As we go to press on Tuesday evening, the coalition deal Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have been pursuing to form a new government in Israel and oust long time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was still not finalized.
Lapid has been mandated by President Rivlin – he has until midnight Wednesday evening – to form a new government following the March elections after Netanyahu, whose Likud scored the most seats, failed to gather enough support to cobble together a majority coalition. Lapid’s Yesh Atid party achieved the second highest number of seats. Bennett’s Yamima party was way down the line with far fewer seats but enough to make it a kingmaker. The plan is for a rotating prime minister arrangement with Bennett serving first.
Frankly, even given the notorious vagaries of the Israeli parliamentary system, the idea that Israelis would not have provided Netanyahu with the electoral wherewithal to form a new government is just mind-boggling. After all, he was in charge when Israel made those extraordinary leaps forward that propelled it to its current status as a world-class political, military, economic and technological power and laid the groundwork for the historic Abraham Accords that is transforming the Middle East.
It was Netanyahu who led Israel in pushing back against Iran both overtly and covertly. It was his working relationship with President Donald Trump that facilitated the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy there; the “Deal of the Century” recognizing Israel’s rights in Judea and Samaria; and the right of Israel to annex the strategic Golan Heights.
It was Netanyahu who made Israel the envy of the world in its distribution of the Covid vaccine.
And of course, it was Benjamin Netanyahu who drove home the likely catastrophic consequences of the Iran nuclear weapons deal to anyone who would listen.
But it is not just the lack of gratitude for what was accomplished that is dismaying. It is the tossing of someone who had, for years, demonstrated the kind of leadership he was capable of providing in the face of Israel’s continuing need to secure its rights in the Holy Land and keep Iran at bay. This is especially significant while someone who is not Donald Trump occupies the White House, someone who would doubtless seize upon any sign of Israeli lack of resolve to seek ever more accommodation with the Palestinians and Iran.
To be sure, some argue that the overarching need is for a right-wing oriented prime minister, not necessarily Netanyahu. And they say that Bennett, with his reputation as a staunch, card-carrying right-winger and head of the right-wing Yamima Party admirably fills that bill. But Bennett is only the beginning of the story. According to current reports, his tentative coalition partners would span Israel’s ideological spectrum.
In addition to the devout left-centrist Lapid and his Yesh Atid party, the other parties expected to participate are left-wing Labor and Meretz, left-centrist Blue and White, and the sometimes right wing Yisroel Beiteinu and New Hope parties. The Islamist party Ra’am is expected to back the coalition from the outside. Reportedly they are all united primarily in their joint goal of dislodging Netanyahu from office. Thus, by definition, Bennett will be largely surrounded by differing agendas with less freedom of movement than one might ordinarily expect of a prime minister. And, if history is a guide, he is no Netanyahu.
We are not unmindful that much of the opposition to Netanyahu is rooted in the criminal charges now pending against him, but that view goes only so far. Prominent legal observers have pointed out that based on the evidence that has been made public, the charges seem contrived and novel. It would seem that such questionable allegations should not drive the choice of Israeli decision-makers in these momentous, and for Israel perhaps existential, times.
There are reportedly still several obstacles in the way of a Lapid/Bennett arrangement and Netanyahu is still trying to derail it. We are rooting for him.
