Israel’s center-left needs Arab parties more than ever
If Blue and White leader Benny Gantz neglects to reward the Arab sector for its crucial role in bringing down the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, he will find himself back in the opposition.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 2012 AIPAC conference about the Iranian nuclear threat. Using a famous English adage, he told his audience, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then what is it? That’s right, it's a duck!” Today, that duck is Netanyahu — a lame duck. Now that 99% of the votes are counted, it looks like the Netanyahu era is over.
With just 31 seats for the Likud and 55 for the right-ultra-Orthodox bloc, it is obvious that Netanyahu failed in his efforts to win 61 seats without Liberman, which would have assured him a coalition that could have adopted legislation to protect Netanyahu from indictments. Thus, early this October, his attorneys will have to appear for a pre-indictment hearing before Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit without immunity from prosecution on the horizon. As such, he will do anything he can to keep his position as prime minister. According to Israeli law, a prime minister can serve even while he is indicted, right up until his verdict.
Anyone who has followed Netanyahu’s career will know that he will be the last person to throw his hands up and admit that he lost the September 2019 election. That is why, in his election night speech, when he was already aware of the Joint List’s success with 13 seats, Netanyahu stressesd that under no circumstances should there be a government with “anti-Zionist parties.” He hoped to prevent Blue and White Party chairman Benny Gantz from as much as holding talks with the predominantly Arab group. He seemed to have forgotten that the Joint List is in no rush to join any coalition, and that the ultra-Orthodox parties can hardly be called Zionist.
Despite his election night declaration that he would work to form a “Zionist government,” Netanyahu was quick to meet with the ultra-Orthodox parties the very next day to form a technical bloc led by him and including Yamina for a total of 55 seats. Then, on the morning of Sept. 19, he called for the formation of a broad unity government with Gantz and his Blue and White Party. Yes, the same Gantz about whom he once said, “If he can’t protect his own phone, how will he protect the country?”
