Five hours after the coalition suffered a stinging loss in the Knesset Tuesday morning when it failed to pass an extension to the citizenship law, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called a press conference to unveil a new plan to trim Israel’s bureaucracy.
The juxtaposition was striking. In the morning, the government, only three weeks old, took a staggering blow to the chin, by noon it was back up on its feet, wanting to create the impression that the punch it sustained had not slowed it down.
“We are continuing forward, the government will survive and continue to do good,” Bennett said, answering a question about the dramatic early morning developments in the Knesset.
The press conference – where Bennett was joined by Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, and Deputy Minister for Regulatory Matters in the Prime Minister’s Office Abir Kara – was meant to send a message that despite the setback, despite the parliamentary loss, the government will carry on.
After relating briefly to the Knesset vote, and charging that the opposition directly harmed the security of the state out of “bitterness and frustration,” Bennett said that “all those who voted against the citizenship law, from Bibi through Tibi to Chikli opted for petty politics over the good of the country, and they will have to give an accounting for a long time to the citizens of Israel for their actions.”
He was referring to odd bedfellows opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the Joint List’s Ahmad Tibi, and Amichai Chikli, of Bennett’s own Yamina Party, whose vote against the measure deprived the coalition of a victory.
The government, Bennett continued, is looking ahead. “I want to direct attention to the things that we want to advance, because in the end sleepless nights and petty maneuvers in the Knesset don’t help a person who wants to establish a business, or a family that is trying to earn a living.”
Still, all the talk about trimming bureaucracy and cutting regulations to help the economy emerge from the coronavirus could not conceal the fact that the coalition, its leaders and all its parts suffered a significant loss on Tuesday.
But they were not the only losers in this battle over the law. The Likud, as well as the other right-wing parties, also lost. This was a rare instance in which it is difficult to identify any unequivocal political winner.
Even Ayman Odeh and Tibi’s Joint List, which cheered along with the Likud and Religious Zionist Party when the 59-59 vote tally was announced, did not secure a complete victory, despite their happy selfies, flashed “V for victory” signs and self-congratulatory tweets.
This Arab party was the closest thing to a winner in this Knesset drama because it has long opposed this measure on ideological grounds since it prevents Palestinians from gaining citizenship to live with their Israeli-Arab spouses inside Israel. Yet it is not a complete victory for them because to secure it they teamed up with the Likud and religious-Zionist and haredi parties, whose aim was not to cancel the law, but to embarrass and weaken the government, in order to eventually bring it down and replace it with a right-wing government led, again, by Netanyahu.
So the Joint List may have won an ideological skirmish here, but they did it at the expense of exposing cracks in the coalition that, if they widen, could ultimately bring down the government and replace Bennett with Netanyahu, definitely not something the party wants to see. This is a victory for the Joint List that contains within it the seeds of a much greater defeat for them.
All the other political actors were losers.
The biggest loser was Bennett. This vote revealed the fragility of his government, and showed that even with all the goodwill and willingness to compromise in the world, that is not enough. It showed that Yamina cannot count on Chikli to vote for it, and that the coalition on paper that has 62 seats, really only has 61, which won’t be enough to pass controversial legislation because there will also probably always be abstentions on ideological grounds.
Even worse, the vote revealed the political weakness of the new prime minister. Though all of the Labor and Meretz MKs voted for the law after a compromise was hammered out, and though half of Ra’am (United Arab List) voted for it (the party’s other two MKs abstained) in the end it was torpedoed because Bennett himself could not deliver all the votes in his small seven-seat faction. If he was unable to deliver the votes this time, then there is no reason to think he will be able to do so next time. This vote made an already weak political leader appear even weaker.
Meretz and Ra’am also came out as losers in this battle because they voted against their ideology, and didn’t gain anything for their trouble. On the contrary, they will now have to answer to their constituents.
As former Meretz head Zehava Gal-On tweeted, “In my nightmare, I never dreamed that when I woke up in the morning I would see my colleagues in Meretz vote for an extension of the temporary order that prevents family reunification. It’s good that this racist law has fallen.”
Netanyahu and the Likud also should be wary of viewing this vote as a victory.
Granted, they embarrassed the government and revealed how weak it is, but at what price? At the price of voting against something that the security establishment determined was important for Israel’s security. At the cost of voting against something they have supported for the last 18 years.
Likud stalwarts who will support Netanyahu no matter what, will likely not be swayed against the former prime minister because of this vote. But Likud fence-sitters, and some do exist and could be important in a close election, may be turned off by this blatant act of political cynicism.
To quote Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the US Civil War, “One fundamental principle of politics is to be always on the side of your country in a war.”
The spectacle of Likud Mks rejoicing with Hadash’s Ofer Cassif and Balad’s Sami Abou Shahadeh will be replayed in loops whenever this country goes to another election. And when that happens, it is not likely to gain the Likud any additional voters.
“Just as they always show how Bibi voted in favor of the disengagement [from Gaza], for many years they will show the MKs who willingly chose to harm Israel,” Bennett said of the opposition MKs at his press conference. “It’s a shame. This did not harm us, they did not harm the government, they harmed the State of Israel.”