There is nothing new about last-minute hiccups before a coalition agreement is signed. This happens, with varying degrees of intensity, before the formation of almost every new government.
At the last minute, one party will make one final demand that another party will object to, which will lead to leaks about a “crisis” in the talks. It’s all par for the course, part of the game, part of efforts to maximize leverage and accumulate more power and influence inside the new government.
So there was nothing unusual about the creaks that emerged on Tuesday as Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid tried to work out the final details among the heads of no fewer than eight parties spanning the entire political spectrum, from the hard Left (Meretz) to the hard Right (Yamina), and including an Islamist Arab party (Ra’am) for good measure.
Barring any last-minute snafus, the anti-Netanyahu coalition that Lapid – against tremendous odds – cobbled together will include the most parties (eight) in any coalition since 2001, when there were 10 parties in the national-unity coalition that Ariel Sharon formed.
And although Sharon’s government did include Labor along with Likud, it did not have the ideological diversity of the one now likely to lead the country. Under one umbrella, Israel will have a former chairman of the Yesha Council for settlements (Naftali Bennett from Yamina) sitting with the former head of the anti-settlement Peace Now movement (Mossi Raz from Meretz).
Now that’s ideological diversity.
Which means that last-minute debates on Tuesday on whether the Agriculture Ministry will go to Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu or Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party, or whether Yamina’s Ayelet Shaked or Labor’s Meirav Michaeli will sit on the committee to appoint Supreme Court judges, will likely seem like small change in comparison with the disagreements that are bound to arise once the government starts to function; when real life intervenes; and when decisions need to be made regarding settlements, African migrant workers, the Palestinians and even Iran.
When the idea of an ideologically diverse government was first broached, the argument was that the country’s focus for the foreseeable future would be on coronavirus and its economic fallout, that the Palestinian issue had been sidelined and that, as a result, the ideological differences between the parties could be fudged.
But now, with coronavirus in the rearview mirror and Gaza and the Palestinian issue looming large around the next bend, all realize that this government will need to do much more than just deal with a pandemic and its aftermath.
Whether one prefers calling this government the “anti-Bibi” government or the “government of change,” there is little argument that it will have achieved its main goal on the very day it is sworn into office: moving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aside.
In other words, this coalition’s main goal will be accomplished even before the ministers hold their first cabinet meeting. That is a unique situation.
The trick will then be to find the glue necessary after that first day to hold the coalition together. And remember, it is a coalition that includes a man (Liberman) who called Bennett in 2018 “messianic and a populist,” and who said, “As far as I’m concerned, the man [Bennett] has been deleted; starting tomorrow, he simply does not exist.”
That same year, Liberman said Meretz was a party that “has long stopped representing Israeli interests and does not belong to the State of Israel. They represent the Palestinian interest in the Knesset.”
Now, Liberman will be serving under a man he “deleted” and alongside a party he said represents the Palestinians in the Knesset.
And that is to say nothing of how he has spoken of Arab-Israeli parties in the past. In 2015, he said disloyal Israeli Arabs should be beheaded, and that there is “no reason for Umm el-Fahm to be part of the State of Israel.”
As finance minister, he will now be dependent for his budgetary decisions on the votes of Ra’am, which is to be in the coalition, even though the Islamic party will not receive a ministry seat around the cabinet table.
In the best of circumstances – meaning when there is some ideological common ground between the parties in the coalition– a government with a razor-slim 61-seat majority is a nightmare to run because every backbencher holds the future of the government in his or her hand.
In this case, running the coalition will be a double nightmare because there is no ideological glue.
This doesn’t mean it will be impossible. The leaders of the parties forming the coalition have justified reneging on campaign promises (Yamina) and sitting with ideological foes (Meretz and Labor) by saying Israel desperately needs stability and cannot afford to go to a fifth election, or potentially a sixth and seventh.
And they are correct. But stability does not come from just forming a government. It comes from maintaining it. If the government is to last longer than a few months and do more than just move Netanyahu aside, it will be incumbent upon each party to remember how important they deemed stability so that they will be willing to make the ideological compromises they will be called upon to make regularly.
Those who detest Netanyahu might say sidelining him is enough. But those who realize that the country needs a stable government will understand that it isn’t. Israel needs a government that functions, not just a replacement for Netanyahu.