Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of Israeli politics, a nation who’s fragile coalition governments rival Italy for their fractious, unstable nature.

The difference is that between March 2009 and yesterday, Italy had seven separate Prime Ministers (Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni, Giuseppe Conte, Mario Draghi), while Israel has had one: Benjamin Netanyahu. And that was Netanyahu’s second tenure as Prime Minister, his first lasting from 1996 to 1999. Other national leader when Netanyahu took office in 1996: Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Pope John Paul II. In 1996, Independence Day topped the box office, “Macarena” topped the pop charts and Barack Obama was running for a seat in the Illinois State Senate.

But yesterday, Netanyahu’s run finally came to an end, with his Likud-led ruling coalition replace by a weird left-right amalgam headed by his former defense minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the New Right Party, and former opposition leader Yair Lapid, head of the left-center Yesh Atid party. This in effect means that Bennett, who is to the right of Netanyahu, will be leading a diverse coalition who’s political gravity is to the left of Netanyahu.

This is not a recipe for stability.

Also not a recipe for coalition stability: The coalition includes Ra’am, or the United Arab List, under the leadership of Mansour Abbas, the first an Arab party has ever participated in an Israeli ruling coalition. By the standards of Palestinian political leadership, Mansour Abbas is a flaming moderate; he opposed the Abraham Accords, but has occasionally worked with Netanyahu.

Can such an unwieldy coalition survive long enough for Lapid to take his agreed-upon turn as Prime Minister in 2023? Maybe, but I’d bet against it. The coalition has the bare minimum 61 members to forge a governing majority, and a unified desire to oust Netanyahu only gets you so far. Pounding the snot out of Hamas has probably bought the new coalition several months of relative peace in which to operate, but that just means the internal stresses will be all the greater. And if it falls, it’s entirely possible that the indomitable Netanyahu (whose Likud still has more seats in the Knesset than any other party) could still end up as Prime Minister yet again.

It’s hard to overstate how consequential Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister has been. Before taking office, the Israeli “Land for Peace” left was a powerful (arguably dominant) force in Israel politics. Since then, the Labor Party (traditional leader of that faction) has dwindled to 7 seats in the Knesset and last occupied the Prime Minister’s office in 2001. Kadima, a short lived centrist party led by Ariel Sharon and (after Sharon’s stroke) Ehud Olmert, was the last non-Likud coalition government before Netanyahu, and effectively ceased to exist after 2015. Under Netanyahu, Israel completed the security barrier and saw a dramatic reduction in terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens as a result. With the help of the Trump Administration, he oversaw peace treaties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and saw several nations moves their embassies from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. He also saw vastly improved relations with the majority of Sunni Arab nations, though that was largely the result of the Obama Administration alienating them with his Iranian nuclear deal. Netanyahu also survived Obama’s attempt to oust him from office.

Netanyahu still has serious charges against him grinding through a slow-motion trial. (And I know even less about Israeli judicial proceedings than Knesset politics.) He could still end up in prison…or a return engagement as Prime Minister.

Or both.

Netanyahu so thoroughly dominated Israeli politics for a quarter century that it’s hard to imagine what a post-Netanyahu political landscape will look like. But he’s still leader of Likud, so he isn’t off stage entirely just yet…

Tags: Abraham Accords, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Israeli Elections, Knesset, Mansour Abbas, Middle East, Middle East Peace Process, Naftali Bennett, New Right Party (Israel), United Arab List (Israel), Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2021 at 12:35 PM and is filed under Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.