Benny Gantz's public relations people and his fans in the media are trying to compare him to Yitzhak Rabin. He too is a former IDF chief of staff who jumped into politics. But they've forgotten that prior to being elected prime minister, Rabin served as Israeli ambassador to Washington, as a Knesset member and as a cabinet minister. But for those who are well-versed in history, the current atmosphere is reminiscent of a different savior who appeared in the Israeli political skies.
It was the time of the political revolution of 1977, which put an end to more than 50 years of hegemony by the Labor party. But in contrast to the prevailing opinion, it wasn't the Likud that ousted Labor, it was a new organization of generals and professors called Dash (the Hebrew abbreviation for the Democratic Movement for Change), under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Yigael Yadin, the IDF chief who managed the War of Independence, established the IDF reserves, and then went on to become a famous, groundbreaking archaeologist. The elitists, who were the flesh and blood of the Labor movement, are the ones who removed it from power, if not intentionally.
Dash, which was a joint venture by professors Yadin and Amnon Rubenstein and famous prosecutor Shmuel Tamir, a former member of the right-wing Herut party, arose from a sense among the elite and the middle class that the Labor party was stagnant. The corruption scandals exposed at the time by a new, energetic attorney general – Aharon Barak, who would go on to become chief justice of the Supreme Court – led to appointee to the post of finance minister Asher Yadlin being arrested before he could take office and then-Housing Minister Avraham Ofer committing suicide, as well as the resignation of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The people of Dash didn't want to see Menachem Begin and the Likud governing the country. They assumed that Labor would win, as usual, and that they could join the coalition and dictate their own terms. Their demands focused on domestic political issues: the establishment of a system of regional elections, fighting corruption and illegal wealth; and writing a constitution for a Jewish, democratic country. It was the first party that held open, internal primaries to determine its Knesset list.
Dash did impressively well in the election, winning 15 seats, which it took from Labor, which dropped from 51 seats to 32. The Likud, under Begin, had been gradually climbing by two to three seats in every election, jumped from 39 to 43 seats in 1977. Because Labor lost support to Dash, the Likud became the biggest party in the Knesset and Begin was charged with forming the government.
As a representative of the middle class, Dash was a centrist party and had envisioned itself as part of a center-left government that would be established after the election. But it caused the opposite to happen and changed the political map, leading to the first-ever center-right government in the history of Israel.
Today, the ongoing attempt by former officers to organize a center-left coalition is taking place not so they can join an existing government but so they can oust the government that is currently in power. But the middle class – to whom the centrist parties are appealing – has changed almost unrecognizably. It now comprises the Sephardi middle class, which rose as a result of the changes the Likud government instituted in social and economic life in Israel. That class does not want to see the Right and the Likud pushed out of power.
For that reason, it's likely that the attempt to recreate Yadin's 1977 gambit will boomerang. What its results will be, we still don't know, but the public discourse gives a sense that people are expecting a political explosion, even if it doesn't happen in the April 9 election. Processes are being sped up and decisions about yearslong controversies will have to be made – the Israeli settlements and sovereignty in the land of Israel vs. a Palestinian state; the issue of identity and nationality (the nation-state law); societal problems; reforms to the structure of government and the judicial system. Even if there is no political upheaval, we might still be on the brink of vital changes to the government structure, the election system, and the balance of power between the branches of government, particularly the judiciary.
