Middle Israel: Will Bennett and Lapid's fourth Israeli alliance last? - opinion

Politicians will build a bridge even where there is no river, said Nikita Khrushchev.

The term politician, in the Soviet leader’s dictionary, did not mean what it meant in the West, but his insight nonetheless applied everywhere, then as now. In the Jewish state, such bridges were built repeatedly, shouldering political alliances that connected nothing, led nowhere, and achieved nothing.

Such was also the aftermath of the 1999 betrothal between then-Labor Party leader Ehud Barak and Likud’s David Levy. The iconic Likudnik’s personal enmity with Benjamin Netanyahu was enough for a momentary escapade with Labor, but it was never a real marriage. By the next election, Levy was back where he came from.

The same went for Avigdor Liberman’s much-heralded union with Likud in 2013, an affair that fell apart less than two years after its announcement.

The third and last of Israel’s lasting alliances was the wedlock between ultra-Orthodoxy and Likud. The second was between Menachem Begin’s Herut and the Liberal Party, and the first was between modern Orthodoxy and Labor.

Of the three, Begin’s alliance with the Liberal Party is the most forgotten, but its impact was profound.

Created in 1965, it brought together his nationalists and Tel Aviv’s captains of industry and finance. Yes, opportunism was part of the match that gave an elitist party access to the masses, and a populist party access to the elites. However, Begin and his allies also shared convictions, having believed with equal zeal in capitalism, small government, judicial independence, and civil rights.

That is how Likud’s seed was planted and how a political hegemony of nearly half a century was sown. Still, the hegemony it replaced was based on a far deeper alliance that accomplished far more.

Having won Israel’s first election handily, David Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party could have established a solid coalition of 65 lawmakers with the socialist party to its left, Mapam, which won 19 seats. A further four seats could have been added if the Communist Party had been included.

That’s not where Ben-Gurion went. Instead of cozying up with Labor’s natural allies, Ben-Gurion took the more difficult path – a pact with religious Zionism. Established already in the previous decade, that alliance would now build the Jewish state.

Yes, Ben-Gurion, the atheist, had big differences with his religious allies, but they shared the conviction that Zionism was about creation, and that this creation would have to be the joint venture of adversaries. And true, it was a hierarchical alliance, as Labor’s following was roughly three times the size of religious Zionism’s.

Still, the two movements built together the judiciary, the welfare state, and the municipal system, as well as hundreds of villages and towns.

On top of this, what would become known as “the historic alliance” successfully balanced Israel’s delicate relations between religion and state. And on top of all that, this pact’s writers made religious and secular Israelis fight shoulder to shoulder in defense of their state. It was an alliance of believing patriots who created, sacrificed, grieved, and celebrated together.

Such was the alliance that governed Israel during its first three decades, until Likud’s defeat of Labor in 1977. And that’s when the third alliance emerged.

The alliance between Likud and ultra-Orthodoxy was the inversion of what Ben-Gurion created with religious Zionism. Now the alliance of believers and builders was replaced by an alliance of horse thieves.

Having first legitimized and then industrialized draft evasion, this alliance set out to loot what the previous alliance had built, in two ways: first, by steering budgets for the buildup of ultra-Orthodoxy’s ghettos, and then by flooding the civil service with anti-national hacks.

It was an anti-patriotic alliance of political abuse. You give me budgets, tax breaks, and draft exemptions, and I will give you power.

First, this duo goes back a long way. What began 13 years ago, when they forced Netanyahu to keep the ultra-Orthodox parties out of his coalition, matured a decade later, when they jointly created and led a government. Having both joined politics after previous careers, one in finance, the other in the media, they have since become the seasoned politicians whose maneuver this week caught the politically inexperienced Gadi Eisenkot off guard.

Second, and much more importantly, Lapid and Bennett represent between them three patriotic populations that make natural allies: Israel’s secular, traditional, and observant liberals.

If built wisely and led prudently, this alliance can pick up from where Labor’s alliance with religious Zionism left off, empowering those who are here to give and sidelining those who are here to take.

This fourth Israeli alliance would dethrone those who stormed the judiciary, contaminated the public service, and undermined our war of defense, and replace them with those who build, serve, pay, and sacrifice for everything good that happens in this country every day and night.