The Knesset vote that squashed the citizenship law indicates a solid, extremely active opposition. It's not for nothing that MK Amichai Chikli of the Yamina party voted with the Likud. This is his center of gravity, to which he is drawn, along with the fact that he isn't willing to be helped by votes from the Arab factions, as Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett apparently are. There was concern that a few Likud MKs would vote in favor of the law due to a sense of national and security responsibility. Apparently, discipline is effective. If there had been defections in the Likud, it could have expanded to the point of collapsing party discipline, with the option of joining the coalition as a faction in the near or intermediate future. The decisive response nipped this in the bud.
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As crazy as it sounds, the reason that Bennett and Shaked apparently aren't joining the Likud in rightfully passing Basic Law: Entry, Immigration and Status in Israel, are the clauses defined in the law as "fundamental principles." These clauses stipulate that "the land of Israel is the historical homeland … and the State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people." Because Mansour Abbas, Tamar Zandberg, Benny Gantz and their colleagues oppose this wording, Bennett and Shaked cannot provoke them. They especially can't provoke Abbas and Ahmad Tibi. The problem is this is already a slippery slope, and Shaked and Bennett are sliding down it at a dizzying speed, to the point of completely falling in line with their adopted family from the Left while violently rejecting their ideological parents on the Right.
Bennett and Shaked are faithfully doing the jobs earmarked for them by Yair Lapid; a job Bennett has been doing in earnest devotion since 2013. His job is to incessantly knock and attack Netanyahu and the Likud, in an effort to wear them down. The fact that he is now occupying the Prime Minister's Office has only given him more tools, turning the office into a hotbed of leaks and propaganda. Taking action and assuming responsibility isn't the end-all, because the democratic principle of governance with the people's consent has been broken.
Gideon Sa'ar is hiding behind the smokescreen created by the media ruckus. We've heard nothing about him. But he is more responsible than anyone for the composition of the Knesset and the dire straits of a government that cannot cope with the most critical national challenges. His supporters still believe him to possess a strong, right-wing ideological backbone. The question is whether this still applies. The Israeli government is unable to mount any effective opposition to America's unbridled pursuit of a renewed nuclear deal with Iran, it is unable to stop the intifada of arson and ongoing Arab violence in the rural areas, and it cannot protect the country's vital national-demographic interests. Gideon Sa'ar lives with this. From his perspective, it's more important that Netanyahu is out.
Netanyahu's ability to quickly formulate strategic action against the government has rallied the opposition around him. He is still the leader of the Right because even those who hesitated to vote for him in the past admit that any alternative leadership candidates in the Likud aren't in his league.
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