Israel has a new government, build out of eight different political parties, a mosaic, that has to overcome the heavy burden of the Netanyahu era. He, after twelve years as prime minister, influenced the country like no other politician before and doesn´t seem to think of an end of his career.
The mood is hot in Zion, as the country is now experiencing a time of deep polarisation and had to deal, beside the attacks from Hamas, with inner conflicts between jewish and arabic Israelis, something never seen before on this scale. That might just have been one conflict to much for many Israelis, including the political class, so that they formed a new government, as fragil as could be. There are three magor reasons for this.
Firstly the government includes, as mentioned, eight different parties, a variatie of ideas and milieus that is hard to find in any european parliament at the whole. This includes the religious-nationalistic Jewish House with the new prime minister Naftali Bennett, but also left and one islamic partie, the Ra´am or united arab list, which is focused on the interests of the arabs and wants an independent palestinian state with Jerusalem as it´s capital. It doesn´t take much fantasy to imagine the difficulties within this combination.
Secondly, even after the inclusion of all this different people in one government, the new government is not able to hold more than just the half of the seads in the parliament. There´re 120 members of parliament in Israel, and only 60 have confirmed the new leadership. As one member didn´t vote, Bennett was put in office by 60 to 59 votes. It will be hard to get things done for the government under such preconditions.
And despide all this problems there is still „Bibi“ Netanyahu around, the political mastermind who currently struggels with different accusations against him. He would be immune against such sanctions as prime minister, that´s why his political ambitions are rooting in a deeply personal motivation. He already talks about a fraud in case of the government formation, especially as the islamic Ra´am partie is involved. That he himself tried to build an alliance with them is something he would never mention again. What might seem like a Trumpian move in the first place is nothing but the logic conclusion of his politics, the modern populism, which was shaped by him and, at the same time, by Erdogan in Turkey. That the current populists in the West are using their tactics is a development rarely mentioned.
If this government will be succesful has to be seen, the general hope is that there is a certain tiredness after all the elections and political struggles of the last years that the will to form a stable government will hold the upper hand. But that alone is such a weak motivation that we might see a stagnation in political sphere soon again.
Simon Dierich 