In recent weeks we've seen disconcerting parallels between the current political situation and that which preceded the 13th Knesset. The potential alliances between Blue and White, Meretz, Avigdor Lieberman and the Joint Arab List – as difficult as it may be to believe they can actually coalesce – is reminiscent of the eve of Yitzhak Rabin's government back in the day. In many aspects, this is the return of the "Oslo coalition."
First, the likeness between the group of generals heading Blue and White and the election of Rabin to head the Labor party isn't a banal one. When the first Intifada was at its apex, and rumors about secret talks with the PLO surfaced to drive away supporters, the Left realized that the path to replacing the Likud government had to come from the Right, or at least the quasi-Right. And what's better than a former IDF chief of staff and defense minister? To complete the costume, Avigdor Kahalani and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer – the Yoaz Hendel and Moshe Ya'alon of the day – were dispatched to the television studios, while Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres were kept behind the scenes.
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Another parallel to that period is Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party and Rafael "Raful" Eitan's party at the time, Tzomet. Similar to Lieberman, Tzomet held hawkish views and even discussed giving benefits to Arabs who agree to emigrate willingly. And like Lieberman, who promised to wipe out Hamas, wipe out its leader Ismail Haniyeh, and enact the death sentence against terrorists, Tzomet, too, promised to fight terror with a heavy hand, expel inciters and impose collective punishments on the Palestinians. But this was only one side of Tzomet. In the wake of the "dirty trick" in 1990, Tzomet identified the potential in the religion vs. state issue and eagerly hitched its wagon to the secular, anti-haredi agenda. The party said it would work to enlist ultra-Orthodox youth to the IDF, fight tooth and nail against the special funds allocated to the haredim and combat their political extortions. Tzomet's message was so successful that some voters deliberated between it and Meretz. Does any of this sound familiar?
Raful, however, whose virtues were many, wasn't the only one elected to the Knesset. He was joined by seven no-names on his list, which the press often referred to as the "seven dwarves." We further recall that two of these "dwarves," Gonen Segev and Alex Goldfarb, cast the decisive votes to pass the Oslo II Accord.
The death knell for that Knesset was of course the birth of the "obstructionist bloc" from the Left flank, aided by the Arab Democratic Party and Hadash, which ultimately tipped the fragile scale between Right and Left. Although the Right and the haredim had 59 seats and the Left only had 56, the external support from the Arab parties facilitated the creation of the narrow left-wing government. Also worth a quick mention was the stigma of corruption attributed to the Likud through the public discourse at the time. The leftist slogans, echoed by the media, decried the politically and morally "corrupt" leaders on the Right; and all of a sudden, after 15 years the Likud had been in power, there was an urgent need to replace the government at all costs.
We already know the Oslo coalition didn't wipe out the Intifada, didn't separate religion and state and also shamelessly bribed Knesset members. It also bequeathed us a memento, a scar in the form of terrorist bombings and the seeds for a Palestinian state within Israel. Meanwhile, let us not forget that this was all made possible by the unfathomable confluence of left-wing generals, anonymous Knesset members, and the Arab parties. Does this still not sound familiar?
