After blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for aspiring to become a dictator, Blue and White showed us all that the real danger to democracy lurks within their camp.
Aided by large parts of the media and probably the judiciary, Blue and White introduced a bill seeking to prevent Netanyahu from forming a government. Instead of winning elections, the losing party prefers to hide behind laws that change the state of post-election reality that has been practiced in Israel since its inception.
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After all, in every election campaign dating back to the first Knesset, the winning party could have exploited its majority and enact a law against its opponents. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion could have done that and Menachem Begin could have done that as well, as did all of those who followed. But they didn't. The thought never even crossed their mind.
This outrageous bill would allow Blue and White to play both ends against the middle – to oust Netanyahu without paying the price of sharing the government table with Joint Arab List MKs. The same goes for Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman. Being part of a government that is supported, albeit from the outside, by Arab MKs could come with a hefty political price, but collaborating on legislation – that's another thing.
The bill in question, which could garner the support of 62 lawmakers who are not part of the right-wing bloc, reflects the cowardice nature of these MKs. While 58 lawmakers are ready to join forces and form a government, the other 62 MKs refuse to unite around one candidate and seek to take advantage of their majority to exclude the other candidate, who just happened to win the election.
Make no mistake – if, despite the results of the elections, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz succeeds in galvanizing a majority in the Knesset, President Reuven Rivlin would be within his rights to turn to him first and task him with forming the government.
But Gantz knows that, just like following the September 2019 elections, even if he receives the mandate from the president, he has nowhere to go with it. He will spend weeks spinning his wheels only to fail and return the mandate to the president. And so, just as with a campaign, he needs external assistance, this time by legislation, so that the judiciary can prop him up. Otherwise, he has no leg on which to stand.
With the results of the elections finalizes, Gantz's attempts to disqualify the prime minister is illegitimate. The legal norm states that Netanyahu can remain at the Prime Minister's Office in the midst of a trial against him.
Like it or not, the public has spoken. The Likud is the largest party in the Knesset. This means that if Gantz pushes this move forward, he will just be trying to disqualify Netanyahu, but everyone who voted for him.
While he has done it before, doing it now, after voter turnout for the Likud surpassed every vote for any party in the country's history, shows a new level of arrogance.
