The changing nature of Israeli politics

Coalition horse-trading may threaten the Jewish state’s liberal democracy

FORMING a government in Israel is always a messy affair. Thanks to the country’s extreme proportionalrepresentation system for elections, no party has ever won an outright majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Intense haggling between the prospective prime minister and the parties wishing to join a coalition always follows an election. In the words of Yitzhak Rabin, an Israeli prime minister assassinated by a Jewish supremacist 27 years ago this week: “In every coalition there’s also some co-loathing.” His adage rings true today.

Some of the parties hoping to form a coalition government with Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, which won easily the most seats in an election on November 1st, are widely loathed. The most prominent is Itamar Ben-gvir (portrayed above left), the leader of the Jewish Power party within a far-right bloc called Religious Zionism. He once declared, when Mr Rabin was prime minister, that he would “get to him”.

A co-leader of the bloc, Bezalel Smotrich, used the annual memorial for Rabin’s murder to air an old conspiracy theory that Israel’s security service had “encouraged” the assassination. A third wouldbe coalition partner heads a party that is fiercely homophobic. Religious Zionism is now the third-largest group in the Knesset. Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who is anxious to return to power after 17 months in opposition, needs it to secure a majority.

Liberal Israelis are horrified by the prospect of Mr Ben-gvir in government. He once led the youth wing of a virulently anti-arab movement known as Kach, founded by an American-israeli rabbi, Meir Kahane. From 1988 it was barred from running in Israeli elections. In 1994 it was banned by the government as a terrorist organisation. Mr Bengvir has rebranded Kach as Jewish Power, toning down its rhetoric a tad. Instead of chanting “Death to the Arabs”, his disciples are now instructed to chant “Death to the terrorists”. “Ben-gvir is still inspired by Kahane and thinks like him,” says Tomer Persico, an expert on Jewish radicalism at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “The question is whether he can put that ideology into practice.”

At the top of Mr Bengvir’s list of conditions for joining the government is that he be appointed public-security minister in control of Israel’s police. Should Mr Netanyahu grant him that post, already tense relations with Israel’s Arab minority, which numbers about a fifth of the population, could further deteriorate. A frequent flashpoint is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, where some Jewish radicals, including Mr Ben-gvir, want to scrap the rules that prohibit Jews from praying beside the al-aqsa mosque. Clashes there between Palestinians and the Israeli police have led in the past to violence that has spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Religious Zionism also hopes to pass an “overriding” clause that would let the Knesset countermand court rulings. That would weaken the Supreme Court’s power to block government actions and laws that curtail human rights. This change is also backed by ultra-orthodox parties bidding to join a governing coalition under Mr Netanyahu. They have their own additional demands, including more funds for religious schools that do not teach “secular” subjects like mathematics.

Despite his nationalist language and sniping at the courts, Mr Netanyahu in previous stints in office has refrained from rehashing the legal system. Nor has he tried to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. His previous coalitions have included parties to the left of Likud to give himself wriggle room to avoid meeting the demands of parties to his right.

This time round he may be more beholden to the far right. So far no parties to his left will agree to join a coalition led by him. The two leaders of parties of the centre, the outgoing prime minister, Yair Lapid, and the defence minister, Benny Gantz, have flatly ruled out serving under a prime minister facing corruption charges, which Mr Netanyahu has battled for two years. He may by instinct lean towards a more pragmatic type of coalition, as in the past, but the far-right and religious parties are the only ones which, for the moment, will guarantee him his majority.

Moreover, they might well help pass legislation that would end his trial for bribery and fraud. “Netanyahu always ran populist campaigns, but once elected usually governed as a pragmatist,” says Gayil Talshir of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “But now, because of his trial and the coalition he’s about to form, we may indeed be about to see populism in power.”

It is not just his desire to evade justice that makes it trickier for Israeli centrists to deal with Mr Netanyahu. His party has shifted further to the right, too. Likud was always staunchly nationalist but in the past it has respected Israel’s courts and shunned Rabbi Kahane’s racism. Nowadays, however, most of Likud’s representatives support an alliance with Jewish Power and sound happy to curb the courts.

Voices on the centre and left are urging Messrs Lapid and Gantz to join a government with Mr Netanyahu as the lesser of evils, to keep out the far right. So far they are refusing to do so. Meanwhile, liberal democracy in Israel is under threat.