Are the Palestinian parties ready to sit in a government with the Zionist parties?
Raam’s Mansour Abbas has made it clear he wants to join a governing coalition, as he did in 2021; The party’s attitude, Iraqi told me, is: “We are here to be in power.”
The situation with the Joint List is more complicated. They would not join a coalition government, and none of the Zionist parties would accept them. Despite this, Jabareen, the leader of the Joint List, said he wants to support an anti-Netanyahu minority government. Noy told me the party doesn’t want to see repeat elections that fail to produce a stable government, as happened in 2019 and 2020. “Each round just makes Netanyahu’s return more possible,” Noy said. “He knows very well how to exploit political instability for his own ends.”
Noy said that while Eisenkot was willing to negotiate, the Joint List wanted to make a deal. “Our support is not promised automatically,” she said. “But we are very realistic in our reading of the political map, and we know that we do not want Netanyahu and that there is a limit to what Eisenkot can give in exchange for our external support. ” In other words, Joint List negotiators will not insist on things they know Eisenkot cannot achieve. Noy herself is not part of the Joint List negotiating committee and is not high enough on the list of candidates to have a reasonable hope of winning a Knesset seat. But, she said, she expects the party to ask Eisenkot to “end the daily terror” against Palestinians in the West Bank as a basis. “If Netanyahu’s policy was aimed solely at dashing any hope of Palestinian liberation and future political settlement, then we would expect to see some change from that policy,” she said.
This actually seems like something that could happen, then? The Joint List wants a deal, and the Eisenkot bloc might need one? Is this the way forward to minimize the damage we were talking about at the start of this conversation?
Well, maybe. But remember the wolf, the goat and the cabbage: Avigdor Lieberman was very clear that he will not bring Yisrael Beiteinu in a minority government, or in a coalition with Raam or the Joint Arab List. This suggests that a coalition led by Eisenkot and supported by Raam internally and the Joint List externally would actually get 49 votes and be outvoted by the Netanyahu bloc.
But could the anti-Netanyahu bloc win, if only Lieberman were willing to make a political compromise with the Palestinian parties?
It’s not just Lieberman: Eisenkot said he wouldn’t do it, Yoaz Hendel of the Reservists said he wouldn’t do it, Bennett said he wouldn’t do it. won’t. Centrist parties do not view Palestinian parties – and the hundreds of thousands of largely non-Jewish citizens they represent – as legitimate participants in Israel’s “Jewish democracy.” They would rather see the country return to the hands of Netanyahu and his Kahanist favorites than share even a modicum of power with the Palestinians.
Okay, so that’s not on the agenda. What else?
A plausible scenario, according to political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, senior columnist at Haaretzit’s that someone goes from one block to another. “It could be a party, or it could be part of a party,” Scheindlin said. “Entire parties could simply break their promises. This happens all the time, and Israeli voters are well aware of this possibility.”
The possibilities here are endless and strange things can happen. Political chatter has focused on Eisenkot’s Yashar party, whose roster is filled with political neophytes who could be ripe targets for Netanyahu to seduce as renegades. Or maybe Lieberman could overcome his hatred of Netanyahu and join Netanyahu’s camp.
Alternatively, Haredi parties could divide with Netanyahu – the Mizrahi Shas party, in particular, has suggested he could support Eisenkot, even though Eisenkot has denied any interest. This issue of Haredi parties is one of the thorniest political issues for the Eisenkot bloc.
Won’t Haredi parties automatically join a Netanyahu coalition?
It’s not that simple these days. The proposed Haredi exemption, which has caused political chaos in Israel for more than a decade, is one of the most important issues in Israeli politics today, after the war in Gaza forced hundreds of thousands of non-Haredi Israelis into prolonged reserve duty. The government’s often half-hearted efforts to stop Haredi holdouts have led to disruptive, sometimes violent riots, and United Torah Judaism and Shas are both angry with Netanyahu, their longtime ally, for failing to propose a new exemption. The centrist parties, and some on the right, have placed the end of the exemption project at the heart of their program. Thus, Unified Torah Judaism and Shas may not find a place in a coalition government.
There is so much internal friction within the two blocs. What about a unity government?
There have been discussions of a coalition involving parties from both factions; Netanyahu spoke building a “broad national government,” whatever that means, and Lieberman accused Eisenkot plans to form a coalition with Netanyahu. This sort of thing has happened before: in 2020, centrist former general Benny Gantz formed a unity government with Netanyahu in which each was supposed to serve as prime minister. But Netanyahu went first and Gantz’s turn never came. (Although he was seen as Netanyahu’s likely successor just a year ago, Gantz’s political fortunes have imploded and he withdrew from the election this weekend.) Scheindlin thinks a power-sharing deal between Netanyahu and another leader is unlikely. “If this is a unity government, Netanyahu will want to be first in a rotation as prime minister, in which none of the opposition parties would be persuaded,” she said.
What if they can’t understand anything?
After the vote, the president of Israel, Recipient of an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and alleged instigator of genocide Isaac Herzog, will appoint the leader of one of the factions to try to form a government. That leader has 28 days, plus a potential two-week extension period, to negotiate a coalition; if he fails, Herzog can give two more faction leaders have a chance before new elections are scheduled for early next year, with Netanyahu remaining in the saddle as caretaker prime minister.
Gn world
