Leave it to the Left. Or not

Only a fool will believe that a government united in hatred will bring reconciliation and unification.

 

Many Israelis are distressed by the recent political events. MKs moving from one party to the next, parties zigzagging across the political spectrum, and party leaders who garnered merely six or seven seats in the elections making a claim to the Prime Minister's Office by exploiting the bizarre political reality as they race to head the most complex state in the world.

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The artificial connection between Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, New Hope leader Gideon Sa'ar, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, and Labor leader Merav Michaeli could lead to the formation of an amateurishly tailored government.

However, Israel, with the myriad of challenges it faces, cannot afford to have a government led by a group of amateurs whose only common goal is the burning desire to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave office.  Only a fool will believe that a government united in hatred will bring reconciliation and unification.

There is no path, no values, no vision, no truth – everything is personal. This is the type of politics that evokes revulsion to the point of indifference and causes the public to lose faith in the democratic process. And it is this type of disgust that prompts a brain drain and a decrease in motivation to serve in the IDF.

The behavior of Lieberman, Sa'ar and to some extent Bennett, is the current expression of the path's loss.

There are several versions as to whether Bennett was privy to the ploy exercise by Lapid and Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas, and whether he sided with Likud only after he learned the plan could go ahead without Yamina. It is for Bennett to prove that this was not a political scheme on his part.

I can only hope that down the road, Bennett will prove he remains part of the right-wing bloc and that he has no plans to make a beeline for a deal with Lapid. There is no doubt that if Bennett wants to be prime minister he has to remain part of the Right. If he doesn't, he's looking at only a short stint in office.

Right-wing voters would do well to remember how, in 1992, the Tehiya party, together with fragments of other parties, toppled the Right-led government and handed power to the Left – something that resulted in the Oslo disaster.

Many of us recognize the falsehood at the heart of the phrase "I will navigate" that was coined by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ahead of Oslo. If Sa'ar and Bennett think they will be able to manipulate the heads of the left-wing parties, they are daydreaming.

The people of Israel are not wary of a long winding road. The majority of the Jewish public in Israel identifies with the values of the Right and for them, Horowitz and education minister, Michaeli as justice minister, Lapid as prime minister and Gantz as finance minister is nothing short of a nightmare.

I have no doubt that if the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties join forces, they will be able to retain the country's leadership. Most Israelis have already understood Lapid is unfit to be prime minister.

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