In many ways, Israel is nearing the end of the line when it comes to a functioning leadership. Before our very eyes spokespeople of the Left are saying explicitly that they prefer a government that is incapable of passing a single law or making a single decision, as long as its existence is preventing the worst thing of all. And what is the worst thing of all? A right-wing government. "We won't give Netanyahu a prize," New Hope leader Gideon Sa'ar is saying.
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A non-functioning government is a government that can't fight inflation or form a security policy. Usually, the person in charge is a political leader who won the support of the people to a certain extent – even David Ben-Gurion had about 45 mandates. The person responsible for national security today became primes minister through political extortion. As political correspondent Amit Segal writes in his book The Story of Israeli Politics (2020), "The Israel system has had difficulty translating the will of the people into a functioning government, but the precedent Bennett set – a small faction that takes control through political maneuvering – threatens to completely sever the connection between the will of the people and the identity of the prime minister."
Ultimately, the lack of a Knesset majority and the inability to pass laws and government still aren't enough to change out this government or bring it down. Every time an existential threat to the regime has arisen, some quick fix was found, one that plugged the hole but created others. Everyone is familiar with the short-lived direct elections for prime minister. In response, the Israeli people split into parliamentary amoebas. In response to the ease in which governments can be toppled through a vote of no confidence, a law was passed requiring that no-confidence votes be "constructive" – in other words, that the measure be capable of forming a replacement government. So the fall still hasn't happened. There is still the option of dissolving the Knesset and holding elections.
What we have now is an insufferable discrepancy between public opinion and the government, which has lost the majority. The sense among the opposition, when the government tries to enlist it to support Gideon Sa'ar's bill to extend Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, is that they're being mugged to the tune of "Hatikva." And always, every failure is marketed as a success. In a 2007 vote on the exact same issue, Sa'ar was one of the people who voted against it.
As Knesset failures mount, the price of survival is growing steeper. We must not be dismissed of the things that are becoming routine in the Knesset plenum after another "fateful" vote. After every one of these, which are near-daily, a confrontation breaks out, and they are getting closer to actual physical violence. Generally, they are between Jewish and Arab MKs.
A crumbling, divided leadership opens the doors to all sorts of pressures. The coalition has been hostile toward the opposition, and completely failed to expand. Are the coalition leaders working on behalf of Bibi, too?
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