A government, at last
Politics, the famous quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck goes, is the art of the possible and that is exactly what Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White Party showed on Thursday.
Politics is not about achieving perfection but about making the right compromises that benefit the public and the majority. Gantz demonstrated exactly that by agreeing to a national unity government and showing that - after more than 15 months of paralysis and mudslinging - it is possible to make a fateful decision and to finally allow the country to move on.
It’s likely that without the novel coronavirus that has taken over our lives, the national unity government between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not have been born and be sworn is - as is expected - later this week.
Without the existential threat to thousands of Israelis, or the dire state of our economy - unemployment is already at 20 percent - the two men would probably still be fighting and pulling political trick after political trick out of their sleeves to try and stop the other from forming a government.
The coronavirus pandemic though put that to an end and while many commentators lamented the death of Blue and White by Covid-19, there is also the upside - the birth of a national unity government due to this deadly and invisible enemy that the entire world is fighting to curtail.
Gantz ultimately made the right decision with his move to break up Blue and White, to split from Yesh Atid and Telem and to join a government with Netanyahu. He does though need to be careful.
When all of this is over, Netanyahu will likely go back to being the divisive leader he was before the virus entered our lives, the one who discriminated against 20 percent of Israel’s citizens and was willing to do almost anything to remain in power. His bribery trial will start on May 25 and when the virus is eradicated - hopefully soon - Gantz will need to watch his back.
In the meantime though, Gantz and his Israel Resilience Party are exactly what is needed to keep Israel sane. The Likud has for too long held the exclusive rights to the mantle of power in Israel. The way Amir Ohana, now the outgoing justice minister, behaved and disrespected the rule of law is not going to be missed. The presence of Israel Resilience in the coalition will prevent some of the extreme and dangerous legislation that Netanyahu and his cronies were plotting to pass through the Knesset the moment they obtained a majority.
It will also finally allow the passage of a state budget, something that has been missing for the last 15 months and is needed today more than ever with close to 1 million Israelis - one ninth of the entire country - out of work. Israel will need its own version of a stimulus plan to get its economy back up and running again, and there is no better government to get that done than one that has national consensus and wide public support.
This new government will also give Israel a chance to heal. After three elections, it is difficult to recall a time when the country has been so divided. Being “Left” has turned into a curse word and being “Right” has become, for many people, synonymous with anti-democratic.
The different tribes in Israel - as President Reuven Rivlin calls the sectors of the secular, the national-religious, the haredim, the Druze and the Arabs - have never been so pitted against one another as they are today. We need to be able to move on from this state of division to a state of unity and cooperation.
Since inception, Israel has faced tremendous threats to its security, probably more than any other democracy in the last century. It can and will overcome the threat that the novel coronavirus presents but it will do so now from a position of strength and power with a government in Jerusalem that, after more than a year, is back to working for the people.