Netanyahu’s a loser. Can Lapid become a winner?

As of yesterday (Wednesday), Benjamin Netanyahu is officially a loser. He lost four elections in a row, and failed to form a government – the one time he managed it, a year ago, he did so on Benny Gantz’s mandate.

That, however, does not mean Yair Lapid, who received the mandate to try to form a government yesterday from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, will do any better.

Let there be no mistake: If anyone tells you they know how things will turn out, they’re either lying to themselves or to you; likely, both. The Anything-but-Netanyahu bloc – which is the one Lapid leads – is deeply fractured. Lapid himself considers himself to be a centrist, but would be considered a right-winger, sometimes (as in his unhinged behavior during the “single’s intifada”) an extreme-right in most countries. As for the Palestinians (as can be seen in his recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg)  he basically advocates endless apartheid, wrapped up in hasbara platitudes. Lapid sounds like Netanyahu, because you barely discern between the two when it comes to policy.

And Lapid will have to govern with two hard-right parties: Naftali Bennett’s Yamina (which literally means “rightwards”) and Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope (there are strong suspicions the name is a pun on the first Star Wars movie; Sa’ar’s name means “storm”). Both parties contain hard racists. One of the members of Sa’ar’s party is Yoaz Hendel, who as a former member of Gantz’s party torpedoed a Gantz government because he would not agree to accept a Palestinian party as a partner.

But the main problem, as far as Lapid is concerned, is Naftali Bennett’s Yamina. Bennet, of inflated ego unfitting his slim winnings – he had only seven seats in the March 23 election– demands to be first minister. Even yesterday, when the parties submitted their responses to President Rivlin, Bennett recommended himself for the prime ministership; nobody else did.

Bennett demands a rotation in the office of prime minister, with himself going first, for at least a year. And, astonishingly, he may actually get it. Even Meretz agreed to it. The Joint List supported Lapid, but announced it will not support Bennett. And it is not at all clear Lapid can form a government without the Joint List. And Bennett has his own problems: One of his seven members of Knesset, an unusually racist nobody by the name of Amihai Shikli, already announced he will not vote for a government with Meretz and the Joint List. Another Yamina MK, Ayelet Shaked, is also strongly rumored to pull a similar stunt.  

So, it’s a fool’s game trying to guess whether Lapid will actually form a government. He has 28 days to do so, but if he doesn’t, then we’re going to a fifth round of elections.

If he does, he will have the most unwieldly coalition of all times, composed of parties that detest each other and are tarnished by the very agreement to sit with other parties. The first main obstacle would be the budget; the government has to get one approved by the Knesset within three months. It’s hard to see the Joint List and Yamina agreeing on a settlements budget, for instance. Every party within the coalition would be vulnerable to criticism over the concessions it would have to make in order to allow the coalition to survive.

Which is why Bennett demands to be Prime Minister for the first year; such a coalition would be unlikely to see a second. But its main goal is to sunset Netanyahu, the grand illusionist of Israeli politics – to show that an Israeli government can be formed without Netanyahu, and allow his criminal trial to grind him down.  For over a decade, Netanyahu has cast a huge shade on Israel: Everything – this was his main gift – was about him. Your politics were either pro-Netanyahu or anti-Netanyahu, with the anti-Netanyahu’s becoming as shrill as the Bibiists. Likud is a personality cult now, much as the Republican party is: For the past five election cycles, it did not even bother to write a platform. Any platform would have shackled Netanyahu.

With Netanyahu gone, Israel may return to a semi-normalcy: Issues will become relevant to political life again. And then, perhaps, countless leftist voters, who abandoned their parties in the futile belief that a centrist party will bring down Netanyahu, may come home.

Perhaps. But as long as this inner conflict continues, Palestinians will have to rely on the small numbers of Israeli activists who already march in solidarity with them. The apartheid regime will grind on – unless the International Criminal Court and the international community delivers a short, sharp shock.