Aaron David Miller
If bookies in Las Vegas were laying bets on a long duration for the newly formed Israeli coalition government, the odds would probably be longer than the prospect of the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals meeting anytime soon in a Washington World Series.
Eight parties—spanning the right, center, and left and with the participation of an Islamist conservative Arab party for the first time ever—have come together to unseat the government led by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The enterprise, which will face a determined Netanyahu leading Israel’s largest and most coherent opposition party, has all the appearances of living on borrowed time. That the confidence vote in the Knesset, which triggered the coalition’s formation, was decided by one vote—60 to 59—likewise doesn’t inspire.
And take your pick of potential coalition-wrecking crises: a fight over the budget; defections from incoming Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s hard-line, pro-settlement party; moves by Hamas or Israeli extremists to test the new government; and a bloody conflict with Palestinians that forced Mansour Abbas and his four-seat Islamist party, the United Arab List, out of the coalition. And even if the coalition somehow manages to survive, it would be a paralytic mess of opposing ideologies and interests certain to change nothing at all, right?
It certainly looks that way. And with Israeli coalition governments lasting, on average, just under two years, betting on stability is never a smart idea. Still, this coalition might surprise the world. And here’s why.
The reason Israel has a new prime minister is the overriding desire—on the part of just about everyone—to get rid of the old one. Never has an Israeli politician played such a fundamental role in his own demise or given a new coalition such huge incentives to keep him out of power.
The leaders of the new coalition’s three leading right-wing parties—Bennett, Gideon Saar, and Avigdor Lieberman—had all worked for and with Netanyahu. They were also all demeaned, abused, and publicly humiliated by him. Netanyahu alienated the center, meanwhile, through personal attacks against Yair Lapid, head of the centrist party Yesh Atid, and through efforts to mobilize demonstrations against the new coalition and ignore death threats and rabbinic injunctions against coalition members. For the two leftist parties—Meretz and Labor—which were demonized by Netanyahu as Satan’s finger on earth, the determination to end his rule, rescue themselves from political oblivion, and avoid a fifth election is clear.
In other words, opposition to Netanyahu was the primary catalyst in forming Israel’s unprecedented new coalition government, and it may well be the strongest glue holding it together. All the parties know Netanyahu, as kind of a king in exile, will go into the opposition with every intention of bringing down the government and then jumping in to pick up the pieces.
Israel has had half a dozen national unity governments, comprised generally of the two largest parties. One would be hard-pressed to describe this latest coalition as a unity government in any sense beyond its main driver: getting rid of Netanyahu and avoiding a fifth election. Still there are several realities that may well keep this government together. These goes beyond the fact that the prime minister and alternate prime minister, Bennett and Lapid, respectively, have mutual vetoes on major issues.
First, to paraphrase one of the United States’ revolutionary founders, Samuel Adams, all parties in this government know since they’ve pushed out Netanyahu, they must hang together lest they hang separately. All may honestly believe their government is driven by the interests of the nation, but they also have more parochial interests served by keeping their strange entity afloat. And they fear political oblivion if they don’t. For Bennett, a man of the right who’s crossed the Rubicon by abandoning Netanyahu (and the Netanyahu-loyal right wing), there’s likely no turning back. At age 49, he needs to make this administration a success if he wants a further career in politics. He’ll thus have to preside over the transition from Netanyahu to a less polarized, more functional political system where government is competent and can deliver.
For Abbas, the risks are even greater. Not more than a month after the worst communal violence between Israeli Jews and Arabs since 2000—if not, since Israel was created—he’s formally joining a government with parties that have, in the past, discriminated against Palestinian citizens and prioritized interests of Jews over Arabs. He’s banking that through formal government participation, he can deliver much for his community. The coalition deal he signed with Lapid includes freezing the law that allows unauthorized settlement building until 2024, unprecedented multiyear funding of $16 billion for the Arab community; and freezing all home demolitions in the Negev Desert for nine months. Securing all this will depend on him remaining in the government.
And for the two left-wing parties, eclipsed in the past decades by a resurgent right, the goal is simpler: survival and a chance to further its social agenda, including supporting reform and conservative Judaism in Israel, furthering LGBTQ rights, promoting public transportation on the Sabbath, and protecting the integrity of Israel’s judicial system.
Second, the government’s longevity will also depend on the relationship between Bennett and Lapid. Here, the future looks somewhat promising. Bennett and Lapid have been cooperating against Netanyahu since 2013, and they have good personal chemistry. Unlike Netanyahu, Bennett is, by all accounts, collegial and has avoided the accusations of narcissism and paranoia that dogged Netanyahu. Indeed, with only six Knesset seats under his control, Bennett lacks the party base to become a larger-than-life figure along the lines of his predecessor.
Close cooperation with Lapid, whose credibility has risen in the past year, may well come naturally. Lapid’s moderation, restraint, and judgment has come through clearly, especially in his willingness to cede the first rotation of the prime minister position to Bennett. Israelis may not have seen Lapid as leader material before, but that may well be changing.
Netanyahu’s departure is a very lucky break for U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration is determined to focus on domestic priorities and avoid spending energy on foreign-policy issues where it doesn’t expect much return on investment. Certainly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict falls into that category, but it’s also a cautionary tale on trying to manage the conflict to avoid a repeat of the recent Israeli-Hamas confrontation.
The new Israeli government is likely to proceed more cautiously on this issue than Netanyahu. Although Bennett is seen as being more hard line than Netanyahu, he will likely be forced to control his pro-settlement convictions and avoid provocations in and around Jerusalem to hold the coalition together and avoid an unnecessary conflict with Washington. Bennett has opposed U.S. reentry into the Iran nuclear accord. But it’s not his signature issue, as it was with Netanyahu, and he won’t actively try to undermine the agreement as the former prime minister did by catering to Republicans and evangelicals.
Biden will be only too happy to reciprocate constructive behavior, perhaps meeting Israel’s recent billion-dollar request for replenishing the Iron Dome, pushing the Abraham Accords forward (as the United States already appears to be doing), and providing an early invitation to the White House for Bennett and then probably Lapid. The dilemma for the Biden administration will be to navigate an approach on the toughest issue of all—the future of Palestinians—that doesn’t press the new government too hard but still manages to make some progress. It’s not altogether clear if that circle can be squared.
The new coalition may have the best of intentions to promote consensus and keep disagreement under control. “No one will be asked to give up their ideology, but everyone will have to postpone the realization of some of their dreams,” Bennett said earlier this month. And if it can pass a two-year budget (Israel hasn’t had any budget since 2018), the government may actually endure for some time. And there is plenty to do: post-COVID-19 economic recovery; infrastructure development; a commission of inquiry on the Mount Meron stampede disaster, where 45 Israelis were trampled to death; and launching comprehensive efforts to better integrate Israeli Arabs. Such progress would keep the coalition together and be good for Israel’s national interest. It would also mean the individual parties will have to swallow hard and postpone their own ideological policy goals. Still, survival in government may well be their overriding goal for now.
If the coalition does break apart, it’s most likely to emerge from a crisis in Gaza or the West Bank. A decision on whether to allow Qatari money to flow to Hamas is looming and so is the postponed Jerusalem Day march through the Old City, which is scheduled this week. Hamas is already threatening conflict if this march takes place. Whatever credit the new Israeli government gets for dispatching Netanyahu won’t count for much among Palestinians and their supporters, who see the new coalition as worse for their interests because they know it can’t address their core goals and it’s harder to paint as anti-Palestinian without Netanyahu and with the participation of Arabs and the left.
The new coalition will likely endure beyond what the skeptics predict. But you can count on something bad to turn up. If this was another universe, the transition from the volatile, mean, and polarizing era of Netanyahu to one that’s calmer, less chaotic, and competent at providing public services and better governance might endure. But this is our universe, and something disruptive and potentially coalition ending—flowing from conflict with Palestinians or the contradictions of a government without a strong core consensus—is surely waiting around the corner.
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