The reason MK Nir Orbach is under much heavier pressure now than he used to be is that the Yamina Party is not a democratic entity. There are no party institutions, certainly not elected legislated institutions. There is nothing that mediates between Yamina voters and their Knesset representatives. The voters have no accepted, democratic way of influencing the party's top echelon, not even voting for institutions like a central committee, a secretariat, or anything similar. The result is that ordinary people who feel betrayed are furious at Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked. But what can they do about it?
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The main reason Orbach resigned from the coalition was not the shouting protesters outsie his house, but rather the unity in the Opposition under Benjamin Netanyahu. This past year, Netanyahu has demonstrated leadership, even though Gideon Sa'ar announced repeatedly that he would not join a government under Netanyahu as leader because he wouldn't "go back" to a Netanyahu government. It sounded like an election slogan.
It's hard not to see the reality. Sometimes people try to gloss things over, but it's not a heartwarming performance. It doesn't look like the Yamina faction even exists. It's breaking up. When MKs Silman, Chikli, Orbach, Alon Davidi, Asher Cohen and basically a large part of the team departs, it simply points to a sweeping lack of faith in the party leadership. Bennett has already said that he erred in making promises. It's really scandalous. A public figure promises to follow a certain line. But it's clear that if he hadn't made ceremonial promises, most Yamina voters wouldn't have cast ballots for the party. Bennett and Shaked would have passed the minimum electoral threshold.
Orbach is blaming Mazen Ghanem and Ghaida Rinawie-Zoabi for his departure. That's not entirely fair, because form the first day of the Bennett-Lapid government, one could see that there was something dangerous and submissive in a few left-wing and a few Islamist parties joining forces with a party that on paper calls itself "Right-ward" (Yamina).
It's not completely clear what Orbach meant in one section of his resignation announcement on Monday, when he said, "I don't think that holding elections is the best option. Repeated elections don't serve the stability necessary to govern the country. This coming week, I won't vote to dissolve the Knesset. I will work with all my might for a stable government with a national spirit, like we promised to do a year ago … I am not part of the coalition."
There is no chance that the longed-for stability will arise from the ranks of the coalition. "A stable government with a national spirit" – that could happen only under a Likud leadership. But the Yamina leaders have come down with leadership syndrome. Let's assume that for now, Orbach won't help dissolve the government. What is he leaving for the Israeli public? At this point, Orbach, Bennett, and Shaked are adding more questions, and are becoming part of the tradition of the religious Right, which since 1975 has been the dominant factor in the lack of stability in this country
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