Stop for a minute and think about how, exactly, we got found ourselves holding a repeat election. The banal answers will sway from a loss of seats for the Right due to the camp fracturing to Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman's insistence on ending the coalition negotiations to his satisfaction. These are correct assessments, but shallow ones. The current political crisis is the result of an unprecedented event in Israeli politics, and mainly the legal system intervening in the democratic process.
Let's lay it all out on the table: If Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit had not published the document detailing the crimes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of less than two months before the election, we wouldn't have found ourselves here. The results of the election created the impression that the publication had not affected the public's opinion. That's a mistake. In effect, the publication of the suspicions against Netanyahu decided the rules of the game and especially how the various political actors would make decisions – and therefore, how the public would decide.
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From the moment that Netanyahu was marked as "accused," an atmosphere developed that placed clear boundaries on everyone involved. If a natural coalition partner like Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon promised he would not serve as a minister in the government of a prime minister under indictment, what could we expect from opponents like Yair Lapid or Avi Gabbay? It's hard to know how the seats would have shaken down if the suspicions against Netanyahu hadn't been published, but it's clear that Netanyahu would have had much more latitude in the coalition negotiations. The Israeli party system lost its flexibility – that is the major significance of Mendelblit and State Attorney Shai Nitzan's decision, inspired by former Chief Justice Aharon Barak.
The decision to publish the list of counts on which Netanyahu is suspected was not merely procedural. It didn't just happen at a critical point in time. The opposite – the timing of the publication was a subject of debate. Was it appropriate to notify the public about them before, or after, the election? And there were solid grounds for the debate: On one hand, perhaps the public should have been provided with vital information. But on the other, if a history of investigations and indictments against public officials that ended in nothing wasn't enough to tip the scales against publishing the suspicions early, then at least the fact that Case 4,000 – defined by Nitzan as a "test case," – should have held them back.
But Mendelblit didn't make the decision alone. As Channel 12 reporter Guy Peleg revealed at the start of January, the "brainstorming process" brought it all sorts of former officials in the judicial system and former chief justices Dorit Beinisch and, of course, Aharon Barak. Former senior officials in the judicial system lined up in favor of publishing the suspicions against Netanyahu before the election. And as Barak expected, Mendelblit did not disappoint.
By pushing for the document to be published before the election, the judicial system interfered with democracy, not to decide who would be prime minister, but to help everyone else understand who would not be. They didn't disappoint, either. But it could be that the current election is indicative of a trend in the opposite direction: Kahlon has joined the Likud, and most of the other players aren't in any rush to set down in stone whether they will or will not join a Netanyahu-led government. It seems that they've also realized that the public doesn't have too much faith in the judicial system.
