Israel without real winners. Now back to square one
Il Giornale, January 24th, 2013
The entire punditry got it wrong, television, press, and politicians from all over the world who were warning against the incumbent victory of Benjamin Netanyahu, “King Bibi” as he had been dubbed by Time Magazine, featuring his unsettling image as front cover. He will get a crushing majority, they said, flanked by a growing right. Be it clear, they insisted in countless columns (see for instance Jodi Rudoren’s article on the Herald Tribune the day before the elections) that Israel be lurching to right, to the radical right, into the depths of black holes of the currents ethics, against Obama, against Europe, against the UN, they maintained.
This implied an ideological drift, commentators stating and predicting that Bibi would be the powerful mastermind with young Naftali Bennet, leader of Habayt Hayehudi, the Jewish Home, apparatchik and settler ... But the preemptive blaming notes crashed against the great surprise of these Israeli elections: 19 seats to the charming fifty year old Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, “There is a future”. Until two years ago he was a famous journalist and a television presenter, born to a father who conveyed him an excellent education and intolerance to the religious who refuse to serve in the army and are a burden to society. Yair led a poised campaign against Netanyahu, unlike anyone else. He did not display the frenzies he had been hysterically accused of because Abu Mazen does not want to make peace or else because Obama does not love him. Poised, conservative, advocate of the intellectual middle class, the ’63 born man broke the bank. Netanyahu now unexpectedly has to bargain with him, if he wishes to rejig a minimally stable government. Otherwise the next elections are already incumbent.
If one side Bibi together with Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel Beitenu, Israel our home, got 31 seats which makes him once again the candidate to form the government, on the other side Bennet doubled his votes, reaching 12 mandates, the conservative front then, along with Shas, which has 11 seats, plus other small right-wing parties attains 60 seats (keep in mind that the Knesset only has 120) and one or two are always to be raked up, perhaps from poor Kadima reduced to almost zero (two seats perhaps). But also the other center-left front, if Yair agrees, can get to exactly the same number, whereas it had attained 55 in the previous elections. It is therefore evident why Bibi dedicated his first phone call in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday to Yair: congratulations, courtesies, then a statement made public: “We can do great things for the State of Israel”. Later, press statements on the need to form a government as wide as possible. Bibi is worried, many hope to see him drown, Netanyahu-hating is a widespread sport also abroad.
Left-wing parties are doing their outmost to try and form a coalition, although their votes are much more splintered and they don’t have a leader as Bibi for the moderate front. After Lapid’s “Yesh Atid” there is the Labor Party led by former journalist Shelley Yakimovitch with only 15 seats, who even in this poor performance was able to find the energy to shout “never ever with Bibi”. The same, in even more furious terms was stated by Tzipi Livni, who founded “Tnua”, movement, but only got 6 seats. Tzipi however perceives herself, based on her past as a Foreign Minister and who know what else, as the natural leader of a left coalition, and her campaign embarrassingly stirred up international anti-Israeli public opinion. Her lack of patriotism was outstanding: Bibi is not friends with Obama, he’s isolating us, he’s compromising us … so let’s get rid of him. His enemies don’t care that Netanyahu reiterated the tenet “Two States for Two Peoples”; that he had invited Abu Mazen to sit down to negotiate without biases a thousand times; that he had reacted with the constructions in the West Bank only after Palestinians went up to the UN for a unilateral statehood bid.
Bibi has even been blamed of denouncing strongly Iran’s threat, as if it was peanuts. The left hates Bibi, but Lapid does not, and he is not likely to form a coalition with the three Arab anti-Zionist parties with 10 seats. If we are to understand why Lapid got so many votes both from right and left, the answer lies once again in Israel’s dream, moving and delusional, to be a democratic, Western quiet country, where economic interests peculiar to a struggling middle class are voiced as everywhere, not screamed, unlike Yachimovich did; strategy issues are raised with all due respect for the army, the threat of Iran, and the Muslim brotherhood, unlike Livni.
Yair has got during the elections campaign the advantage not to have that wrinkle of deep concern crossing Bibi’s face, that tough even if reasonable attitude that pushes the average Israeli away from the dream of being normal. Yair would be a good Foreign Minister, polished and educated... Will Bibi manage to enroll him in the government? This is the big question these very hours. The stumbling block is the enrolment of the religious, who according to the nationalist component, like Bennett, make the best soldiers, but others think the Bible be a better weapon than the army.