In Israeli politics, there is but one rule: never bet against Bibi. Yesterday’s Knesset elections were finally going to topple Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister.
I have lost count of the number of Knesset elections that were going to do so, and even on the few occasions when his opponents were able to wrest power from him, he always engineered a return by hatching a plot, making a deal, or, most dastardly of all, winning an election.
Israeli politics is that scene from The Simpsons where Moe keeps slinging Barney out of his tavern, dusting off his hands in satisfaction, then turning to see Barney has found his way back in.
As of Wednesday lunchtime, and with 85 per cent of votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud and its right-wing and religious allies are projected to secure 53 seats, the anti-Bibi bloc led by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot is on 48, and the Arab parties, including Islamists, communists and anti-Zionists, are heading for 19.
The magic number is 61 and the obvious path forward is for Eisenkot to form a pact with the Arab parties, but this is Israel, where the obvious struggles to keep up with the messy, the dramatic and the self-defeating.
That the Arab parties will be the kingmakers is not exactly novel; Mansour Abbas’s Islamist faction Ra’am put the 2021-22 anti-Netanyahu government into power. But this time the Arab parties will be more powerful, leading the right to accuse the left of sacrificing Zionism for political expediency, and the left to return the accusation by pointing to the non-Zionist religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition.
Jews who hate Arabs, Arabs who hate Jews, Jews who hate Jews for not hating Arabs, and Jews who hate Jews for not hating other Jews, all crammed into the same pokey strip of land, vying to lead a nuclear-armed state and a peace process. God is the greatest sitcom writer of all.
The odds look tough for Netanyahu, but the odds have looked tough for him before, and his skill for defying odds is the reason he has been prime minister for 19 of the last 30 years. Even if his opponents are able to cobble together a coalition, it will be a volatile one, comprised of leftists, liberals, secular right-wingers, Marxists and religious Muslims. They had better hope they don’t drive Netanyahu from political life altogether, for these people have nothing in common beyond hating him. Their only plan for power is keeping it out of Bibi’s hands; they can agree on no other use for it beyond that.
Israel needs new leadership. After 19 years, Netanyahu cannot possibly be the man to provide that, but his opponents look even less up to the job.
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