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The Next Israeli Government: Let It Be a Coalition Willing to Make Peace
March 10, 2015
As the 2015 Israeli election polls show an almost neck-and-neck race between Likud and the Zionist Union, with Kulanu and Yesh Atid continuing to draw votes in the center, Israelis are pondering what will be the configuration of parties in the next coalition government. Sometime after the March 17 election, it will fall to President Reuven Rivlin to choose the leading party and ask it to form a coalition to govern the country. If the party with the highest vote count cannot form a coalition, Rivlin could ask the party next in line. These days one leading scenario is a national unity government composed of Likud, the Zionist Union and Kulanu, possibly with Yesh Atid, and maybe with some sort of rotating premiership between party leaders Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog.
However, the reality is that Netanyahu and Herzog are miles apart on the most fundamental issue of peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is running entirely against the creation of a Palestinian state. His party is campaigning by playing to Israeli fears that behind the Palestinians lie enemies out to destroy Israel. Thus his close associate, Knesset member Yuval Steinitz, in an interview on Israeli TV’s Channel 2 on March 6 claimed that any land in the West Bank that was vacated by Israel would be taken over by ISIS. Of a two-state solution, he said, ''Despite agreement in principle to the two-state formula, we say very clearly that under current circumstances here in the Middle East, any withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or from Jerusalem does not constitute a formula for peace but for disaster.''
Herzog, on the other hand, has proposed a detailed diplomatic plan to negotiate an agreement establishing a Palestinian state in accord with the principles laid out by US President Bill Clinton in 2000 and reiterated by President Barack Obama in 2011. It calls for a permanent agreement backed by the international community, including a border based on 1967 lines with land swaps enabling Israeli annexation of settlement blocs. To change the tone of Israeli diplomacy in the run-up to a negotiated agreement, Herzog would immediately freeze construction in the settlements beyond the security barrier and even put Israel on record as voting in favor of a Palestinian state at the UN.
It is our view that a coalition between Likud and the Zionist Union is completely unworkable, given their radically opposite positions on the primary issue that will determine Israel’s future. Either Herzog or Netanyahu or both would have to retreat from the positions they staked out for themselves, and that would be a political disaster for both men. Netanyahu for the past four years has barely been able to keep the right wing of his own party at bay, and as for Herzog, he would lose all credibility with his Labor Party base. It would not be long before this coalition comes apart, just as Netanyahu’s last coalition did within months after the collapse of the peace talks mediated by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013-14. Yet this time is also different because the fig leaf that enabled leaders like Tzipi Livni to join Netanyahu’s last coalition, namely his 2009 Bar Ilan speech in which he declared himself to be in favor of a two-state solution, is now recognized to be a fiction.
This leaves the possibility of a coalition in which either Netanyahu or Herzog ally with other, smaller parties. So between the two, who would politicians like Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon and Yisrael Beitenu leader Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman prefer to join up with? The record of centrist politicians who threw in their lot with Netanyahu is not promising. We recall what happened to Shaul Mofaz, whose Kadima party all but disappeared after his stint in a Netanyahu government. Neither did Lieberman profit from his now-defunct coalition with Likud. It seems that the Israeli public has grown weary of Netanyahu, with chants of “Anyone but Bibi” and “Bibi is bad for all of us” growing louder throughout the country.
On the other hand, when it comes to the issue of the Palestinians, there seems to be growing convergence between Herzog-Livni and the leaders of the other centrist parties. Lapid, Kahlon and even Lieberman have all been talking in recent months about a regional arrangement that would include moderate Arab states. This could be a path to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all and also set up an alliance for regional security against ISIS and other extremist groups. The idea has a lot of merit for both diplomatic and security reasons and it has drawn wide popular support, with a recent poll showing 72% of the Israeli public agreeing with this idea.
Therefore, once the votes are counted, we believe that President Rivlin will do well to choose Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni to form the next government, into which they would invite the centrist and center-right parties that are open to forging an agreement with the Palestinians: Yesh Atid, Kulanu and Yisrael Beitenu. If they can also work out an arrangement with the religious parties and get occasional support from the Joint Arab List, such a coalition could successfully govern Israel and achieve the agreement to establish a Palestinian state that is necessary for Israel’s future as a peaceful democratic nation.
As the 2015 Israeli election polls show an almost neck-and-neck race between Likud and the Zionist Union, with Kulanu and Yesh Atid continuing to draw votes in the center, Israelis are pondering what will be the configuration of parties in the next coalition government. Sometime after the March 17 election, it will fall to President Reuven Rivlin to choose the leading party and ask it to form a coalition to govern the country. If the party with the highest vote count cannot form a coalition, Rivlin could ask the party next in line. These days one leading scenario is a national unity government composed of Likud, the Zionist Union and Kulanu, possibly with Yesh Atid, and maybe with some sort of rotating premiership between party leaders Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog.
However, the reality is that Netanyahu and Herzog are miles apart on the most fundamental issue of peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is running entirely against the creation of a Palestinian state. His party is campaigning by playing to Israeli fears that behind the Palestinians lie enemies out to destroy Israel. Thus his close associate, Knesset member Yuval Steinitz, in an interview on Israeli TV’s Channel 2 on March 6 claimed that any land in the West Bank that was vacated by Israel would be taken over by ISIS. Of a two-state solution, he said, ''Despite agreement in principle to the two-state formula, we say very clearly that under current circumstances here in the Middle East, any withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or from Jerusalem does not constitute a formula for peace but for disaster.''
Herzog, on the other hand, has proposed a detailed diplomatic plan to negotiate an agreement establishing a Palestinian state in accord with the principles laid out by US President Bill Clinton in 2000 and reiterated by President Barack Obama in 2011. It calls for a permanent agreement backed by the international community, including a border based on 1967 lines with land swaps enabling Israeli annexation of settlement blocs. To change the tone of Israeli diplomacy in the run-up to a negotiated agreement, Herzog would immediately freeze construction in the settlements beyond the security barrier and even put Israel on record as voting in favor of a Palestinian state at the UN.
It is our view that a coalition between Likud and the Zionist Union is completely unworkable, given their radically opposite positions on the primary issue that will determine Israel’s future. Either Herzog or Netanyahu or both would have to retreat from the positions they staked out for themselves, and that would be a political disaster for both men. Netanyahu for the past four years has barely been able to keep the right wing of his own party at bay, and as for Herzog, he would lose all credibility with his Labor Party base. It would not be long before this coalition comes apart, just as Netanyahu’s last coalition did within months after the collapse of the peace talks mediated by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013-14. Yet this time is also different because the fig leaf that enabled leaders like Tzipi Livni to join Netanyahu’s last coalition, namely his 2009 Bar Ilan speech in which he declared himself to be in favor of a two-state solution, is now recognized to be a fiction.
This leaves the possibility of a coalition in which either Netanyahu or Herzog ally with other, smaller parties. So between the two, who would politicians like Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon and Yisrael Beitenu leader Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman prefer to join up with? The record of centrist politicians who threw in their lot with Netanyahu is not promising. We recall what happened to Shaul Mofaz, whose Kadima party all but disappeared after his stint in a Netanyahu government. Neither did Lieberman profit from his now-defunct coalition with Likud. It seems that the Israeli public has grown weary of Netanyahu, with chants of “Anyone but Bibi” and “Bibi is bad for all of us” growing louder throughout the country.
On the other hand, when it comes to the issue of the Palestinians, there seems to be growing convergence between Herzog-Livni and the leaders of the other centrist parties. Lapid, Kahlon and even Lieberman have all been talking in recent months about a regional arrangement that would include moderate Arab states. This could be a path to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all and also set up an alliance for regional security against ISIS and other extremist groups. The idea has a lot of merit for both diplomatic and security reasons and it has drawn wide popular support, with a recent poll showing 72% of the Israeli public agreeing with this idea.
Therefore, once the votes are counted, we believe that President Rivlin will do well to choose Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni to form the next government, into which they would invite the centrist and center-right parties that are open to forging an agreement with the Palestinians: Yesh Atid, Kulanu and Yisrael Beitenu. If they can also work out an arrangement with the religious parties and get occasional support from the Joint Arab List, such a coalition could successfully govern Israel and achieve the agreement to establish a Palestinian state that is necessary for Israel’s future as a peaceful democratic nation.
