Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to avoid losing right-wing votes appear to be successful. Kulanu, which was about to be annihilated, joined the Likud. The New Right took over the United Right and formed the Yamina (formerly the New Right) list. Now Moshe Feiglin's enigmatic party has decided to drop out of the election, following Netanyahu's announcement that he would appoint Feiglin to a ministerial post in the next government and the possibility that the Likud might be willing to take care of the debt that Feiglin's Zehut party racked up in the April election.
Feiglin is a sort of serial lawbreaker, even if at age 57 he is very much where he was in the 1990s. He founded the Zo Artzeinu movement, which staged violent demonstrations, some of which sought to physically prevent the peace process led by the government of Yitzhak Rabin and his successors.
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In 1997, Feiglin was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 18 months in prison. His name became known around the world. Britain declared him a persona non grata 11 years ago. After years of demonstrations and violations of the law, he decided that a more effective way to exert influence would be to join the governing party, build up a base in the primaries that would give him a place in the Likud faction, and speak out once he was there. The Likud establishment followed Netanyahu's lead and did everything in its power to keep the criminal out of the Knesset, but in 2013 it could no longer hold him back. Feiglin became an MK and even served as Deputy Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
But once an outsider, always an outsider. Feiglin announced he wouldn't adhere to coalition discipline, visited the Temple Mount when doing so was prohibited, tried to remain the "wild child," and even faced off against Netanyahu for leadership of the Likud before he realized that the party would not let him advance. Since then, he's been trying on his own, unsuccessfully. Now he has reinvented himself, with his pet issue being legalizing cannabis. For a brief moment, it looked like he'd be the surprise of the April election, but he didn't even make it past the minimum threshold.
The prime minister has decided to pay what he apparently sees as a very low price to keep Feiglin and his Zehut party from running in the Sept. 17 Knesset election. But the press conference the two held to announce the decision wasn't just a moving reunion between ideological rivals after years of strife. It was a public meeting between the prime minister and a lawbreaker, who has now been given legitimacy after Netanyahu said that he saw Feiglin as part of the next government.
This move should send a signal to the younger lawbreakers – those who are busy with seditious activity, those who threaten violence, those who incite to violence, and those who employ violence – that anything goes. If they just wait a few years and gather a few thousand votes, the establishment will embrace them. A little patience is all it takes – we've seen that their path bears fruit.
