Based on the current polls, it is unlikely that the left and center in Israel will be capable of forming the next government after the National election in March. It appears that Labor Leader Isaac Herzog and his partner, Tzipi Livni realize this and have set their sights on something less: a “national unity government” featuring a rotation in leadership between current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Herzog.
MK Haneen Zouabi
The cruel fact is that “the Zionist Camp” (the name taken for the joint ticket between Labor and Livni’s small HaTnuah party) and the left-wing Meretz party are just too far from the 60 Knesset seats required to form a government to seriously entertain the possibility of an actual victory. That is the case even if they would agree to include and could persuade the United Arab List (with a projected 12 seats in the Knesset) to join their coalition.
Dramatic evidence for this calculation by Herzog and Livni is their declaration of support for barring Arab Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi from running for national office. By joining the Likud in this tactic, the Zionist Camp seeks to position itself as eligible for sharing power with Netanyahu’s party. That may make short-term political sense for the leaders of the “main opposition party.”
But, it is a move that exposes the realities that politics in the “Jewish state” imposes on Jewish moderates. It appears certain, and it appears that Herzog and Livni know this, that in the kind of political arena currently constituted by the State of Israel no governing coalition in Palestine/Israel can arise which is capable of addressing the Jewish-Palestinian problem.
Demographic and cultural changes have transformed the Jewish electorate in Israel into a polity incapable of producing a left or even center-left government. The current election campaign shows that the painful implications of this state of affairs have not yet been absorbed by the remains of what used to be called “beautiful Israel.” To do so would mean recognizing that any serious strategy for bringing Jewish moderates back into power will require an alliance with non-Jews, campaigns to achieve extremely high turnout rates by non-Jews, and even extension of political rights to Arabs in East Jerusalem (perhaps to Arabs in the rest of the West Bank). Support for Zoabi’s political ostracism slams the door in the face of that strategy. At best it delays real movement toward it and at worst indicates a fundamental refusal to face the country’s deepest challenges and the realities that produce them. One of those realities is the impossibility that the country will once again ever be governed by an Ashkenazi-liberal dominated, Jewish-only, coalition.
Two instructive comparisons come to mind, one with the United States and one with France. Compared to Arabs in Israel, who comprise 15% of eligible voters, African Americans make up only 12% of the American electorate. Yet, elections in the United States have come to turn on African American participation. On average, Republican Presidential candidates receive about 57% of the white vote. Indeed, it is agreed among all observers that without a strong turnout by African Americans, Democrats simply cannot win Presidential elections in the United States. That they have done so repeatedly in recent years (including winning the popular vote in the disputed 2000 election) when African American turnout has been high, while suffering severe setbacks in off-year congressional elections (when that turnout has been low), proves the point.
Perhaps a better, though less well known, comparison is the predicament of the Socialist government of Guy Mollet in France in early 1956. The Socialists were already aware of the disastrousness of the war in Algeria. In January 1956, Mollet outlined a “Republican Coalition” that would include supporters of Pierre Mendez-France and other advocates of French withdrawal from Algeria—a coalition that would save the Fourth Republic by extricating France from the mess in Algeria forced upon the country by an alliance among right-wing and ultranationalist parties, settlers, and key elements in the military. But Mollet’s plan failed. He could not achieve a stable majority without allying with the Communists, who controlled a significant portion of the French legislature. Mollet refused to risk his “anti-communist” credentials by allowing communists in his coalition. Instead he turned to the equivalent of a “national unity government,” thereby winning power. But by joining with the right on a platform of Algerie Française, he prolonged the war, and, ultimately, destroyed the Fourth Republic. Whether the Fourth Republic could have been saved is unclear but by refusing to ally with the communists on the fateful question of staying in or leaving Algeria, Mollet sealed its doom.
There is a saying in politics—that it makes strange bedfellows. Usually that shows itself by the appearance of unexpected and even unprecedented alliances. But sometimes it shows itself by the fate of those who defy it. By refusing to face the newness of the world that must be made, the leaders of the “Zionist Camp” are deepening the crisis of the world as it is.
Professor Ian Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.