Well, not exactly. It was really born to move former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu aside. To do that, however, it had to bring together disparate parts: from the hard Left to the hard Right; Islamists with religious Zionists.
But once those disparate parts have been brought together, the government can only survive if those parts compromise.
The leaders of the government like to call it a “national unity” government. But since it does not include any representatives of the haredi community, a community that makes up some 13% of the country, the term “national unity” here is a bit of a misnomer.
A better term, or at least a more accurate one, would be a “government of compromise” – because if it is to survive, compromise needs to be this government’s default mode.
The leaders of the eight factions that make up this coalition all expressed a readiness and willingness to compromise when they agreed to form their surprising government two weeks ago. The music that accompanied the signing of the coalition agreements was that there is more the parties agree on than they disagree on, and that with good will and understanding, even the issues they disagree upon can either be worked out or avoided.
The idea behind the government was that after two and a half years of a country deeply polarized and divided, the time had come to find common ground – and that it was possible to find it. The idea was to create a new paradigm for this fractured country, whereby one side would not beat the other; where one side would not pin down the arm of the other in some ideological arm-wrestling match.
TWO ISSUES are currently in front of the government that will test its ability to do this and to compromise among itself. The first is the fate of the recently established illegal outpost at Evyatar, and the second is the “family reunification” law.
Both are hurdles for the government because of the wide ideological composition of the coalition.
Yamina, New Hope and Yisrael Beytenu will have trouble supporting the forced eviction of some 50 families who built an outpost at Evyatar after a terrorist murdered yeshiva student Yehuda Guetta in May at nearby Tapuah junction.
And on the second issue, the United Arab List (Ra’am) and Meretz will have trouble voting for the extension of an 18-year-old law preventing the automatic granting of citizenship to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians (or citizens of enemy states such as Syria, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon) who marry Israeli Arabs.
In both instances – instead of running headlong into a situation that will leave one half of the government feeling good, and the other feeling sour; one half feeling victorious, and the other half vanquished – there are currently serious efforts to find a compromise solution.
That very search for a compromise is refreshing and sets a welcome tone for this factious nation: that confrontation is not inevitable, and that creative solutions need to be sought for problems so that neither side feels fully dissatisfied.
HOW THE government deals with Evyatar will go a long way in setting this government’s tone, just as the way former prime minister Ehud Olmert dealt with the first evacuation of Amona in February 2006 set a tone for his premiership.
At the time of the Amona evacuation, one that a Knesset committee of inquiry found was done with excessive force, Olmert was acting prime minister, following Ariel Sharon’s incapacitating stroke. Elections were just a month off, and after the Supreme Court green-lighted the evacuation of the outpost illegally built on private Palestinian land, Olmert acted immediately.
With the election just around the corner, and an interest in taking Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza and applying it to parts of the West Bank within the framework of what he called the “convergence plan,” Olmert was keen on showing that he could and would take on the settlers.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former director-general of the Yesha Council (the umbrella organization representing communities in Judea and Samaria), has no such interest.
On the contrary, Bennett has an interest in showing that regardless of what Netanyahu says about him day and night, there will be no evacuations or major concessions in Judea and Samaria under his watch, and that he is not a puppet of the Left. Bennett has an interest in settling the issue peacefully, without images of soldiers forcibly evicting Jews.
On the other side of the coalition fence, Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz and MK Moss Raz, a former Peace Now leader, have said the outpost was established illegally, the laws must be enforced and it therefore must be evacuated.
A compromise formula was drawn up, whereby the 50 families at the site would leave this week, and the structures there will remain and serve as a yeshiva and as a temporary IDF outpost until the question of the outpost’s legality is decided.
Whether a compromise here can be worked out – whereby neither Bennett’s Yamina nor Horowitz’s Meretz get everything they want, but where each party gets something – will be a test as to whether this government will be able to work going forward.
AND THIS is not the only area where the government is expending energy looking for a compromise way out of a problem. Efforts are continuing to find a middle ground that will enable Ra’am and Meretz to vote for a one-year extension of the Family Reunification Law, despite their ideological opposition to it.
Netanyahu made clear on Monday that the Likud was not going to throw the coalition a “life jacket” on this matter and would only vote for a two-month extension if the coalition promotes and advances a stricter version of the law, something that would rattle Ra’am and Meretz even more.
Unable to count on the Likud or its satellite parties to vote for an extension of this law – even though they have done so every year for the last 17 – will necessitate creative thinking and a willingness for Yamina, New Hope and Yisrael Beytenu inside the coalition to find a compromise with Meretz and Ra’am over this issue.
The hunt is on, which in and of itself is positive and sends an important message, though what ultimately matters is whether a compromise can be found.
The very structure of the current government – Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has veto power over Bennett now, and Bennett will have veto power over Lapid when he takes over in two years – forces compromise. It is a power-sharing arrangement that can only work if there is accommodation.
Columnist Shmuel Rosner put it well earlier this month in The New York Times: “At a time when polarization is such a grave social and political threat, Israel might have awkwardly stumbled into a remedy: an enforced regime of compromise.”
But the early tests posed by Evyatar and the Family Reunification Law will indicate whether this “enforced regime of compromise” is enough to bring about the actual conciliation needed for this government to survive