Resetting the Countdown

The countdown to Israel’s next election was halted and reset. Mark your calendars: Dec. 23 is the next deadline, for the next crisis. Three hours before midnight, I wasn’t sure if I wanted the Knesset to hold a new election. Maybe reshuffling the cards once more will do the trick. Maybe three elections within 18 months wasn’t enough. Maybe Israel needs a fourth election. 

Debates about the pros and cons of postponement are as old and varied as public policy. Should a government let a market crash and recover on its own or offer aid, thereby easing the pain while prolonging the crisis? Should Israel bomb Hezbollah rocket launch sites in Lebanon now, or let the rockets “rust in warehouses” in the hope that they will never be used? That’s a well-known Israeli debate from the previous decade. 

Sometimes, there is no way to know. Sometimes, the decision is more a result of character traits than methodical calculations: the cautious vote for postponement, the bold vote for immediate action. At other times, the reasons are clearer. In Israel’s case this week, there were three such reasons: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s weariness of elections when a pandemic still rages; the Charedi parties’ reluctance to hold elections without a budget that ensures funding for their institutions; a political compromise that safeguards another exit point in just four months. The parties agreed to not pass a two-year budget and to halt all appointments of senior officials, including the chief of police and the state attorney.  

This cannot hold for very long. Israel’s government is dysfunctional. The Likud and Blue and White partnership isn’t working and doesn’t seem likely to ever work. This is mainly Likud’s fault but, more importantly, the current government is not a solution to Israel’s challenges. It cannot last for a full term. No one believes it will last for another year when Blue and White’s leader Benny Gantz is supposed to replace Netanyahu as prime minister. 

This problem has three possible solutions: 

1. 1. Replace Netanyahu. To do so, the voters (through elections) or Likud (through internal strife) needs to push aside the prime minister. 
   2. Replace Blue and White with other parties. Have right-wing Yamina and two additional Knesset members join a 61-member coalition. 
   3. Hold new elections in the hope that a better, or a more stable coalition will emerge. 

The first option, preferred by many voters (possibly a majority who didn’t vote for Likud and its immediate allies), is not yet on the table. Likud is loyal to its leader, and the polls foresee a Likud victory if there is another election. The second option is also not on the table. Yamina has seen its numbers rise in the polls and therefore has no reason to rejoin Netanyahu as a small party and lose its political edge. The third option is another round of elections. If not now, then later. 

The Likud and Blue and White partnership isn’t working and doesn’t seem likely to ever work.

Of course, when the deadline for a new election is postponed for four months, there is always a slight hope that something will change. We often use the expression “either the nobleman dies or the dog dies” to describe such faint hope. This expression is borrowed from a collection of Jewish jokes by Alter Druyanov, a Zionist writer, editor and activist, about a Jew who forces a menacing nobleman to teach his dog to speak. “No problem,” the Jew replies. “But it will take three years.” His only hope is that either the nobleman or the dog will not survive the full three-year term.

So, that’s the hope we have for this government. Figuratively speaking. We hope that something will fundamentally change before December. If not, the script for what happens next is foretold in the compromise reached this week: by the end of December the parties will have a disagreement over the budget. The deadline for passing a budget will expire, the Knesset will dissolve, and new election will take place in early March 2021, exactly one year after the last election. 

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor.