14 minute read
Too Much Change in the “Change Coalition”?
BY SHAMMAI SISKIND
Back in late March, Yamina party chairman Naftali Bennett was interviewed by the religious-Zionist outlet Arutz Sheva.
With the latest round of elections completed only days earlier and coalition-forming efforts then fully underway, Bennet left no room for ambiguity for what his political intentions were.
Following the election, the Yesh Atid party, headed by center-left politician Yair Lapid, passed the polls with seventeen parliamentary seats. With the results in, it became crystal clear any government that would present an alternative to Binyamin Netanyahu – whom Bennett has repeatedly denounced and called for his replacement over the past year – would be formed by Lapid. Bennett was adamant he would take no part in such a coalition.
“I am a man of the Land of Israel from the womb and from birth,” Bennett said, “as I have already promised: I will not lend my hand to a government headed by Lapid, not even in a rotation, because I am a right-wing man. Period.”
The Yamina chairman went on to dismiss accusations from Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud party that he would help the left rise to power.
“I will never help Lapid become prime minister because his positions are the opposite of mine.”
Little more than two months after that interview, Bennett transgressed the very red line he so clearly laid out.
On June 3, Bennett announced that he had reached a deal along with seven other parties to form a government with Yair Lapid, whom he warmly referred to as “my friend.” In the late night hours the previous evening, Lapid informed Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin he had succeeded in reaching a deal.
(L-R) Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Yamina chair Naftali Bennett, New Hope chair Gideon Sa’ar, Blue and White head Benny Gantz, Ra’am chair Mansour Abbas, Labor head Merav Michaeli and Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz at a meeting of the heads of the would-be-coalition in Tel Aviv, June 6, 2021. (Ra’anan Cohen)
ABBAS IN THE ALLIANCE
The recently announced coalition pact is almost too strange to believe. The list of “political firsts” the new government will bring in is long indeed. Two years ago, Naftali Bennett became the first religious MK to head the Defense Ministry. With the official vote to establish a new government set for Sunday, it seems Bennett will again make history as the first observant prime minister of Israel. Similarly, never has there been such a thinly spread variety of parties that have taken part in forming a coalition. The new government will house the full gamut of Israel’s political spectrum: from religious-Zionists to leftist radicals, from conservative-leaning secular right-wingers, to ardent socialists.
It also presents a seismic rattling of the political landscape in Israel, the likes of which haven’t been seen for decades. Among the many intriguing aspects of this weird alliance, two in particular stand out.
First and foremost is the unprecedented participation of the Ra’am party headed by Mansour Abbas. Ra’am’s support of the coalition marks the first time an Arab party will be vital to forming an
Israeli government. Abbas himself made sure to bring up this fact after the coalition deal was announced. This is the first time that an Arab party is part of the process of forming a government.
“We, of course, hope that it works and that a government will rise after four rounds of elections,” Abbas said in an official statement.
Of course, the involvement of Ra’am, a self-defined Islamist party, is a touchy issue in Israel and speaks to the heart of the conflict between Israel identifying as a Jewish state and a democratic one. Over the decades, most governments were able to avoid this issue by simply not bringing Arab parties into their coalitions. At other times, as was the case in the ‘50s and ‘60s when Ben Gurion’s Mapai party still dominated politics, Arab parties were simply satellites of the ruling party, with barely any influence on policy. This, however, is a very, very different scenario.
The “change coalition,” as it has come to be known, is seeking a significant shift of power in Israel’s governing and administrative bodies. Without Ra’am, it simply doesn’t have the numbers to do so. What this means is that this time an Arab faction will be instrumental in bringing about decisive change.
All of this brings up uneasy history from three decades ago, when the Rabin government pushed through the infamous Oslo Accords, a radical change in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1993, Rabin’s government survived a vote of no confidence with the help of two non-Zionist parties with primarily Arab constituencies – Hadash and the Arab Democratic Party. Both of them were not coalition members. In 1995, the votes of three Hadash Knesset members allowed the Oslo Accords to be ratified by a vote of 61 to 59.
The ensuing debate which tore the country apart cemented a belief among a majority of Israeli Jews that important decisions relating to security or foreign affairs must rely on a Jewish majority. The very idea of seeking political change by relying on the support of Arab parties became an anathema. Polls reveal that as late as 2019, less than 20 percent of Jews approved of incorporating Arab parties into coalitions.
While the severity of the Arab participation question cannot and should not be dismissed, it is important to keep the particular development involving Ra’am in perspective.
The less-than-earth-shattering nature of Abbas’s participation in the government is underscored by the outrage toward it in much of Palestinian media. Nationalist-oriented Palestinians – i.e., those with the explicit goal of amputating parts of the Jewish homeland to form their own state –see Abbas as nothing less than a traitor to the cause. Take the most recent editorial by the Palestinian Chronicle, an outlet that toes the violently anti-Israel party line narrative in its entirety. In a June 7 piece entitled, “Power at Any Cost: How Opportunistic Mansour Abbas Joined Hands with Avowed ‘Arab Killers,’” regular contributor Ramzy Baroud lambasts the Ra’am chairman for selling out Palestinian interests.
“Sadly, the unprecedented success of the Arab [MKs] following the March 2020 elections has now culminated to a tragic end, where the likes of Abbas become the unwelcomed ‘representative’ of a politically conscious and awakened community.” Put in plain English, Abbas’s readiness to collaborate on the latest coalition deal is, according to Baroud, betraying the hopes and dreams of the Arabs he claims to represent.
However, this accusation against Abbas is simply based on a false premise. Abbas isn’t interested in advocating for “politically conscious and awakened” Palestinians – at least his policy agendas aren’t showing that. During the recent round of flareups in Gaza and throughout the country, Abbas, to the ire of Palestinian hardliners, did not participate in the riling-up of the Arab population
and called on his supporters to “respect the law.” Despite the opportunity he had to bring to the fore any nationalist sentiments he had, he didn’t. This is for the simple reason that, as Baroud wrote, Abbas’s “political narrative is almost apolitical as he insists on reducing the national struggle of the Palestinian people to the mere need for economic developments.” In other words, Abbas is not interested in pursuing a nationalist cause, only a social one. This, it is worth noting, is not fundamentally different from Netanyahu’s own “economic peace” proposal that Bibi advocated over a decade ago.
During a 2008 plenary of the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, Netanyahu stated
that any peace process needs to focus on economic issues and not political disagreements. “Instead of talking about contentious issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the first step to a lasting peace needs to be the fostering of the Palestinians’ economic situation,” he said.
Obviously, it would be naive to think that all enemies of Israel can be bought off by improving their “economic situation.” There will always be those who will despise Israel, view it as a colonialist occupier, and treat it as such – even if that occupier can provide better paved roads and air-conditioned supermarkets. But this is the very point. Abbas is not seeking to placate those voices. On the contrary, even if Mansour Abbas does harbor dreams of a free Palestine in his heart of hearts, fighting that fight does not serve him politically. His voters sent him to the Knesset for one reason – to improve their quality of life at the material and legislative level.
Abbas’s whole platform from the outset of his career has been a socio-economic one. Demands from his new coalition partners didn’t involve surrendering territory to the Palestinian Authority or freezes to settlement construction in Judea and Samaria. What they did involve was funding – funding for the social and infrastructural issues his constituency so desperately seeks.
This is what Abbas hammered home when the news broke that his party would be part of the new government. “We have reached a critical mass of agreements in various fields,” Abbas told reporters. “[These] serve the interest of Arab society and that provide solutions for the burning issues in Arab society – planning, the housing crisis, and, of course, fighting violence and organized crime.”
Abbas promised that many of the benefits would flow to the Negev region in southern Israel. Ra’am’s base is among the traditional Bedouin communities in the Negev Desert. The so-called “change bloc” agreed to a whopping NIS 53 billion ($16.3 billion) in budgets and government development plans for Arab society. According to a statement by
Ra’am officials, Bennett and Lapid pledged NIS 30 billion over five years in unspecified economic development funds, as well as another NIS 2.5 million ($770,000) to fight violence and organized crime in Arab society. Furthermore, three Bedouin villages – Abda, Khashm al-Zena, and Rakhma – are set to be legalized in a government decision, according to Ra’am.
The heavy and explicit focus Abbas has placed on his social and infrastructural agenda has the potential to bring about a much-needed change in Israeli political discourse, namely the untethering of social agendas from nationalistic ones. For much of Israel’s history, all Arab political agendas have been seen by Israelis as an effort to attack the state’s legitimacy or subvert it in some way. Efforts to improve the conditions of Palestinians and/or Israeli Arabs were conflated with the more general aim of undermining Israel. If there were complaints, for instance, about the quality of public services in Arab population centers, it was really just a pretext to fight the occupation. To be sure, there was much truth to that perception. But Abbas’s explicit shift away from nationalist issues could bring a clear distinction to these two categories.
Abbas, a longtime veteran of Arab Israeli politics and activism knows better than anyone how much security concerns play a role in the derelict state of his voters and the communities they live in. Whether it’s the “no-go zones” of East Jerusalem or the lawless swaths of Israel’s south, the lack of police, basic services, and vital infrastructure is due largely to the fact that it is too costly from a safety perspective for Israeli authorities to operate there. Thus, for Abbas to achieve his most important programs, it is in his interests to convince his supporters to cooperate with the state.
Fostering this cooperation has been part and parcel of Abbas’s policy stances. So far, his behavior has reflected it as well. Let us hope that continues to be the case.
BYE-BYE BIBI
The second noteworthy factor of this newly-formed coalition – the one that has been most covered by mainstream media in the West – is the “dethroning” of Netanyahu, the longest serving prime minister in the country’s history. Netanyahu’s reign has not only been due to the dominance of his Likud faction, a party which has enjoyed an average of 30 parliamentary seats for nearly twelve straight elections. It is also the result of Netanyahu’s incredible skill at forming political alliances – and laying waste to opponents. To put it bluntly, Bibi is the most highly skilled politician ever to emerge on the Israeli scene, a fact even many of his detractors reluctantly admit. And this has led to his incredibly long hold on power.
Over the years, however, Netanyahu’s tactics, especially his legendary rigidity and unwillingness to share power or credit, has incurred a cost. And it seems now the debt has finally caught up with him.
It is truly remarkable that every major figure on the Israeli Right today was, at one point, a Netanyahu confidant. All experienced along the way a major falling out with the longtime premier: head of the recently formed New Hope party Gideon Saar, Israel Beteinu’s Avigdor Liberman, Naftali Bennett, even the Likud veteran Zev Elkin, all came up in the ranks either working for, or closely with, Binyamin Netanyahu. His former allies all tell a similar story. That Netanyahu has lied to everyone about everything, publicly and shamelessly, and furthermore –and this is the really damning line – the retention of power has become his priority, not promoting the rightwing Zionist values he claims to hold.
For two years now, four consecutive elections have been essentially battles between pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu camps. Despite the
uncompromising zeal of the “change-bloc,” its lack of numbers has kept Israel in a political purgatory, with Netanyahu clinging to the prime minister’s seat and his opponents unwilling to budge.
FLIP-FLOPPING
Which brings us back to Bennett’s commitment to never sit in a government with Yair Lapid and his blatant reversal on that promise. While he has not addressed the issue explicitly, Bennett is very much aware of how glaring of an about-face he took. According to Bennett, however, the decision to form a “unity government” with Lapid was of existential importance. Israel has not had a stable government in four years. It has not had a state budget in over two. This deadlock, enforced by the irreconcilability of every party’s respective campaign promises, has become intractable. “What we didn’t accomplish in four elections, we will not accomplish in the fifth,” said Bennett in his speech announcing his coalition deal with Lapid.
According to Bennett, his efforts to form a deal with Netanyahu were in vain. The Yamina head asserted that Netanyahu is no longer able to produce real rightwing governance since staying in power has become his only concern.
“Mr. Netanyahu is no longer trying to form a right-wing government because he knows full well that there isn’t one. He is seeking to take the whole national camp, and the whole country, with him on his personal last stand,” said Bennett.
Some critics say Bennett rejected coalition offers from Netanyahu only in order to reach the Prime Minister’s office. This fury against Bennett’s decision has come out in running protests near the homes of Yamina party members and persistent threats from right wing activists –which have caused Bennett’s security detail to be increased in recent days. But an equally plausible reason for Bennett’s move is his sincere belief that substantive change in Israel’s governmental make-up is the only way to ensure any measure of political stability.
Another important point to consider is that the new government may be able to accomplish feats Netanyahu’s governments were not. Indeed, due to the strictures in Bibi’s political maneuvering, many of the issues close to rightwing voters have been left neglected. These include restructuring of the Justice Ministry (long seen as a tool of Leftist political agendas) and the protection of additional areas in Judea and Samaria – regions dubbed “Area C” – falling under Palestinian control. Both of these have been addressed in the coalition deal. Other important issues relating to business law, long championed by Bennett, including regulation reform, have the greatest chance of being addressed with Yamina in a position of power.
But perhaps the most important element the new government will bring to the table is a marked change to the factionalist atmosphere that has come to define Israeli politics. All party heads have committed to setting aside their vast fundamental differences and focusing on basic issues that they all can agree on – rehabilitating the post-Covid economy, for example. In a statement released a few days ago, Yair Lapid vowed the new government “will work to serve all the citizens of Israel [...] and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society.” These commitments were not just empty rhetoric. Written into the coalition deal was a provision to allow any additional party to join the coalition after it is sworn in even without the approval of all coalition parties. One Israeli outlet reported that Bennett’s goal is to get one of the ultra-Orthodox parties to join. This open invitation shows how all the parties actually value political unity even at the potential expense of their political agendas.
To be sure, there is much cynicism that can be laid onto the incoming government. It is fragile, is composed of seemingly incompatible ideological camps, and required the reneging on more than a few commitments by party leaders. But for many Israeli voters, the possibility of finally escaping a two-year standoff, and perhaps bringing forth some substantive across-the-aisle cooperation, makes for a welcomed and refreshing proposition.
