Israeli politics has been undergoing a change in recent years, which now seems to be reaching its apex ahead of the upcoming election: Parties are disappearing. Looking at the political map through a wider lens, we don't see true parties anymore, at least in terms of ideology-based political unionization. What we are increasingly seeing is a collection of individuals from the right and the left enlisting prominent personalities to form a group (which is mistakenly labeled a political party), which inevitably disbands and sometimes come back together.
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Parties with long-term, stable and meaningful mechanisms in place are slowly fading away. Also vanishing are the "parties of the people," built from the bottom up, with vibrant cultures of activism, grassroots members, committees and lawmakers elected democratically via party primaries. Aside from the Likud, essentially, no other party is both representative and democratic.
Israeli politics is gradually eating away at the party structure. True, there are ultra-Orthodox parties, and yes, the Labor party still holds primary elections. But the haredi parties aren't democratic and Labor barely exists anymore. The remaining parties can't be considered truly democratic either.
The change to the election system in 1996 and the advent of directly voting for the prime minister have made Israeli elections more personalized than ever. But the return to the previous system didn't reverse this trend. Quite the opposite; it seems that instead of ideology, elected representatives only want a seat in the Knesset plenum – and if possible in the government as well. And as long as they're in the government, everyone wants to lead it. Above all else, the culture of jumping ship to other parties for political payoffs has become prevalent. Instead of being frowned upon and discredited, these acts are now labeled as "courageous leadership."
We should keep this in mind amid the backdrop of the current mobbing of the Likud, whose members are struggling to implement the public's democratic decisions. This is because the concerted efforts by left-wing "parties" – and sporadically by those on the Right as well – to force the Likud to put forth an alternative to Netanyahu, are more sophisticated than they appear. This is an attempt to harm the largest and only representative and democratic party remaining.
After all, if the Likud ever moves to operate undemocratically, in contravention of its members' decisions, the identity of the party's leader won't matter anyway. From that very moment onward the party will have lost its power and the trust of its members that their involvement and decisions mean anything. In other words, the Likud's rivals no longer want the "head" – rather the entire party. The day there ceases to be a significant ruling party from the Right it will be game-over. In the ensuing chaos, amid the political debris, there will be a free-for-all.
In 2005, Ariel Sharon flouted the democratic decisions made by Likud members, and he later dismantled the party to form Kadima. The Likud dwindled to the lowest number of mandates in its history – 12. Only four years later was the party able to rehabilitate its strength, mainly thanks to its robust democratic mechanisms.
When the Likud is denigrated, it's not because it isn't democratic. Just the opposite: The goal is to erode the foundations of the last democratic and grassroots party remaining. The reason is clear: It's the only way to remove the Right from power.
