with referenced “Likud backstabbers,” clearly referring to Gidon Sa’ar and Naftali Bennett and their respective parties, New Hope and Yamina. The implication was that by abandoning the Likud, running on their own as two independent right-wing parties, together capturing 10% the new Knesset, and resisting forming a right-wing government with Likud at its head, they were literally stabbing Likud in the back. The implication was that they are solely responsible for preventing Likud and Prime Minister Netanyahu from forming a government.
Others silently nodded their agreement, either in general agreement, or awkward discomfort. I did neither. I refrained from responding which would have been inappropriate in the context. So, I didn’t. But I also didn’t agree.
I consider myself right of center, not as much as some, yet more than others. For all but two of Israel’s elections in the past two decades, the first and the most recent, I have voted Likud. I was even a Likud party member for some years. Netanyahu has many achievements to his credit, and these cannot be taken away. I’ve felt for a long time, and in many ways still do, that he’s the most qualified to be Prime Minister. After all, he’s held this position for 15 years, 12 consecutively. But I also think it’s time for him to go. Some criticize me for not realizing that sooner. For others, I am a “Likud Backstabber” too.
Netanyahu has been around so long, that many who’ve hitched their cart to his horse are not capable of realizing the horse is going in the wrong direction. Or they realize it but, borrowing another metaphor, are afraid to say the king has no clothes. Either way, for those choosing to ride it out, it may mean going off a cliff. I’m all for a right-wing government. But if the dysfunction within the Likud and inability to pull the reins and stop makes going off the cliff inevitable, I’d rather have a government that, for the time being, puts some stability in the Knesset, even if it includes parties whose policies I dislike, and for which I would never vote. Since in such a broad coalition spanning the right and left nobody will get what they want and the most extreme policies will be checked by the other side, maybe it’s even a good thing as a country to have leaders who find a common ground and seek to get along.
Maybe it’s time that the inevitable fighting to succeed Netanyahu within the Likud take place as he has not cultivated a successor, and pushed away most of the competent ones. Blaming Bennett or Sa’ar, two of those who Netanyahu has disenfranchised and who decided to set up their own parties, is disingenuous at best. The Likud needs to do a lot of soul searching.
Likud supporters suggest that because they won the largest number of seats in the Knesset this past election, 30 compared to 17 seats for the next highest party, most Israelis want Netanyahu to be Prime Minister. The problem with that thinking is that 30 seats only represents 25% of the vote. That means 75% of Israelis do not want Netanyahu. It also reflected a 20% drop in the number of seats Likud held. That’s created several frustrated Likud party members who lost their jobs, and may realize that there is only a pot of coal under Netanyahu’s rainbow.
But Israel’s parliamentary democracy typically lines up in blocks. In the case of the right wing and ultra-orthodox parties which have been allied for decades, even if Sa’ar nor Bennett had supported Netanyahu, they still would not have had enough seats to form a coalition. Since Sa’ar’s voters especially did not want Netanyahu to continue, the claim that most Israelis wanted Netanyahu to remain Prime Minister is false.
Presented as a way to avoid fifth (parliamentary) elections, some are suggesting that to break the political deadlock, we should have direct elections for Prime Minister. Coincidentally, this is also presented as a way to keep Netanyahu in power, as it’s projected that he would have a large advantage.
The fallacies with this are two-fold. First, direct elections would still be elections. It would be another round of campaigning, and delay for Israel to be able to form a government all the same, not to mention the expense.
If there were direct elections, presuming one needs a majority, Netanyahu would likely not get 51% in a first round. After failing to get a majority, again, would mean a SIXTH vote, presumably a runoff between Netanyahu and the next highest vote getter. At this point, the other candidate would be in a better place to get a majority among the 75% who didn’t vote for Netanyahu, and who would rally around another candidate.
Netanyahu and Likud supporters are shrieking that any government formed without him would by definition be a left-wing government, adding venom to the backstabber accusation. The problem with this is that Netanyahu didn’t have a problem with the Labor Party joining his recent government, or including others who he now calls left-wing, whether they are more centrist or not, now and in the past. Critics say that means that Netanyahu is hardly one to talk about making governments with left-wing parties.
Netanyahu and Likud also criticize others for entertaining a probable scenario that would require support from one of the Arab parties in order to form a coalition. They conveniently avoid the fact that in this past election, Netanyahu actively courted Israeli Arabs, and even broke the ice by indicating that he would have no problem building a government with the support of the Islamist Ra’am party. Indeed, the pot calling the kettle black.
If forming a right-wing government were indeed a priority and not a way to criticize others for Netanyahu’s failures, there is a solution: for Netanyahu to resign and hand over the reins. Doing so Likud could leading the country to form such a government, but there’s one person who disagrees and he happens to be the Prime Minister who does not want to be out of a job any more than the several Likud backbenchers who lost their seats between election #3 and 4. However, now that Israel may be on the verge of a broad coalition, this could be the impetus for sweeping changes in Likud – either dumping Netanyahu or a faction breaking away – to support and become part of a coalition that would at least avoid having far left and/or Arab parties as key players.
If Israel gets a coalition government that tilts to the left, the blame does not fall on those who abandoned ship and did not back Netanyahu, but rather on Netanyahu and those who blindly think that he’s the only option.
Likud supporters need to come to terms with the fact that Likud doesn’t singularly represent Israel’s right-wing. It’s easy to blame others, but it’s time they took some responsibility. The actual Likud backstabbers are those in Likud who continue to stab themselves in the back.