Herzog’s call for unity exposes the contradictions of Israel’s political leadership - opinion

Except for those who wish Israel to sink into total chaos, nobody in Israel or abroad who wishes Israel well can be pleased with the deadlock our political system seems to have entered.

At this particular juncture, neither political bloc – that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor that of the “bloc of change” headed by Gadi Eisenkot – seems capable of forming a stable government, likely to survive for longer than several months at best.

The result is that everyone seems to be preoccupied with trying to create minor changes in the situation that will place them in a better tactical position after the current stage plays out.

The current stage of the game is that the president of the state, Isaac Herzog, has met with the representatives of each of the parties/lists that participated in the elections on October 27 and passed the qualifying threshold, to ask them who they recommend to form the next government: Netanyahu, Eisenkot, or someone else.

The result of this process was more or less known in advance. Because of the extraordinary achievement of the Arab parties, which attained an all-time peak of 19 seats, and their decision to recommend Eisenkot to prevent Netanyahu from forming yet another all Right/religious government, Eisenkot was recommended by parties representing 67 of the MKs of the 26th Knesset, and Netanyahu by parties representing only 46, after the seven members of United Torah Judaism decided not to recommend anyone at this stage.

Everyone knows that Eisenkot cannot form a government with a majority of 67, since at this stage of the game the majority of Jewish Israelis will not accept a government that is fully dependent on the support of the Arab MKs.

The most Eisenkot can hope for, at this stage, is that when the new Knesset convenes next Tuesday for its opening sitting, his bloc will manage, with full Arab support, to elect a new Knesset Speaker and thus be able to get the Knesset to start functioning even before a new government is formed, on the basis of the new distribution of seats.

There is no doubt that the current Knesset Speaker – Amir Ohana (Likud) – will do his utmost to block this tactical plan, and the next week or two will witness a fascinating battle of wits between the leadership of the outgoing Knesset and the new bloc of change/Arab majority in the Knesset.

Although Eisenkot is unlikely even to try forming a government supported by all 19 MKs of the Arab parties, he might try to form a temporary minority government supported by the four parties that make up the bloc of change, and Ra’am, with its eight MKs (including MK Yoav Segalovitz, who has been mentioned as a potential national security minister) – i.e., a minority government of 56 MKs.

Another option that has been mentioned, in connection with the recent declaration by Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman that, under the circumstances, he is willing to serve in the same government with haredim (ultra-Orthodox), is that UTJ will join the coalition – an option that would produce a minority government of 55 MKs.

I am skeptical about the feasibility of this option, since I believe that UTJ refrained from recommending Netanyahu to the president for tactical reasons only.

In the course of his meetings with the representatives of the new parliamentary groups, Herzog did not conceal his preferred outcome at this stage: namely a national unity government. In his meeting with the Democrats, he admonished the latter in the following words: ”Is life all about yes or no, Netanyahu? Hasn’t the time come to go for unity?”

When he met with the representatives of the Likud, Transportation Minister Miri Regev referred to the opposition parties bloc as a “catastrophe bloc”, to which Herzog replied that “you extend your hand out to them, and then refer to them as a ‘catastrophe bloc’?”, adding that figures like Gadi Eisenkot are also referred to (in Likud circles) by various derogatory nicknames. (He was apparently referring to Eisenkot being referred to as a “Moroccan monkey”).

I expect that Herzog is not naïve and is aware of the fact that when he speaks of national unity, Netanyahu is not suggesting a government based on equality that can work out more moderate policies and modes of conduct, without Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionism Party on the extreme Right.

What Netanyahu means when he speaks of unity is a government made up of his whole all-Right/religious bloc, plus any centrist Zionist party willing to join. The chances of such a government adapting its policies to the new reality of an Israel threatened with serious economic sanctions because of its actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and the accusation of some of its leaders of war crimes, with the International Criminal Court in The Hague actually issuing warrants for their arrest – are virtually nil.

It is also difficult to see such a government acting to save what remains of the special relationship between Israel and a bipartisan United States, not to speak of the close relations that used to exist between Israel and various European states, and have vanished in the last three years into thin air.

The truth is that Netanyahu realizes that should Eisenkot fail to form any sort of government – temporary or more stable – he himself is also unlikely to form a government in the course of the 26th Knesset, even if he will manage to bully UTJ into returning to his political fold, or somehow manage to get several MKs from the bloc of change to desert.

Possibility of new elections

The most Netanyahu can hope for after he fails to form a government is that new elections will be declared as a result, and he will head yet another debilitating transition government, under much more complicated circumstances than Israel’s previous transition government that followed Israel's 34th government in the 20th Knesset.

That transition government existed throughout the terms of the 21st and 22nd Knessets and the first two months of the 23rd Knesset – from April 30, 2019 to May 17, 2020, and was followed by Netanyahu’s COVID urgency Government with Benny Gantz, in which he demonstrated his total absence of credibility when it comes to workable unity governments.

What else can be said about the political situation at this point? That we might nevertheless still be surprised, and find ourselves at the end of a fierce battle of wits, and many broken election promises, with a stable, workable government of change.

The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.