Israel’s new government is a daring, possibly doomed but nonetheless fascinating experiment. Headed by tech millionaire turned nationalist figurehead Naftali Bennett and TV journalist turned voice of centrism Yair Lapid, Jerusalem’s 36th government is an ideological hydra.
Bennett’s right-wing national-religious Yamina party is joined by the secular liberals of Lapid’s Yesh Atid, along with Kahol Lavan moderates, Labor social democrats, Meretz socialists, and the Likud breakaway faction Tikva Hadasha, plus Yisrael Beiteinu’s secular right-wingers and Ra’am’s Islamic conservatives. This unwieldy rabble is held together by a coalition agreement to focus on areas of consensus — more investment in education, bumping up defence spending, cutting bureaucracy and regulation, tackling crime and unemployment in the Arab sector, getting more ultra-orthodox youth into work — and swerve thornier matters, especially religious affairs and IDF service.
They’re also held together by something even more binding than their governing pact: the desire to oust Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Bibi didn’t go down without a fight, warning: ‘We’ll be back soon.’
It may not be an idle threat. Bibi has been ousted before with the tacit (and not-so-tacit) support of a Democrat White House, though in 1999 he was at least beaten at the ballot box. This time, he has gone after two-and-a-half years of political stalemate and with a corruption trial pending. His street-fighting ways, which had served him so well in the past, eventually convinced enough of his natural right-of-centre allies that he had to go — not least his railing against the police, prosecutors and the judiciary. He is 71 and awaiting his day in court, which makes it less likely that Israel’s comeback kid will stage another return, though throughout his political career one of Bibi’s greatest strengths has been his opponents’ tendency to underestimate him.
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