The coalition government is far from ideal, but is necessary - opinion

Israel needs a government right now that has wide public legitimacy to take the dramatic fiscal steps that will be necessary to emerge from the crisis with an economy still intact.

By HERB KEINON
A banner depicts Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White party, and Israel Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of Blue and White party's campaign ahead of the upcoming election, in Tel Aviv, Israel February 17, 2020 (photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
A banner depicts Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White party, and Israel Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of Blue and White party's campaign ahead of the upcoming election, in Tel Aviv, Israel February 17, 2020
(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
Four hundred and eighty days, three extremely bitter election campaigns and billions of shekels later, Israel finally has a government.
With a record of up to 36 ministers and 16 deputy ministers from the Left to the Right – with rotating prime ministers, including one who will split his time between the cabinet room and the courthouse, and another who has exactly no ministerial experience – this government is nobody's dream.
But, as the Rolling Stones once sang, “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.”
And an emergency government at this time – even a badly inflated emergency government – is definitely what the country, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis and facing an economic catastrophe of epic proportions, needs.
The last thing in the world that Israel could afford right now was to careen toward a fourth election, something that would cost billions of shekels more and – at a time when national solidarity is needed – preoccupy the nation with negativity and nonsense at a time when more than a quarter of the workforce is unemployed and hundreds of thousands of people are in the grips of severe financial anxiety.
Israel needs a government right now that has wide public legitimacy to take the dramatic fiscal steps that will be necessary to emerge from the crisis with an economy still intact.
Israel needs a government that will be able to pass a budget.
Israel needs a government with authority and legitimacy to decide whether to annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley before the November US elections and the possibility that US President Donald Trump will be turned out of office.
Israel needs a government able to decide critical defense and security issues – such as how to handle rocket fire from Gaza or Iranian entrenchment in Syria – without every IDF action raising questions of whether it was really needed, or just done to score political points.
Israel needs a normal, functioning government. The national emergency government agreed upon on Monday night will give it, if all goes as written and planned, a functional government.
Normal it won't be.
A rotation agreement is not normal. A government of this size is not normal. Two prime ministerial residences – one for the acting prime minister, and another for the deputy – is not normal. Hopefully it will be functional. And given the political stalemate since December 26 2018, when the Knesset dissolved itself sending the country to new elections, functional – at this time – would be good. A half loaf is better right now then no bread at all.
And history has actually shown, with the Yitzhak Shamir-Shimon Peres unity government in 1984, that a rotation government can function, and actually do pretty well. That government pulled the IDF back to a security zone in southern Lebanon and put the brakes on runaway inflation. But it will take goodwill by both sides, by both partners.
And that goodwill is not something that the public has seen exhibited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz in large amounts. The fact that it took so long – even as the coronavirus upended life in this country – for Netanyahu and Gantz to be able to draw up an agreement shows the level of distrust and lack of goodwill. Hopefully now that the deal has been signed, Netanyahu and Gantz can muster that goodwill.
One impetus for doing so might be the fear of facing the electorate again any time soon.
Despite recent poll numbers that have been favorable toward Netanyahu, he has no interest at this time in being blamed for the breakup of this government and a return to the ballot box.
Netanyahu has gotten fairly good grades from the public for his handling of the crisis up until now, but there is palpable anger among self-employed and small and medium-sized business owners – many who have voted for him in the past – that will likely be expressed in the creation of new parties to run in the next election. It is better for Netanyahu to have another 18 months as prime minister in the bag – especially with his trial set to start in May – than risking it all by going back to elections at an extremely volatile and potentially explosive political moment.
And Gantz has everything to gain by this arrangement actually working.
Had no agreement been signed, he would have gone to the elections having gone back on his most important campaign promise – not to sit in a government with Netanyahu – and having had lost half of his original Blue and White Party in the process. Gantz did the right thing for the country in a time of emergency by reversing his position on sitting in a Netanyahu government, but badly hurt himself politically in the process. New elections now for him would be political doom.
But if Gantz now actually proves himself as a defense minister, and if the rotation agreement is carried out and he is able to do well in the role of prime minister for 18 months, he will have completed a remarkable political turn-around.
Those are all big “ifs,” but at this time he has nothing to lose.
After three nasty campaigns, the trust is low. But both men – for their own political self-interests, to say nothing of the interests of the country – have good reason to actually want to make this abnormal, behemoth emergency rotation government work.