A day after Benny Gantz's pathetic victory speech, his Blue and White co-leader Yair Lapid gave a speech about the opposition and promised the next Likud government that "we will make your lives miserable." Who writes their speeches? One declared a nonexistent victory that was impossible from the moment Blue and White rushed to reject any possibility of a blocking alliance with the Arab parties or the possibility of joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government; and his colleague portrayed their party's only role as giving someone else a hard time.
Lapid spent four years in the opposition and never spent too much time in the Knesset. Even when he was there, no one could have accused him of making the government's life a misery or embarrassing it. He chose to try and convince the Swedes to stop their boycott of Israel and a few of them even agreed to listen to him speak. It's not certain they stopped their boycott as a result or that Israelis themselves were convinced that nothing would change unless Lapid was appointed foreign minister.
The opposition has a role to play in the face of the Netanyahu governments' policies. The prime minister can be criticized for giving Habayit Hayehudi a free hand in reining in the Supreme Court; for the nation-state law, which destabilized relations between Jews and non-Jewish citizens; for Culture Minister Miri Regev's attack on freedom of cultural expression; for stopping the peace process; for preferring Hamas to the PLO and his lack of willingness to meet with PA President Mahmoud Abbas; for missing out on the Egyptian initiative for regional peace; for increasing the deficit; and for positioning Israel as the ally of regimes that the democratic West stays away from.
But anyone who wants to trade well-grounded criticism for "making the coalition's life miserable" (for example, by voting against any bill the government proposes, even when there is no reason to object to it) is living a lie and abandoning the responsibility of the opposition. The Randolph Churchill quote from 1922 that "the duty of an opposition is to oppose" is far from reflecting its true role. The main mission of a parliamentary opposition is to present an alternative to the government's policies, to expose the ןinjustice and unworthy conduct of those who rule; and convince the public that it is worthy of being voted into power.
Obviously, the opposition makes things difficult for the government and it would be much more convenient if the ruling party could do whatever it wanted without anyone criticizing it. But a true opposition knows when to vote with the government and when to agree with its policies. Not only is it fair to do so; it bolsters the opposition's credibility when its members take a stance against the government.
Lapid and his friends need to understand that. If their party, which includes good people who have little common ground, can't find a common denominator and produce something better than harassing the government, it will expose its own weakness long before it exposes that of the government.
Instead of "making the government's life miserable" and posing as a "fighting opposition," the leaders of Blue and White should behave responsibly and try to prove to their public that they are a worthy alternative to the government that has been elected.
