A plague on all your houses

With a third election in less than a year on the way, a reasonable question to ask is how did we get into this predicament? And who is to blame?

No one is taking responsibility, unsurprisingly. Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. The Likud says it’s because of Blue and White, Blue and White says it’s because of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman says he has “zero percent” of a role in all this, it’s all the two big parties.

Public opinion polls show that people blame Netanyahu the most, then Liberman, followed by Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, with a huge margin between them.

They are certainly all at fault. They all played a part in the hundreds of millions of shekels being wasted between the cost of holding an election and market losses on another day off work. They all have a hand in the political paralysis of the past year, weakening our security,

charges on which Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit seeks to indict Netanyahu.

Elections, which “used to be a celebration of democracy, have become a moment of shame for this building,” Lapid lamented.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said he was “zero percent” responsible for the situation, and that the Likud and Blue and White, which constitute a majority on their own, shoulder the blame.

Earlier in the day, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz repeated his party’s call for Netanyahu to give up his right to request immunity from prosecution from the Knesset.

“We will be going to a third election cycle today because of Netanyahu’s attempt to obtain immunity. We must stand in opposition to this .... There is no room for immunity” in Netanyahu’s case, he said at a conference held at the Knesset on the topic of rule of law.

Still, some in the Likud reportedly called on Netanyahu to give up his right to ask the Knesset for immunity from prosecution on charges of corruption, in order to call Gantz’s bluff.

The Likud’s spokesman denied Netanyahu is considering the idea, shooting back that Blue and White is on a “political spin spree after they sabotaged a unity government in every way possible and failed to establish a minority government with [Joint List MKs] Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh.”

Tibi and Odeh said throughout the day they think the Joint List will win more than its current 13 seats in an election.

“If there’s one party that’s not afraid of elections, it’s the Joint List,” Tibi said.

In Netanyahu’s eyes, “my friends have turned into ISIS because the man has simply lost it,” Tibi added. “He has no ammunition other than lies and spins and incitement. Does he deserve to be prime minister for even one more minute? If he is holding on to his seat and doesn’t want to release it, we will help him in the upcoming election.”

Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz said Blue and White should stop talking about Netanyahu giving up his immunity as a way to restart talks, because it gives people false hope.

“Stop these useless contacts that amount only to a blame game for the third election,” Peretz said. “The public has had its say and blames Netanyahu and Liberman. There is no reason to accept Netanyahu’s offer to remain prime minister for a number of months [in a rotation for the premiership.]”

Peretz said he would ask all the party leaders in his camp to sign a pact not to attack one another during the election.

Gil Hoffman contributed to this report. • of people would take to the streets with placards calling on their leaders to do something, declaring the nation cannot tolerate being without a fully functioning government?

“I think it would,” she said. “It would create pressure on the politicians.”

But those rallies never materialized, and that pressure never built up.

There are many possible reasons why no such movement emerged.

First of all, as Shaked herself speculated, it has to do with the public believing up until the very end that the politicians would work it out, that this would go down to the wire, but that it was all just a matter of brinkmanship, and at one minute to midnight someone would give in and a government would be formed.

This, actually, is how it has always happened in the past, and most thought that this would be the way it would happen in 2019 as well. Except that it didn’t.

Another reason Shaked proffered for why people did not take to the streets was a feeling that in this social media era, if you want to protest, you write a snarky post on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Yet that doesn’t explain large protests organized by Ethiopian-Israelis following the shooting of Solomon Tekah in the summer, or by the Arab community in October to protest runaway violence on the Arab-Israeli street.

Those large protests this year alone show that people do take to the streets, but that they take to the streets when something affects and impacts them directly. Both the Ethiopian and Arab communities protested en masse against issues that touched their lives directly.

The masses, apparently, have not felt the direct impact of this political crisis on their lives. The impact of being without a fully working government now for a year will be felt by average citizens only at the beginning of next year, when services people are used to receiving from the government ministries – from health to social and even religious services – will not be available because a new budget has not been passed.

Another way that the average citizens might feel the lack of a fully functioning government would be if one of the country’s enemies viewed Israel as weak and vulnerable, and decided that this was the perfect time – without anyone fully in charge – to pounce.

And a third reason for a lack of a significant protest movement over this issue is simple apathy, the sense that demonstrations would not make a difference. If casting a vote does not get the politicians to form a government, why would going out to a protest do the trick?

This is one of the biggest dangers of the ongoing political logjam, and what the lack of any significant protest movement on the street reflects – a growing feeling in the country that the system simply does not

work. •