On the night the Knesset dissolved itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that "Avigdor Lieberman is part of the left-wing bloc." That statement was met with mocking laughter. How could it be that Lieberman had suddenly moved to the Left? He, who had wanted to switch his Knesset seat so he wouldn't have to sit next to Joint Arab List leader Ayman Odeh, who ran in the previous election under the slogan "No loyalty – no citizenship" [referring to Arab Israelis], who sought the death penalty for terrorists – what, exactly, made him a left-winger?
An explanation can be found in Lieberman's zigzagging on the proposal to put cameras in polling stations. On Sunday, while touring Maaleh Adumim, he announced, "We will support the cameras law even though it's clear it won't pass, but Yisrael Beytenu will support it." Whereas on Monday, he changed his mind and instructed his party's representatives in the Knesset House Committee to vote against the bill. Two different Liebermans in as many days. Which one is real?
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Lieberman has been in the game long enough for us to know that his declaration on Sunday was honest. In principle, there was no doubt that he supported the cameras bill. It aligned with almost all of his positions and actions over the course of many years. So why did he wind up opposing it? For one simple reason: no matter what his principled positions might be, in every practical point, he is on the Left.
The political system is binary. That's a basic fact. There is a range of parties, but in the end, everything is divided into two groups – coalition and opposition, Left and Right. So it's always a package deal – a right-winger who votes with the national camp has to accept things he might not like. In a right-wing coalition, for example, the haredim almost always have the last word on matters of religion and state. Centrists in the Likud or its satellite parties will attack attempts to pass reforms on legal and economic matters. You can be an old-guard liberal, but when faced with the choices that politics present, you won't get everything you want. That's the price of "bloc" politics.
The same holds true for the Left. The right-wingers running with leftist parties – Yoaz Hendel, Zvi Hauser, and to a lesser extent Moshe Ya'alon – can make declarations until their voice gives out. At the end of the day, they're part of a political bloc whose dynamics will drag them far from their ideology. The coalition they will build, if they build one, won't be in the spirit of "the Begin Likud" that everyone misses, but in the spirit of Yesh Atid mixed with Meretz. That's realpolitik.
When Lieberman brought down the right-wing government after the April election, the simple dynamics of politics went into motion. When he took action against the right-wing bloc, he effectively joined the opposing bloc, and even if he doesn't agree with its beliefs, he has to cooperate. This week, he retreated from his principles on the cameras issue, because the bloc is forcing him to operate against the "Likud spin." Call it "bloc discipline." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got it right: Lieberman might not be on the Left but he's definitely in the left-wing bloc and he is already starting to pay the ideological price.
