The puzzle of parties, mostly small ones, that are trying to adopt the appealing name "coalition for change" or "healing government" is not an obvious one. The glue that supposedly holds the "Anyone but Bibi" coalition together entails simplistic reasoning that allows parties with polar-opposite platforms to team up.
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Will everyone – parties such as Yamina and New Hope, which are well on the right wide of the political map, and Meretz and Labor, which are committed to a two-state solution and cancelling the Nation-State Law – join forces? The image of wolves dwelling with lambs (Isaiah 11:6) underscores the anomaly, the idealization of irrationality, of this supposed movement. Is anyone buying the ideological message of a "healing" government or a platform that focuses only on the handling of the COVID crisis? To a large extent, this turns government into banality and shows a lack of understanding of the tasks of a government.
Since the founding of the state, and even before, the major divides in the people were ideological in nature, first and foremost the dispute between socialism and revisionism. Ben-Gurion's categorical rejection of the communist and right-wing Herut parties, which marked the "boundaries of political legitimacy" in Israel, cracked after some 20 years ahead of the 1967 Six-Day War with an ad hoc constellation that did not cover up the wide ideological gap between the two sides of the Israeli political spectrum.
In effect, the results of the election for the 24th Knesset are being parsed by a personal consideration – supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is also how the opposition parties waged their election campaigns, with momentum from the anti-government protests. But a deeper analysis of the moves made by the Zionist left-wing parties anchors the theory that their vision remains what it was, and might even have been sharpened in light of trends in the new American administration under President Joe Biden.
In circumstances such as these, it is almost certain that the media's attempts to create the impression of a honeymoon between the left-wing parties (some of which would prefer to be called "center-left") and Gideon Sa'ar of New Hope and Naftali Bennett of Yamina aligns with the left-wing parties' strategic political plans.
Empirical reality indicates that most of the public holds a worldview that tends to the Right, a tendency that has gained strength in the latest election. Netanyahu's repeated motto – as he is establishing a front to handle major challenges, first and foremost Iran, given the new American administration – which signals that the "special relations" between Israel and the US are losing their meaning, is justified.
A bunch of parties from all over the map that have adopted slogans of "healing," "repair," or "change," are nothing but pot-stirrers that comprise another aspect of the "beats" on route to changing the record for some future government. This places New Hope and Yamina before a kind of honey trap. The logic of ousting Netanyahu assumes that doing so would lead to the destruction of the Likud and the hegemony of the Right.
The appropriate imagery for those pulling the strings of this should be inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin," or, translated into electoral terms, first we take Bennett, and then we take power.
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