After elections, Israel has some choices to make — few of them good ones | Opinion

I have been debating with my American friends for a long time as to which of our countries has a better — or worse — system of government. They insisted that, unlike the American system, where a president is elected for a full four years and, therefore, can implement his plans, the coalition system in Israel is a mess.

They said that’s because a prime minister constantly is being extorted by radicals who can topple him at any moment. Therefore, they kept arguing, Israel is ungovernable because prime ministers only think about their own immediate survival, not about what’s good for the country.

I, on the other hand, maintained that Israel’s system is better, because — as contentious campaigns can be — soon after Election Day, the central parties sit together and broker a compromise. In contrast, whenever a Democrat is elected U.S. president, half of Americans believe that the White House has been hijacked by communists. If a Republican wins, then the other half think that America had been overrun by fascism.

After each round of debate, my friends and I agreed to disagree.

Following the elections in Israel on Tuesday, however, the fourth in only two years, I’ve had second thoughts. This time, not only was the campaign more divisive than ever, but when the dust settled, it turned out that, for the first time in Israel’s history, there is almost no possible way to form a government — and the horrible option of a fifth election is not out of the question.

It goes without saying that Israel is having a serious crisis of government. For a country that routinely faces so many challenges — the current COVID-19 crisis — its state of instability poses a strategic threat.

The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) has a remedy for this. In a 2015 position paper, IDI’s president, Yohanan Plesner, and Prof. Gideon Rahat, a political scientist from the Hebrew University, suggest the following: “After a general election, the head of the largest Knesset faction will become the prime minister automatically. The new government formed by the prime minister will no longer require confirmation by a parliamentary vote of investiture.”

The authors also recommend a constructive vote of “no confidence,” meaning that the government cannot be toppled by a circumstantial ambush, only by evidence that a contender has a serious coalition behind him.

Unfortunately, this is only a position paper on the shelf and, in the meantime, we are stuck in a weird situation in which Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yamina rightist party, which won only seven out of 120 seats in the Knesset, might become prime minister, because his seven mandates will probably decide which bloc will form the next coalition.

We can easily keep lamenting the stalemate and the state of the fractional political scene in Israel, with so many parties holding so few seats in the Knesset, except that a closer look at the election results shows that actually, there was a clear decision. These elections were not contested over the real issues Israelis should have been worried about (like the future of their relations with the Palestinians), but over one issue only: Are you for Benjamin Netanyahu — Bibi — or against him. In the final analysis, the anti-Bibi bloc turned out to be bigger.

Even in the remote chance that Netanyahu can form some kind of a government, it will consist of some of the darkest aspects of the Israeli society: Homophobia, racism, anti-liberalism, disregard of international conventions. In the past, he would shudder at such thought, but now, when his trial over corruption charges is beginning, he would stop at nothing, hoping that such a coalition would somehow save him.

But what happens if, even with the wavering Bennett, Netanyahu doesn’t have enough mandates to form a government? Here we are faced with the dark horse of the elections: Ra’am, the United Arab List, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brothers, which won four seats in the Knesset, might give Netanyahu the key to the premiership.

In return, Netanyahu, who, in the 2015 elections, incited against the Israeli Arabs, will now have to treat them as legitimate political partners. If that happens, then — even in these messy elections — it is a blessing in disguise.

Uri Dromi was the spokesman of the Rabin and Peres governments from 1992-1996.