These days we appear to be in a play that is being written in the course of its performance, where various individual or groups of actors assume the role of the play’s author. However, while each of them knows or at least pretends to know how he or they wants the play to end, at the moment, no one is really in control and the play keeps taking unexpected twists and turns which the actors must constantly adapt to.
What is most confusing in the situation, is that the prime minister is not only not in control of events but appears to have lost control of himself. In other words, he appears to have lost it and that is not only an opinion prevalent in opposition circles.
If this situation continues, the best one can hope for is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will finally opt for a plea bargain, that will remove him permanently from the political arena. Then, either the current all-right coalition will agree on an alternative leader or we shall have another round of early elections in which, if the recent opinion polls will prove to be accurate, the current coalition will lose its majority and perhaps the all-right bloc will turn into an aberration of the past, just as the past idea of an all-Left bloc did after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.
This might happen, sooner than anyone had expected but certainly not overnight and things might still get completely out of control before it does. There is even talk of Israel splitting into two cantons.
The twists and turns in Israeli politics
The first of the twists and turns in what has occurred in the last week and a half was the announcement by the prime minister of a perfectly reasonable and well-functioning defense minister, whose main offense was to sound the alarm on the dangerous situation created within the military as a result of the legal reform, and this while Netanyahu was on a superfluous visit to London over the weekend.
For the time being, Yoav Gallant has not received an official letter informing him of his dismissal but the immediate reaction was an upgrading of the demonstrations by the anti-revolution camp, which was followed very rapidly by the organization of counter-demonstrations by the supporters of the reform, thus breaking the rather surprising 12-week monopoly of the former group.
ONE OF the surprises of the first 12 weeks of the current crisis was that the coalition did not manage to turn its impressive Knesset majority of 64 MKs into counter-demonstrations to those of the opposition. When it did, at least in the beginning, those who turned up were primarily supporters from Judea and Samaria of Otzma Yehudit and of the Religious Zionist Party, plus the violent, racist hoodlum organizations La Familia (which is formally a football fan club) and Lehava, whose self-declared mission is to prevent Jewish assimilation among gentiles – involving active, manipulative, frequently violent intervention in relations established by Jewish girls and women with Arabs. In the first stages, there were few participants from among Likud supporters in general and from the periphery in particular and much of the activity involved threats and minor violence against members of the opposite camp.
However, very soon the focus of the pro-government demonstrations turned into the claim that the voters of the coalition parties, who constituted a clear majority during the last election, are second-class citizens since in the final reckoning their votes apparently do not count because the minority is acting on the streets to prevent the government’s legal reform, for which they had allegedly voted on November 1, from being realized.
Thus, rather than the coalition being responsible for an attack on the essential principles of democracy as the opponents of the reform claim, it is the opposition that is responsible for threatening Israel’s democracy in its majoritarian sense by trying to prevent the Government from implementing the policies on the basis of which it had allegedly been elected.
There are several faults with such a presentation of the situation, even though many voters of the coalition parties may have legitimate subjective reasons to feel that they are second-class citizens whether or not this is objectively true.
The first problem is that the legal reform or legal revolution, hardly played any role in the election campaigns of the various parties that later formed the all-right coalition and very few among their voters voted as they did because they sought such a reform or revolution.
In fact, not until Yariv Levin became justice minister on December 29, almost two months after the elections, did he announce the details of the reform he envisioned: a reform that the Kohelet Forum, an independent right-wing research institute, was much more involved in preparing than anyone, besides Levin, within the Likud.
Without going into details, one should also take note that Levin’s plan, which he and the chairperson of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) have been tirelessly promoting for the last three months if actually implemented, will have very little immediate direct impact on most individual citizens since it does not deal with the real legal issues that concern them.
THE PLAN does not deal at all with the slow and inefficient operation of the legal system and the resulting drawn-out legal proceedings that the individual citizen must contend with (President Isaac Herzog’s outline does mention this briefly). In fact, the plan concentrates on the Supreme Court, which ordinary citizens very rarely have any direct contact with and how its justices are selected, with emphasis on ensuring that there will be a conservative majority in its makeup – “conservative” as defined by Levin, Rothman and the members of Kohelet, which does not necessarily reflect how the run-of-the-mill Likudnik defines the term.
Of course, the most important development in last week’s saga was Netanyahu’s announcement on the temporary suspension of the legislative process designed to implement the reform under the auspices of the President of the State until after the Knesset’s spring recess and the opening of talks on a possible compromise over the reform between the coalition and the opposition.
My feeling is that the cold shoulder Netanyahu has been getting from United States President Joe Biden over his being invited to Washington for an official visit is much more responsible for Netanyahu’s sudden determination to open such talks. It’s had a greater impact than any realization by the prime minister that Levin and Rothman are leading him and Israel at great speed straight to an edge of an abyss or the impressive show of determination by the hundreds of thousands of participants in the anti-government demonstrations all around the country.
There is nothing I would like better than to receive news that the teams participating in the meetings have found acceptable solutions to each and every one of the issues at stake. But like many others, I am pessimistic, both because Levin has already announced that once the Knesset’s summer session opens on April 30, he plans to resume the legislative process because of the odd makeup of the Likud’s negotiating team and that does not bode well for the future of the negotiations and also because Netanyahu’s attention seems to be focused elsewhere.
Where will the play move on from here? I doubt anyone really knows. We shall just have to wait patiently and see.
The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book: Israel’s Knesset Members – A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, is published by Routledge.