Lately a cartoon described the condition being faced by
Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, swimming in shark-filled waters,
but he is not aware that there are more than a dozen sharks trailing him behind
his back.
The cartoon aptly illustrated where Bennett’s government stands right
now, after resolving its coalition crisis with the Ra’am (United Arab
List) Party.
That crisis was a reminder of how difficult it is to survive
with a slim majority in the Knesset of 60 to 59 on a good day. It also
demonstrated how sensitive the coalition is to any issue that could provoke
controversy.
Mansour Abbas leading Ra’am into the coalition was
celebrated worldwide as a historic breakthrough for Israel. Along with the
Abraham Accords, an Arab party joining the coalition was seen internationally
as Israel successfully entering a new era of mutually beneficial strategic
cooperation with the Arab world despite the conflict with the Palestinians
remaining unresolved.
Abbas enthusiastically and optimistically told The
Jerusalem Post at an October 2021 press conference at the Knesset, where
he presented the government’s massive new allocations to the Arab sector, that
it would now become natural for Arab parties to join every Israeli governing
coalition forever.
That historic breakthrough was nearly lost, due to Temple
Mount violence and the lack of honest reporting about it. Like countless times
in the past, violence on the Temple Mount that was exaggerated and fanned by
fake news threatened to derail the sensitive fabric of life in the Holy Land.
Reports in the Arab world that made it look as though Israel
was purposely trying to kill Muslims at prayer at the Aqsa Mosque nearly made
it impossible for Abbas to climb down from the Mount and back into the
coalition.
Even when Abbas was finally ready to end the crisis, another
incident magnified in the international Arabic media around the world got in
the way. Wednesday’s incident in Jenin in which Al Jazeera correspondent
Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead – and the bad press Israel got in its aftermath
– could have forced Abbas to continue to freeze his party’s membership in the
coalition, vote for a bill that would initiate an election and perhaps even
torpedo Bennett’s government.
Abbas canceled a press conference he had scheduled in Kafr
Kassem, called Abu Akleh a martyr and said he would insist on an international
investigation of the incident. He would have carried on his protest of the
incident longer and scored more points with his constituents, if he had had time.
But Abbas had to announce how his party would vote on the
Likud’s Knesset dissolution bill in the afternoon and could not wait. His
speech about “giving the coalition another chance” could have been written the
day he began what was essentially a fake crisis that he initiated to look like
the defender of al-Aqsa while the Knesset was on recess.
Abbas knows that he needs as much time as he can get in the
coalition for his constituents to be able to see with their own eyes – or at
least with their pocketbooks – the positive results of him joining.
What made it easier for Abbas to justify unfreezing Ra’am’s
membership in the coalition was the foolishly unruly behavior of the
opposition.
He spoke immediately after opposition leader Benjamin
Netanyahu blasted him in a speech in the Knesset plenum that was supposed to be
about Theodor Herzl.
Netanyahu picked yet another fight with Abbas, even though
Ra’am could be a very easy coalition partner for him in the future. Every time
Netanyahu calls Abbas “a terror supporter” or pretends he did not negotiate
Ra’am building a bond with the Likud, Bennett’s coalition gets stronger.
The most right-wing MK in the Knesset, Itamar Ben-Gvir,
helped strengthen the coalition even more by crashing Abbas’s press conference
in the Knesset. Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid said later that the public
prefers Abbas in the coalition over Ben-Gvir.
Then there was the opposition’s most uncouth MK, David
Amsalem, who shocked MKs in both the coalition and opposition three times on
Wednesday.
First he started an unnecessary fight with Knesset Speaker
Mickey Levy, threatening the former Jerusalem police chief. Then he insisted on
responding in the plenum to a consensus bill proposed by deaf MK Shirley Pinto
that would require government offices to speak to deaf people via text
messages. The bill passed 40-0, but Amsalem still had to speak against it.
Finally, Amsalem left a live interview with Channel 12 to
cast the deciding vote on a bill. Meretz MK Yair Golan was on the same program,
and the two had paired off to leave the coalition and opposition with the same
balance in the plenum. But Amsalem left Golan as he was speaking next to him
and raced up to vote.
It was less noticed by the coalition, but another MK who
embarrassed herself was former coalition chairwoman Idit Silman. She claimed in
a TV interview that one of the reasons she defected to the opposition was that
the government had built a “Reform Kotel.”
She knows full well that no progress has been made on
implementing the Western Wall agreement, that the family prayer site is not
intended only for Reform Jews, that Reform is not a slur, and that while
Bennett did build what he called the “Ezrat Israel,” it was when he was
Jerusalem affairs minister under Netanyahu in 2014.
Silman said in the Knesset cafeteria that she thinks her
bolting the coalition will prevent the site’s renovation. She said that since
she left, the coalition has had to go “rightward” – yamina in Hebrew. But the
coalition’s cooperation with the Joint List that came as the result of her
departure has proven that the opposite is true.
Now that the fight with Abbas is over, there are plenty of
challenges that await the coalition.
The sharks approaching Bennett include Jerusalem Day
celebrations in two weeks, next month’s visit of US President Joe Biden to
Israel, attempts to pass next year’s state budget that will begin on June 16,
wavering Yamina MK Nir Orbach’s demand to hook up unauthorized outposts to the
national electricity grid, and the pregnancy of New Hope faction head Sharren
Haskel.
Haskel is due at the end of July, around the same time the
Knesset will leave for its next recess. If she gives birth early, she may have
to bring her newborn into the plenum to vote, as Pinto did six days after the
birth of her child in December.
Jerusalem Day will be the first challenge. Opposition
officials said they intend to exploit the holiday to anger Ra’am again, but
they said they do have limits.
“We won’t cause a security crisis to cause a political
crisis with Ra’am, but we will call for people to go on the Temple Mount on
Jerusalem Day, of course,” a Likud spokesman said.
The spokesman said he did not think Netanyahu would ascend
the Temple Mount, but acknowledged that it would not be the first time such a
controversial step was taken by the head of the opposition from the Likud.
“It’s clear to everyone that the next crisis with Ra’am is
only a matter of time,” the spokesman said. “This past week was not ideal for
the opposition, but we won’t give up. They have dozens of bills in the pipeline
that we stopped. They aren’t even trying to pass them. Even some they put on
the agenda they took back. This doesn’t look like a government that can last
very long. It can last a few weeks, but it is bound to end soon.”
In the weeks ahead, the coalition intends to continue the
strategy that worked this week. Uncontroversial socioeconomic legislation will
be advanced. Bills that do not have a consensus will have to wait.
Coalition bills will be put on the agenda only if a majority
is obtained for them well in advance. Opposition bills will be passed by the
coalition if they make sense and do not cost money, as eight were on Wednesday.
De facto coalition chairman Boaz Toporovsky said he intends
to proceed with caution, knowing full well that there are plenty of sharks
ready to attack. But he was not afraid of exulting about the opposition backing
down from bringing the Knesset dissolution bill to a vote.
“The opposition surrendered and pulled back the bill,”
Toporovsky said. “Another political spin crashed. They are scared. They know
they have no majority, neither in the Knesset nor in the public. I recommend
that all our doubters wait patiently and watch our government be strong and
function. The unified coalition will continue to come to the Knesset and work
hard for the entire Israeli public.”
Courtesy: The Jerusalem Post
