We are approaching the day when the Israeli Left will be able to fulfill its biggest wish – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's exit from politics. Evert left-wing system is in place for the post-Netanyahu era and every pundit is more than happy to discuss the "twilight of his rule," as if he has been a caretaker for all his governments, not a sitting prime minister.
Among those pundits are there are a few very reputable ones who for the past decade have been cultivating the myth of "beginning of the end" of Netanyahu's political career. They predicted he would not survive the 2011 social protest; swore he would be forced to step down after the exit polls in 2015, and stated that Netanyahu was "done for" every leak from the investigation waged against him.
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Listening to them, one could think that the "beginning of the end" of Netanyahu's rule began on March 31, 2009.
Given recent developments, many in the Left can already imagine the victory party they can finally organize, 10 years – or six, or four, or six months – too late.
This time, the Left might actually get to throw such a party, but when the confetti settles, reality is likely to sink in.
Netanyahu served as prime minister for over a decade, at the end of which – facing an indictment and subject to daily media beating – he still enjoys public support. If he does exit politics, it will be after two election campaigns where the best the left could do was create a draw with Likud.
The only way the Left even got close to unseating him was via a party formed by generals, which includes right-wing hardliners – the kind who have promoted issues like the nation-state bill and other – the same one the Left decried from the rooftops.
But at the end of the day, it was Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit who handed them their wish on a silver platter.
Leftist like to tell themselves that they earned the right to gloat, but the truth is that were it not for the legal Deus ex machina, they would have had to wait at least until March 2020 for any chance to tell their favorite pundit, 'You were right, he really won't be forming the next government."
A left-wing victory party will be a sad one. Not only has Netanyahu given the national camp 10 consecutive years of government – the end of which is still uncertain – but during which he was able to show that the Israeli economy can survive the "tsunami" of diplomatic "isolation", and even without "painful prices" such as withdrawals, alliances and collaborations can be fostered in and beyond the Middle East.
For an entire decade, the Left has been so busy with demonization, delegitimization, doomsday predictions, and fighting Netanyahu's rule that they have completely lost sight of one thing – creating alternative ideological infrastructure.
For a whole decade, dotted with social protests, corruption cases, hostilities vis-à-vis Gaza and Iranian harassment – a public diplomacy bonanza for the Left – there has been no significant shift in public opinion in the Left's favor. The public is not interested in a different political path.
This is why the Left is unprepared for its party: It has no agreed-upon leadership, no ideologically homogeneous party, and no alternative security, political and economic agenda to the one the Likud and Netanyahu follow.
Even with its wish within grasp, the Left remains empty-handed. The Left is grossly fooling itself. It rejoices over Netanyahu's apparent removal from power but it unwittingly celebrating the ideological triumph of the man who has managed to turn even the aversion to him into a political resource.
