Next week, Israel is going to elections, but Israelis do not seem to be duly impressed by this opportunity to exercise their basis democratic right. And it is not surprising that elections are not really one’s priority any more when Netanyahu has carefully planned the Corona crisis such that just now, the country is opening up, shopping centers are operating, restaurants happily accept guests and even next week, the bars and nightclubs will reopen their doors. So who cares about such trivialities as elections, which, in the eyes of many (those that bother to look) will anyway again end up in a stalemate, just like the three previous rounds and a fifth edition will most likely be required.
The politicians are somewhat in the same state of mind. They all take into account that an additional round will be necessary, but at the same time declare to whoever wants to hear that they will do anything to prevent that an additional election will be required. And so they are busy mostly with the numbers. The interests of Israel and Israelis are rather irrelevant. The only thing that counts is how many seats will the Bibi camp receive and how many the anti-Bibi camp. And of course there are those who blatantly claim that they are the only one that can save Israel (from what, itself?) and that only they should be Prime Minister. Of course Netanyahu claims this all the time. He has been extremely busy portraying himself as the savior of the Jewish State, the King of modern Israel. But also others, like Gideon Sa’ar and Naftali Bennett, whose parties barely make it into double digit numbers, are not hesitating to claim that they and only they should be the new Prime Minister of Israel, only they can bring about a change and put Israel back on track. Never mind that both Sa’ar and Bennett are ultra-right politicians with racist and fascist ideals that would indeed put Israel on track: to a disaster like the Jewish State has never seen before.
Yair Lapid, whose party does appear to become a challenge to Netanyahu and the Likud, with about 20 seats predicted in the Knesset, has been very careful not to give out clear-cut statements about what will happen after the elections and even has been hesitant about proclaiming that he wants to be Prime Minister. Instead, he has been concentrating on the progress of the “Anti-Bibi” bloc. First, Lapid has been trying to convince Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party to quit the race because of the danger that votes for Gantz will be lost if he will not pass the electoral threshold; a plea that did fall on deaf ears with Gantz, and the danger of him not passing the threshold still is very real. Now Lapid has taken it a step further and told voters that if they do not want to vote for him, they should seriously consider voting for Meretz, because of the same danger Meretz may not pass the threshold and votes cast for them will be lost. Lapid added that in any case voters should not choose the Labor party because they will in any case reach five to six Knesset seats and don’t need more than that.
There are now two viable options after the votes will have been counted, and it constitutes a win-win situation for Netanyahu.
The worst case scenario will undoubtedly be that Netanyahu with his racist, fascists partners Ben Gvir and Smotrich, will obtain a majority and form a government. This may very well include Bennett, because in contrast to other (right-wing) politicians such as Sa’ar, who declared in an unmistaken manner that they will not sit in a government with Netanyahu, Bennet and his side-kick Shaked, have kept mum on the subject, even when pressed hard by journalists to clarify their status. Bennett is hoping to become a crucial “king-maker”, placing him in a position to make demands on Netanyahu, that he latter will almost certainly will agree to in order to obtain the desired majority. This option will put Ben Gvir and Smotrich in the Israeli government and will turn Israel into a Jewish Dictatorial State, destroying the last remnants of the Democracy that once existed here.
The second option is that the “Anti-Bibi” camp, which should include the Arab parties, will gain a majority in the Knesset and Lapid will be given the opportunity to form a government, being by far the largest party in the bloc. It must be realized that the various parties in this “bloc” have absolutely nothing in common, except for the desire to see Netanyahu out of office and into the criminal court to be judged for his crimes. The bloc includes Meretz, if it passes the threshold, a far-left party that has become more and more of a fringe in the past years, the Arab parties, who are extremely weary of the Jewish parties in the Knesset because they simply cannot be counted on the represent the Arab population or even keep them in mind, and, on the other extreme there is Sa’ar, who grew up in the Likud and has been known and expressed himself repeatedly as an ultra-right politician with racist ideas. Even from a clean political point of view, these extremes appear impossible to reconcile but even if the parties would be able to come to some arrangement regarding politics (which will include such hot potato topics as Religion and State, the Settlements and Annexation), the egos of their leaders will most likely prevent that any agreement may be reached. Lapid should be entitled to the office of Prime Minister, being by far the largest party, and, after the disaster of his lining up with Gantz three elections ago, he will never agree to anything less than full control over the anti-Bibi coalition, even if he (wisely) doesn’t say this out loud now. But the ego of Sa’ar will simply prevent this from happening. Unless the polls are very wrong and Lapid and his Yesh Atid party will become much bigger that is currently predicted, the option of an anti-Bibi government is simply not realistic.
And this would leave Netanyahu as the winner here also, even if he loses. There will be months of negotiations which will lead to nothing and in the end a fifth round of elections will be called. Such elections will take place in October-November only, thus the government we have now will remain in place (with changes Netanyahu will want to make) and Netanyahu will keep control over the country, enabling him to continue to take care of his own affairs, with as first priority, a new Justice Minister to make his current criminal trial go away.
History will have to tell us how we ever got here. A situation in which a country that was established as a socialist, democratic entity has rapidly turned into a racist theocracy and the population simply let it happen. One man has been capable of destroying the basic values of this country and the people are cheering him on.
I hope history will also be able to tell us how we got out of this quagmire and back onto a path of sanity and humanity.
I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.
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