Historically speaking, those further to the right of the mainstream right-wing camp would challenge its more centrist representatives. We saw this when challenges were issued to the Likud over Menachem Begin's promotion of a peace deal with Egypt that led to Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.
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Ever since, regardless of who it was that happened to be further to the right of the Likud at the time, members of the right-wing camp have all behaved in a similar pattern. The satellite parties have all become ardent opponents of the ruling party, so much so that they were even willing to topple the coalition.
In 1992, the right-wing Moledet, Tzomet, and Tehiya parties all quit then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government over his participation in peace talks in Madrid. The talks, held at a time when Jordan was still Palestine and with a prime minister who ceded American guarantees to not have to give them anything in return, were not right-wing enough for them. We know how this ended. Tehiya did not pass the electoral threshold, and the Left under Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin came to power. If that weren't ironic enough, it was representatives of the Tzomet party that ended up helping to approve the Oslo Accords.
Has the lesson been learned? Of course not. In 1996, it was Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu that members of Moledet and the National Union took issue with. For New Hope MK Benny Begin, who is now a part of a coalition government with Ra'am and Meretz and has the support of the Joint Arab List, Netanyahu was not right-wing enough at the time. The result: Opponents of yielding 3% of the territory in the Wye River accord brought us Labor leader Ehud Barak's government, which ceded 97% of the territory. Ironically, the successors to opponents of the Wye accord recently refused a deal to impose sovereignty on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and 30% of the territory.
Time and again, the pattern remains the same. This becomes even more troubling when we look at what has transpired in the meantime on the Left. In 1992, Meretz's election campaign called not to replace Rabin for not being sufficiently leftist but rather to "incentivize" him in this direction. To allow Rabin to form a government, Meretz compromised on issues of religion and state, beginning with accepting Shas in the coalition and even having one of their own, Shulamit Aloni, resign from the Education Ministry in accordance with the Haredi party's demand.
In 2008, Meretz's election campaign asked voters to choose between Kadima's Tzipi Livni and Netanyahu, once again bolstering the head of the left-wing camp. No one argued that Livni should not have their vote because she wasn't sufficiently left-wing.
By contrast, the Yamina party recently refused to join a coalition headed by Netanyahu and Blue and White party head Benny Gantz because the 6-Knesset seat party was offered three senior government positions instead of four.
Meretz's current willingness to swallow the toad to ensure the coalition remains intact is a model of political loyalty and humility the likes of which we have yet to see in this country. Meretz has set no conditions and issued no threats toward the government. The right-wing satellite parties, by contrast, have never treated the Likud in such a manner.
Having apparently had our fill of the various reincarnations of Habayit Hayehudi, Yamina, and New Hope, and having seen the "unapologetic" Right" prefer their "brother" Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid and go from satellites to the deciding factor in the government and from there, Bennet's swift transformation into a left-wing premier, there are those who still fail to recognize the pattern.
The alternative to purely right-wing policies is a blatantly left-wing government. Those who insisted on focusing on the illegal Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar not only failed to get a more right-wing or moderately center-left government but rather got the new left-wing bloc, which includes Ra'am and the Joint Arab List, in its place.
It makes no difference who is at the helm of the right-wing satellite parties: The lesson must be learned. The main party must be bolstered and incentivized, not bullied. Without the mothership, the satellite will remain lost in space. And this void will quickly be filled by a left-wing government comprised of loyal players capable of compromising quite a bit for the benefit of the greater cause.
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