Surprisingly, the Israeli government strives to challenge political traditions and has survived since June, overcoming the partisan mix and defying predictions of inevitable dissolution. The most ideologically kaleidoscopic cabinet in the country’s history rests on two pillars: interruption of the reign of former premier Binyamin Netanyahu and the idea of ”mutual assured destruction”.
Also known by the English acronym “MAD” (mutual assured destruction), the military concept shaped the Cold War. It expressed the doctrine of the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid at all costs a military conflict between the two largest nuclear arsenals on the planet.
The principle metaphorically was transplanted into the government of Israel. Made up of eight parties, from the right “hawk” to the left “dove”, including a conservative Arab group with an Islamic orientation, the cabinet avoids agendas that open wide ideological differences and concentrates efforts on common agendas in order to avoid their disintegration.
Political acrobatics seeks, in addition to removing Netanyahu from power, to interrupt the voting cycle responsible for an unprecedented political crisis. Between 2019 and 2021, the country held four elections, unable to produce a stable cabinet.
With a controversial and centralizing style, the rightist Netanyahu, in power since 2009, plunged the country into “personalist” and no longer ideological polarization. The scenario of the last elections replaced the traditional left-right clash with the duel between the pro and anti-Bibi camps.
Proof of the social fracture lies in the score of approval of the new government in Parliament: 60 votes to 59, with one abstention. Oppositionists took over on June 13, amid the challenges of the pandemic, the region’s perennial geopolitical thorns and also under the shadow of a Netanyahu with promises to return to power, despite facing legal proceedings, with accusations of fraud, bribery and breach of trust.
Short-lived predictions have been pouring in for a government led by right-wing Naftali Bennett, with centrist Yair Lapid in the Foreign Affairs portfolio waiting for 2023 to take over as head of government, a rotation agreement at the top of power.
Committed to preventing the return of Likud, Netanyahu’s party, to government, the coalition found, at least for the time being, an astonishing modus vivendi. It has advanced in initiatives to combat the pandemic, approved budgets and economic measures and deepened the rapprochement with former adversaries in the Arab world, such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
Ideological differences have not evaporated. While Bennett reaffirmed his opposition to the idea of a Palestinian state, the minister of Defense, the centrist Benny Gantz, welcomed Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor, into his house.
The governmental jigsaw handed to the left the portfolios of Health, fundamental nowadays, and Transport, while rightists implement their ideals in the ministries of Finance and Justice. There is, however, challenging news for the prime minister, the subject of a strong erosion of his image caused by slippage in the fight against the pandemic, in the efforts for economic recovery and by the intense political offensive of his biggest adversary, Netanyahu.
In any case, the mere survival of the Israeli political contraption for about eight months is already surprising and reinforces the possibility of building national agendas, despite programmatic differences. Especially because, in the case of Israel, it is not a broad front. It is, ideologically speaking, very broad.
Source: Folha
_133228.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
