It happened just one day after news broke that Knesset member Basel Ghattas of the Arab Joint List was accused of serious crimes against state security while visiting security prisoners in jail. At a Dec. 19 meeting of the Knesset’s Likud faction, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he supported implementing the Expulsion Law against the allegedly wayward Knesset member. The law, which he originally initiated together with Knesset member Ze'ev Elkin of the Likud Party, dates to February 2016, when it was revealed that Knesset members from the Joint List, including Ghattas, paid a controversial visit to families of killed terrorists involved in the murders of Israelis.

In July 2016, a heated, late-night debate took place in the Knesset, set against the rancor that Israelis felt toward these Arab Knesset members. Sixty-two members of the coalition voted that night to approve the law, which enables them to remove a Knesset member for various reasons — including incitement to racism or support of a terrorist organization. The law states that signatures from 70 Knesset members (out of 120), including 10 members of the opposition, are needed in order to initiate the process. The expulsion is only finalized if 90 Knesset members vote to support it.

The opposition responded harshly to the law, claiming that it undermines the idea of a separation of powers and circumvents the legal authorities. Furthermore, they argued, it is inappropriate for one group of Knesset members to remove other members. If that is the case, how did it happen that on the evening of Jan. 16, Minister Elkin made a show of presenting Speaker of the House Yuli Edelstein with 72 signatures, slightly more than the number necessary to begin the expulsion process, and that these included 10 signatures from the opposition Yesh Atid faction, which originally opposed the law? And how is it possible that there are even loud voices within the opposition Zionist Camp, calling on its members to add their signatures to the list, or that there is a bitter debate within the party as to whether they should follow Yair Lapid’s lead and join the expulsion melee?

In order to better understand how the major opposition parties zigzagged until they reached the same position advocated by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the populist right, it is necessary to look back at the Dec. 19 Likud Party meeting mentioned earlier. Netanyahu would not make do with lashing out against Ghattas over the serious allegations against him. He also wanted to exploit the opportunity to attack the chairman of Yesh Atid.