The decision by Benny Gantz to accept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's many public appeals to join forces in a national unity government was very Purim-like in its turning all political events on its head. In the Purim story, all the political pieces are in place for Haman to rise higher and for Mordechai and the Jews to be eliminated. Then, in a veritable instant, it all changes. Haman gets hanged on the gallows he erected to lynch Mordechai, Mordechai is elevated to Haman's former position, and the Jews get the king's royal proclamation to kill their enemies.
And so it seemed that modern-day Israeli politics were in place. Likud's Yuli Edelstein was forced to give up his position as Knesset speaker, with Blue and White's Meir Cohen about to take his place. Benny Gantz had obtained the recommendation of 61 Knesset members to form a new government. Leaders of the Arab Joint List, headed by Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh, were congratulating themselves on having ended the reign of Netanyahu.
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Avigdor Lieberman, only recently among Israel's most right-wing politicians, joyously was participating in the same plot alongside the 15 anti-Zionist Joint List Knesset members whose numbers include those who have expressed sympathy for Arab terrorists who have murdered Jews. By all external appearances, Netanyahu was out, Cohen was in, and Gantz was only a few meters away from becoming Prime Minister. Likewise most gleeful were two of Gantz's four co-leaders in the Blue and White "cockpit," Yair Lapid of the party's Yesh Atid faction and Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon of Telem.
And then, in a virtual instant, Gantz cut a deal with Netanyahu. Netanyahu remains prime minister yet another year and a half. Then Gantz for eighteen months. The Arab Joint List – irrelevant. Lieberman and his Yisrael Beytenu party – left without a political home. Lapid and Ya'alon? In a daze. Not much more to say except: "Huh?"
In reality, Gantz had no choice. His act was not that of a once-in-a-generation patriot who gives up everything for his land and his people. Nor was it a political betrayal of his voters. Rather, it was like being on a road where you want to turn left, but the sign says "Right Turn Only" – and a police car is right behind. He had to turn right.
What were Gantz's options? He had pledged an all-Jewish government that that would not rely on the Arab Joint List. But he had only 33 seats, with six more from Labor and Meretz, and with seven from Liberman. He needed 61. Likud, which had emerged as the country's largest party with 36 votes, had no intention of helping.
The two Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, cannot sit with either Yair Lapid or with Avigdor Lieberman because they both campaigned on platforms of reducing Haredi influence. The right-wing Religious Zionist Yemina party is a natural adjunct of Likud. Gantz's only choices during Phase One after the year's third elections were either to concede that he again cannot cobble together a government – or to break his promise and negotiate the Joint List's participation. With Lieberman, Lapid, and Telem's Bogie Ya'alon all singularly focused on bringing down Netanyahu, no matter the cost, Gantz first veered that way.
But then Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser of Telem made clear that, like Orly Levy-Abekasis of Gesher, they absolutely would not cast their votes to form any government that relies, even indirectly, on the backing of anti-Zionists including those who have praised or otherwise justified terror attacks on Israel. So, bereft of Hendel and Hauser, Gantz was left with 59. What else could he have done?
He could have wasted four weeks trying haplessly to form a government that cannot be formed, even as Netanyahu holds daily national briefings on combating the coronavirus and publicly urges a unity government. Initially, Gantz tried that path for a few days. The results were politically devastating. Several respected national voter surveys were published showing Likud's strength growing and Blue and White's support collapsing. By March 20, Shlomo Filber and Tzuriel Sharon of Direct Polls reported that Likud's lead over Blue and White had ballooned to 40-30, with the right-wing and religious parties now polling at 62 seats. So Gantz had to recalibrate.
In the alternative, Gantz could have returned his mandate to President Reuven Rivlin and then waited as Netanyahu would try to secure three cross-overs to help his 58-seat bloc make a government. If so offered, Netanyahu probably would have been savvy enough from the outset to focus instead on publicly cajoling Gantz to form a unity government, with coronavirus casualties ever-increasing. If Gantz would continue refusing, the vast majority of Israelis would have blamed Gantz for forcing Israel into its fourth elections in a year, this time amid the worst medical plague and economic catastrophe the country has faced. Gantz's position would have been impossible. He had no choices.
In cutting a deal, Gantz's own personal political future, even if he becomes Prime Minister in eighteen months, probably – ironically – lies with his ultimately joining Likud. He cannot go back home again politically.
The Left never will trust him again after they gave him their million-plus votes in return for his so-often-repeated pledge never to serve in a government under Netanyahu. Israel's voters in the center never will trust him again after he violated his so-often-repeated pledge never to rely, even indirectly, on Arab Joint List support for a government. The right presently cannot trust him, but if he serves under Netanyahu for eighteen months and then continues, with Ya'alon or Lapid as his partners, promoting a Likud agenda that likewise accommodates its religious coalition partners – who knows?
For now, though, so many ironies abound. Netanyahu has conferred on Gantz the Foreign Ministry at a time when almost no one is leaving the country and almost no one coming in. When the planes fly again, Netanyahu will have Gantz out of the country quite a bit, a tactic that Barack Obama deployed when he named his main political challenger, Hillary Clinton, to that similar post. As American Secretary of State, she was not heard from much, and she was not seen. Gantz will traipse around the world possibly unable to convince a single country to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. Not a formula for success.
More ironies abound. Blue and White now splinters into its parts. For now, Ya'alon and Lapid are close because they both hate Netanyahu more than anything else. But that marriage won't last long because, once Netanyahu no longer is in power, the Yesh Atid and Telem factions will ask what they are doing in the same bed. Meanwhile, Lieberman will have to adjust to a world in which he no longer matters.
For a year, he has been dangling his 5-8 Knesset seats, luring media to daily news conferences and attracting endless television and radio studio interviews, with all aware he could confer governance. But now, with Gantz's Resilience faction of 15 seats joining up with the Likud-Religious bloc, that 73-seat coalition makes Liberman irrelevant even if two or so Resilience members back out.
For the disappointed Israeli Left, this has been a nightmare. Labor and Meretz thought their voters had given them seven seats, only to see Levy-Abekasis utterly dissociate. The Joint List thought they had a deal with Gantz and had achieved their long-sought goal of toppling Netanyahu. Lapid, Lieberman, and Ya'alon thought their voters had realized their singular goal of destroying Netanyahu politically. Now they all feel cheated and betrayed.
Those on Israel's right know that feeling well. In February 1992, three members of Raful Eitan's right-wing Tzomet party – Gonen Segev, Esther Salmovitz, and Alex Goldfarb – crossed over to the left and cast the deciding votes to pass the Oslo accords. They abandoned principle because Yitzchak Rabin named Segev to a cabinet ministry.
A decade later, Israel's right-wing voters gave Ariel Sharon a landslide victory over Ehud Barak, only to see Sharon later expel and destroy the Jewish community of Gush Katif, as he unilaterally handed over Gaza without negotiating a single concession. But for the stroke that felled him, Sharon next was determined to do the same to many of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria.
Such is politics. Such is democracy. Ask any American conservative who elected George H. W. Bush, whose core campaign slogan in 1988 was "Read my lips – no new taxes." They elected him. He raised taxes. And he never won another election.
