NOTE: When I wrote this, it was not yet clear that Bibi had 65 MKs behind him. I'm posting it anyway.
On Thursday, the heads of two political parties met with Israeli President Shimon Peres to give their recommendations on whom the President should pick to be the next Prime Minister of Israel. Shas's Eli Yishai and Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Liberman both recommended Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu for the prime ministry. Peres will meet tomorrow with Netanyahu and Kadima head Tzipi Livni to further discuss the formation of a government. Peres will appoint one of the two on Monday.
That both Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have endorsed Netanyahu for Prime Minister shouldn't be surprising, and yet it is. Shas's negotiations (if one can call them that) with Livni when she tried to form a government in the fall were completely unreasonable, so they have no choice but to endorse Bibi. So if Shas were endorsing Bibi alone, that would be one thing. But they're doing it alongside Lieberman.
Lieberman, at least in terms of foreign policy, is an ultra-hawk and fully endorses the notion of "transfer," i.e., that Israel should eject its Arab citizens. And yet Lieberman was holding his cards close to his vest. As recently as Tuesday, after holding meetings with Kadima, Lieberman had indicated he might endorse Livni for Prime Minister. Of course, Israeli politicians are notoriously always for sale, so the right price offered by Bibi the next day is probably what sold Lieberman's endorsement to the Likud.
But what about Shas? Considering what Lieberman was insisting was his major demand of a new government — that Israel legalize civil marriage — it's surprising that Shas would also agree to endorse Netanyahu. After all, Lieberman, so the conventional wisdom has been saying, is the one holding the cards. He's the "kingmaker," who has enough mandates behind his party (15, the third largest number in the elections held February 10) to make or break the next government. Shas, with its 11 mandates, is not irrelevant, but they aren't as key to any coalition as Yisrael Beiteinu.
Or are they? Since the election, Bibi has been boasting that the "nationalist" bloc got 65 mandates to the 55 mandates of the "left." The problems with this argument are varied and several, but essentially, they fall into two categories: (1) The "nationalist" bloc includes both right-wing secular parties, like Yisrael Beiteinu and the Likud, as well as the purely religious parties, i.e., Shas and its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism. Two other parties, Jewish Home and National Union, make up the rest of this bloc, and these are "national-religious" parties that represent certain religious interests, as well as the Greater Israel philosophy. The issue is to what extent they are willing to serve in a coalition with Lieberman. The Likud's secular positions are not a big deal to the religious factions in Israel because Likudniks don't legislate on the basis of their secularism. Lieberman, however, is going to demand that they do. (2) The "left" includes 11 mandates from the "Arab parties," which includes Hadash, a mixed Jewish-Arab party with serious Marxist leanings. Furthermore, Kadima isn't a "left-wing" party, and, as I pointed out elsewhere, neither is Labor. And, yes, this second point works more in Bibi's favor than in Livni's favor.
Here's what it boils down to. If Peres appoints Netanyahu to form a government, then Bibi has six weeks in which to accomplish this. The problem he will face is making enough promises to both Yisreal Beiteinu and the religious parties that they all agree to sign on. And the rub is this: If a single one of the parties in the "national" bloc bails on Bibi and Kadima and Labor refuse to join him, he will fail at forming a government. He can't do it without just about every party in the bloc he claims to represent.
The obvious rejoinder is that Livni can't form a government without Netanyahu. Despite their better interests, the Arab parties won't join her. That leaves the "left" with only 33 mandates to work with. Lieberman can't put her over the top, but Bibi can. In fact, she can form a government and leave Lieberman out entirely, or at the very least make him a very junior partner. But in order for her to do this, certain things have to happen. First, Peres has to appoint her to form the government, and second, Bibi has to agree to join it as a partner. Bibi has been insisting that he should be the next Prime Minister and he evokes his 65 "nationalist" mandates as proof. But this particular emperor has no clothes.
So two people need to be convinced: Peres needs to appoint Livni to form the government, and Bibi needs to join a Livni-led coalition. But it's only Bibi that can convince Peres to have Livni form the government. And only Livni can convince Bibi to back her, and it will cost her. She should not relinquish the prime ministry — at least not entirely. But she should offer a power-sharing agreement, a rotation agreement in which Bibi serves as Prime Minister for the second half of the electoral term. In exchange, Bibi puts his mandates behind Livni and she forms the core of her government from Kadima, Likud, and Labor.
Why leave out Lieberman? Other than his odious political positions and the investigations into graft that are ongoing, what portfolio is any Prime Minister in his/her right mind going to give this guy? If Kadima is in a government, it only makes sense to keep Livni in the foreign ministry. It's where she has shone so far. Furthermore, for all of his negative qualities, Bibi was a competent foreign minister under the Ariel Sharon–led Likud. You can't trust Lieberman with either the foreign ministry or the finance ministry. His foreign policies are too volatile and, well, that graft investigation would kind of make an appointment to finance a travesty.
That leaves defense as the major portfolio left to give out. Again, this can't realistically go to Lieberman. It ought to remain where it is, with Labor's Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history and right hand to the late Yitzhak Rabin on security issues. But that requires that Barak be brought into the government before Lieberman.
Kadima, Likud, and Labor total 68 mandates, which while narrow is still workable. With such a secular bloc at its center, an Israeli government can now choose to go with the religious parties or with Lieberman. While the religious parties have more mandates, Lieberman has upward political mobility and, more importantly, a commitment to secular politics.
Lieberman will not be happy to be left in the cold as a fourth member of a coalition, behind a party (Labor) that polled worse than his own party did. But beggars also can't be choosers, and once he stops jumping up and down, if he's given something like the interior ministry, he may actually be able to do some good. Maybe even the immigration portfolio can be given to him, considering that, in theory at least, his party is one of immigrants. In fact, his demands about secularization of marriage and other issues are a direct result of his constituency — a large number of them, like him, immigrants from the former Soviet Union — largely being intermarried with non-Jews.
The only thing left to consider is how Israel's religious parties will react to being the outsiders. How will an opposition composed entirely of religious parties conduct itself? All four of the religious or national-religious parties combined hold 23 mandates, or just over 20% of the seats. That's a considerable number but not one that should cause undue concern.
United Torah Judaism will abide. And National Union and Jewish Home, who use religious issues more as a cover for their ultranationalist platforms, will continue to fool few people.
The only party with any considerable number of mandates is Shas. Maybe a season in the abyss is what Shas needs to come to terms with itself and stop seeing itself as a necessary part of any coalition. Maybe the Sephardi and Mizrachi voters that made Shas so powerful 15 years ago will see that they were wrong to put so much power into the hands of so self-interested a group of politicians, and the voters will come back into the secular fold.
After all, Shas's numbers don't indicate religious preference as much as ethnic political expression. The inclusion of Sephardi and Mizrachi ministers in the next government could go a long way toward healing one of Israel's longest-festering wounds.
Kadima's second and third positions on its party list are Iranian and Iraqi Jews: Shaul Mofaz and Dalia Itzik. Labor has had Sephardim as its heads and remains the only major political party in Israel to run a non-Ashkenazi candidate for Prime Minister. And the Likud has traditionally drawn its strength from non-Ashkenazi voters. All three of these parties can put Shas in its place and move Israel toward a secular position and away from where Shas et al. would like to see it — as the Jewish equivalent of Iran.