The coronavirus crisis has put the leaders of the Blue and White party in a tough spot. Upon realizing that a minority government under their leadership was off the table, Blue and White immediately received the prime minister's offer of forming a national emergency government.
Netanyahu repeated the offer on Saturday and it will be very hard to turn down. The party, which has refused to sit in a Netanyahu-led government as a matter of principle, will soon face pressure to violate this promise and join him. It is a complicated dilemma.
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For a while now, Blue and White has been viewed as a campaign party. One that is led and managed by advisers and strategists, politicos who actually dictate the party line, its decisions, the speeches its leaders make and more. With the coronavirus crisis raging on, it appears these advisers are still setting the party's tone.
Aside from a campaign, petty political ploys and clumsy attempts at evasion, responsible leadership is still nowhere to be found. Even Avigdor Lieberman, hardly the paragon of stately behavior, realizes that this moment necessitates a functioning government. In contrast, what continues to interest Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, and Moshe Ya'alon is replacing the Knesset Speaker on Monday, taking control of the Knesset's Arrangements Committee and House Committee, apparently passing a law to disqualify Netanyahu from presiding as prime minister – and likely a few more ridiculous and frivolous political tricks in which the public they are supposed to represent is completely disinterested.
In the past, they would accuse prime ministers of going to war for political reasons. Today, they are accusing Netanyahu of putting an entire country into quarantine for similar reasons. This would be true if Israel was the only country on the planet enacting these measures and the medical experts were advising against them, but this isn't the case. The entire world is heading in Israel's direction and the medical professionals in the Health Ministry thoroughly support the drastic steps recently taken.
It's okay to ask questions, criticize, and it's even important for the legislative branch to have parliamentary oversight over the enforcement branch, but Blue and White's policy is putting all this on hold, not the other way around. If they continue to take their regular path of consulting with the president, stretching out the process for weeks and maybe even forcing another election – no measure will be relevant anymore for the millions of people placed on an emergency footing Sunday morning.
Very rarely – if ever – in a party's lifetime do its chiefs have the opportunity to show true leadership, push the campaigns and image consultants to the side and do what is right. The big question is will they do it.
