Likud and Labor: The New Odd Couple of Israeli Politics
Who are the winners and losers in the newly formed Bibi-Barak government?
Following a rowdy session replete with impassioned speeches and audience jeers and boos, on Tuesday night the central committee of Israel’s Labor Party voted 680-507 to join Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
Netanyahu has been desperate to go beyond a narrow right-wing coalition ever since the February 10 elections. He enticed Labor’s 13 members of Knesset (MK) with a generous deal that will give them five cabinet posts, two deputy ministerial positions, and chairmanships of major Knesset committees. Netanyahu’s earlier attempt to get Tzipi Livni’s 28-MK Kadima Party to join his 27-MK Likud Party in the new government failed.
The 13 Labor MKs were sharply split between a group headed by Defense Minister (both currently and in the new government) Ehud Barak that favored joining and a more left-leaning group that denounced joining the coalition as an ideological sellout likely to lead to Labor’s extinction. It’s possible that the remaining six naysayers will — in a move that would indeed jeopardize Labor’s future — split from the party to form a new opposition faction.
Fifteen MKs from the secular-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party and 11 MKs from the religious, right-leaning Shas Party have already joined Netanyahu’s coalition. If Labor holds together, it means that Netanyahu now has a solid majority coalition of 66 (out of 120) MKs and is in a stronger position to negotiate with the remaining small, religious, and right wing parties that are still interested in joining.
Who are the winners and losers in this new state of affairs?
One loser is undoubtedly Netanyahu’s Likud Party itself. Likud members are outraged at the number of cabinet posts Labor has received, along with those posts allocated to Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, and a non-party professional as justice minister. This leaves very few positions for those within Likud, even though Likud’s 27 mandates make it by far the largest party. As a result, talented and popular Likudniks like former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon and former Minister Benny Begin have been left out of the top posts. In his zeal to include Labor, Netanyahu has in fact handed his own colleagues a raw deal.
Beyond the Likud Party, though, the Israeli electorate isn’t exactly getting what it voted for. Although polls show a large majority of the public in favor of a national-unity government of some kind, Labor, with its lowly 13 seats — and, moreover, as part of the center-left bloc roundly defeated by the center-right bloc — is getting far more than its electoral due. This stems from Israel’s difficult parliamentary system, where people vote solely for parties of widely varying descriptions and sizes, and never for individual leaders or geographic representatives.
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P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/
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12 Comments
1. Marc Malone:Looks to me like he’s trying to buy support from Obama, or at least buy some time, in the hopes that Obama will be out of office in one term. It’s a desperation move, it seems to me. But then, I cannot fathom crazy Israeli politics.
Mar 26, 2009 - 12:17 am 2. Pops in Vienna:I just read an article on PJ Media about a 93 year old Japanese man who survived both nuclear attacks on Japan. The way things are going in Israel, the old geezer may not hold on to his title for long.
If anybody reads Yoni the blogger, you’ll know that Bibi says one thing on TV in the USA and does something entirely different in Israel.
Look for him to give up Golan and Jerusalem for “peace”. Tel Aviv will soon be an Iranian nuclear test site.
Obama will make a brilliant funeral oration for the millions of victims. He’ll be awarded the Noble Peace Prize a few months later.
Mar 26, 2009 - 3:51 am 3. Joel:Netanyahu needs to shore up his coalition, counteract the extremist image of himself and of some parties and individuals in his government, and possibly gain legitimacy for military moves by having Barak and Labor at his side. The sacrificing of his fellow Likudniks, denying them the cabinet posts they deserve, is not pretty, but neither is Israel’s flawed parliamentary system.
Mar 26, 2009 - 3:59 am 4. Marina:F– YOU, BIBI!
A coalition with socialists? Now? F– YOU!
Mar 26, 2009 - 6:20 am 5. Scott:Joel hit it on the head.The electoral system in Israel is insane.Israel faces grave threats,and is ill served by this coalition idiocy.
Mar 26, 2009 - 7:03 am 6. Pops in Vienna:The irony is that after Israel is nuked and taken apart that most of the survivors will immigrate to the USA and register as Democrats. Hope there will be enough Obama tee-shirts for the Red Cross to distribute.
Mar 26, 2009 - 7:57 am 7. Professor Guvinoff:Two things:
1. Livni did not steer her boat well.
2. This could not possibly have happened without a wide popular consensus regarding the menace of Iran and the urgency of doing something tangible about it.
It is easy for those far away, like Obama, to profess that the “Palestinian State” is priority number one. It is not. Priority one is survival.
When it comes to the survival of western values, Israel is our canary in the mineshaft. Netanyahu is smart enough to sing the music of the stupid “peace” kabuki, but this is not where his popular support comes from.
The palestinians have not done anything to deserve statehood. The Israeli have not done anything to deserve destruction. Obama is also at risk, but he does not know it. The Isreali do. He should listen to them instead of lecturing them. In general, idiots are harmless. When they have power, watch out!
Mar 26, 2009 - 8:27 am 8. Lynn B.:Did we bomb the convoy in the Sudan? Seems arms shipments to Hamas from Iran heading through the Sudan to Egypt and then through tunnels to Gaza has been blown up by F-15s. Anyone?
Mar 26, 2009 - 9:38 am 9. asdf:Obama is proving to be a dhimmi
Mar 26, 2009 - 9:41 am 10. wancow the islomogynist:I simply can’t believe Netenyahu put anyone in office because of good relations with the Obama regime. What’s the point when Obama has made it very clear he supports Hamas and very likely supports Hamas’ goal of wiping out Israel…
Bibi has an opportunity to tweek Obama’s nose and gain public support the only way anyone can today: as a victim.
Mar 26, 2009 - 10:38 am 11. MiamaMan:For drastic that it seems, the only chance of survival Israel has is to nuke Iran.
They must provoke Iran by attacking their nuclear program-producing facilities via air power, and nuke them after they send rockets to Israel trying to get Dimona. In the process, Syria can get lectured too.
In this wise, there will be peace in the Middle East for at least for 10 years.
Otherwise, my advise to them is to pack up again and leave the neighborhood.
Mar 27, 2009 - 3:44 am 12. idov:Barack wanted to join the government all along. But he only got enough support in his party when former leader Ben-Eliezer came over. Ben-Eliezer said on TV that he changed his mind because Bibi did not have a government. If you remove the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi, who were hemming and hawing, and an extreme nationalist party, who Bibi didn’t want, Ben-Eliezer was right. It would have meant in the worst case another election immediately or even less problematic, a weak government which couldn’t have lasted. Meanwhile Israel has serious problems to deal with, not the least of which is growing unemployment.
That’s the nature of Israeli politics but the big loser if this government works is Livni. In the past, throughout the 80s for example, when the two largest parties Likud and Labor saw that they either had to hang together or hang separately, they worked it out. Her party, Kadimah replaced Labor, Barak’s party, as number two, and she put the country in a possible bind instead of pushing for rotation as PM which she would have got, she just walked away.
Mar 29, 2009 - 4:01 am