While associates of Israel Resilience Party leader Benny Gantz were doing everything they could to maintain tight-lipped discipline and minimize the ramifications of an interview in which he praised the evacuations of Jewish settlements (those that have already taken place and those that he thinks should happen in the future, even as unilateral steps), MK Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al) showed up and boldly rolled out a work plan for his party and Gantz's.
We can cooperate after the election, Tibi winked, to the regret of everyone who is working to build up the former IDF chief's "neither Right nor Left" image.
As if that weren't enough, Tibi even outlined how things would go – a left-wing phalanx would be established that would comprise Gantz's party, the left-wing parties, and the Arab parties, just like in the 1992 election, which led to the disaster of the Oslo Accords.
Tibi is one of the most hostile, clever opponents of the Zionist enterprise, but in this case, he deserves a prize for telling the truth. Not that we wouldn't have understood the arithmetic without him – even in the best-case scenario, Gantz wouldn't be able to assemble a government without the Arab parties. But Israeli voters listen to words more than to electoral numbers and now Tibi is saying those words out loud. Everyone in the "anyone but Bibi" camp – from Gantz to the communists and Islamists of the Joint Arab List – have one hope: that they can put together a bloc that will topple the right-wing camp.
It's no coincidence that this goal has been wrapped in the nostalgia of a return to the 1992 precedent. "A successful trial," Tibi called it. Indeed, for the person who at the time served as an adviser to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, it was a great success. The Arab parties let Yitzhak Rabin become prime minister and he paid them back. Enormous amounts of money were poured into iffy budget items that were pet projects of anti-Zionist Arab MKs.
Make no mistake: The goal was not to integrate the Arab minority into the country so none of the very real problems in the Arab sector (from violence and illegal weapons to a lack of planning and construction) were addressed. But money rained down on the heads of people who dreamed of cutting off the Zionist enterprise and it whetted the appetite of their successors.
The "trial" of 1992, of course, had ramifications that went far beyond the budget. Rabin's dependence on the Arab parties paved the way for him to give away parts of the country to Arafat's terrorists and to the creation of the problem that Israel has yet to solve 25 years later. Tibi would be happy to build on that precedent this time, too. It's utterly clear that in exchange for his support, he and his partners will demand that Gantz follow the tragic, suicidal path laid out in the Oslo Accords. The Arab parties are the only ones who can hand Gantz a victory and they are already signaling what the price would be: Israeli withdrawals and even greater sums of money for Tibi's cronies and the Islamist movement.
The people of Israel are facing a clearer and more fateful choice than in previous elections. "Neither Right nor Left," Gantz is promising, unable to hide his future partners' satisfied smiles. Indeed, there are only two options: Bibi or Tibi.
