There were several winners from Israel's recent elections – from Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to the premiership, through to the astonishing achievement of the Religious Zionist Party, and the impressive leap made by Shas. But the big winner, the one that really stood out, was Mansour Abbas and his party, Ra'am (United Arab List). The results not only justified and rewarded the exceptional political move that he took, but also made him the most important political figure in the Israeli Arab community, as well as someone with significant influence on the political system overall.

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At first glance his achievement could be overlooked: With 195,000 votes, Ra'am won five seats in the Knesset, the same number as the joint Hadash (Communists) and Ta'al (Arab Movement for Renewal) who together received 180,000 votes. Balad (National Democratic Alliance)  and didn't pass the electoral threshold: it received 140,000 votes, which would have been equal to three Knesset seats, if the threshold were lower. In other words, Ra'am received some 40% of the votes for Arab parties and the remaining 60% were divided between the three other parties. The significance of the numbers is that Ra'am, by quite a margin, is the largest Arab party, and the only one that passed the electoral threshold on its own.

Its success comes in the wake of the move taken by Abbas after the 2021 elections – a move that was controversial in the Arab sector – when he declared his willingness to be a partner in a coalition with Zionist parties and held negotiations both with Netanyahu and the opposing camp. In the end, Abbas joined forces with the Bennett-Lapid coalition in the face of stern opposition within the Arab sector and even within his party.

This move may have ended in his political downfall, but in fact the opposite occurred. The Arab electorate didn't reject the move but rewarded him with its votes, which gave Ra'am the status of the largest Arab party and crowned Abbas as the leader of the sector.

The results were not just a reward for a political maneuver. They also broke a 40-year veto that the Arab parties had imposed on any real cooperation with the Zionist parties.

That wasn't always the case. In the first 30 years of the state, a number of Arab parties joined forces with the ruling party. Until 1981, only Jews were members of Mapai and Labor, while its supporters from the Arab sector established satellite parties that joined various coalitions over the years, among them the Democratic List for Israeli Arabs (1951-1959),  Progress and Development (1959-1973)  and the Arab List for Bedouin and Villagers (1973 to 1981). These parties received the majority of the votes in the Arab sector, this at a time when the Communist Party was still mostly Jewish.

Things changed after 1977 when the Likud government ended regime pressure on radical elements in the Arab sector and at the same time the Labor Party turned directly to Arab voters. The result was the elimination of the moderate Arab parties and the rise of radical elements to the leadership of the Arab sector.

After a 40-year-long veto the feeling among many in the Arab Street is that things have reached a dead end. Abbas was the first leader to express this explicitly when he declared that Israel is a Jewish state. This declaration was aimed at abrogating the conflictual approach of radical groups among Israel's Arabs according to which direct conflict will lead the Zionist state to slowly capitulate and to its elimination. In Abbas' view this is a delusional position that is not only disconnected from reality, but risks throwing Israel's Arabs into a battle they cannot win. The backing given by Arab voters to his position enables Abbas to shunt his rivals aside and put his party on the path to becoming an Arab version of Shas.

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Indeed, the Iranian threat toward Israel is growing as Tehran continues spreading its tentacles in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. Turkey's Islamist turn under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has negated it as a potential partner against Iran. As an alternative, officials in Israel and the U.S. are trying to forge an alliance with Sunni-Arab countries, chief among them Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. But these are weak, unstable regimes, who invest most of their resources in suppressing domestic opposition. An alliance with them is being sold to us as a counterbalance against Iran, but the vision of joining the Sunnis is fundamentally unrealistic. The confluence of interests with them is limited and temporary, not worth the price they will demand, and regardless these Sunni states aren't capable of providing the goods. Even though Israel and the Sunnis agree on the Iranian threat, they have almost no other interests in common. From an economic or military standpoint, they have little to offer us; and from their end, any overt cooperation with Israel is always met with immense public blowback.

Will the Sunnis fight alongside us in a war with Iran, or at the very least openly support us in any way? Of course not; it's far more plausible that under pressure from their "streets" they will converge with our enemy, even if only in appearance. After all, even the "moderate" Sunni regimes still adhere to a pan-Arab ideology that considers Israel a foreign element. They recognize our presence and cooperate in specific areas, but true and full normalization with Israel would controvert the basis of their existence.

Even when Sunni leaders want a relationship with Israel and derive actual benefits from it, they are essentially incapable of openly saying or doing anything on behalf of the "Zionist entity." The Saudi crown prince sees us a lifeline against the Iranian threat, but saying so in Arabic will undermine his rule. In a recent interview, the Egyptian president blurted out a couple sentences about tight security cooperation with Israel and immediately backtracked fearing public backlash. The Jordanian king, who relies heavily on Israel to prop up his weak regime, not to mention stave off a mass water crisis, comes out against us in rhetoric and diplomatic measures whenever the opposition in his country gets stronger.

So if they won't or can't help us, maybe they can avoid actively hurting us? Here, too, the answer is negative. A Sunni alliance with Israel, even covert and delicate, would exact a hefty price from us in diplomatic concessions, and handcuff us when we need to act militarily in Syria or Gaza – which has already happened. During the Gulf War in 1990, Israel didn't retaliate after Iraqi Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv because it had to preserve Arab support for the United States. The prize we received for this restraint was the Madrid Conference of 1991, where unprecedented pressure was applied against us to make diplomatic concessions. Now, too, there are those who say we must accept the dangerous Saudi peace initiative or make other concessions for the sake of a Sunni alliance.

It's critical that we realize we must contend with the threats around us on our own, and make it clear to our American friends that the Sunni alliance isn't just ineffective but also entirely unreliable. Putting stock in this alliance will only end in buyer's remorse.

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The explanation for this lies in the not-so-incidental fact that former Likud members, who had left the party unwillingly, now lead most of these tiny right-wing parties. Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, Moshe Kahlon, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya'alon reached the conclusion that they were no longer wanted in the party and independently left it in the hopes of surmounting the voter threshold. These aren't isolated cases anymore, rather a clear phenomenon that indicates a trend. These people and their ilk haven't changed their positions, as they and their parties most assuredly still fall inside the boundaries of the Likud's diplomatic-economic-cultural platform. Their departures have had one cause: They realized their path was blocked. It had nothing to do with political or behavioral objections, rather the party's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, was determined to stand in their way.

Thus, for example, when Kahlon sought the finance portfolio or Lieberman the foreign affairs portfolio, they learned their popularity within the Likud and the public was meaningless because Netanyahu would never give them such portfolios while they were still members of the party. They realized that the only way to advance was to establish separate parties essentially based on the Likud platform and voter base – which ultimately led them to the portfolios they desired.

Although the cases of Bennett, Shaked and Ya'alon are somewhat different, the pattern is the same. In the Likud the path to the top was blocked, hence they resigned and tried moving ahead externally. Ministers who stayed in the Likud never faired any better in this regard, due to Netanyahu's unmistakable distaste for appointing Likud members to senior posts in his government. When the current government was formed, none of the senior portfolios (foreign affairs, finance, interior, education), aside from defense, were given to Likud ministers. Is there no one in the Likud capable of serving in a senior position?

This state of affairs can exist mainly because Likud members are traditionally very loyal to the party chairman. The public, however, has reservations about this approach. Thus these former Likud members receive a large chunk of the votes while the ruling party can never come close to realizing its true electoral potential.

In the last elections, the Likud won 30 mandates; its satellite parties collected 27 – almost the same number. Even if we remove a few mandates from these satellite parties, which regardless won't match the Likud, it's evident that the Likud's potential voter reserve far exceeds its current electoral strength – which we can estimate at around 50 mandates or more.

None of this indicates a one-time thing; the trend appears to be growing stronger. Even voters from established sectoral parties, such as Shas and the National Religious Party (now part of Habayit Hayehudi), could cast their ballots today for the Likud. This is certainly true as it pertains to the centrists (which carefully avoid identifying with the Left), such as Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz and Orly Levy-Abekasis, many of whose supporters are former Likud voters.

Hence we are now witnessing the absurd spectacle of the nationalist camp splintering itself in a futile and pointless ideological spat. Yes, responsibility for this situation falls on the leaders of these satellite parties, who at the very least could have joined together to form a more significant bloc and in turn perhaps pressure the Likud into accepting a broad unification within the camp. But we must also say honestly that the brunt of the responsibility lies at the doorstep of the party leader, who has worked to push people away rather than bring them toward building a large nationalist camp.

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We owned a young female dog at the time, and this attracted many male dogs to our apartment and our landlord's home. One day, one of those male dogs attacked and killed our landlord's dog.

About a day later, she sent us a letter blaming me for the loss of her small dog. The letter demanded that my family and I immediately vacate the housing unit we were renting from her and threatened us with a lawsuit.

It turned out that despite the many qualities and good judgment officials at the State Attorney's Office have, those watchdogs know how to become attacks dogs when things become personal. The letter made ludicrous claims and was treated accordingly. But it underscored the principle that has become mainstream even among liberal thinkers: No one is fit to be his or her own judge.

I was reminded of this case in the wake of the recent controversy over who gets to decide the cabinet's positions on legislative matters. On the one hand, we have Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who says the ministers are allowed to make up their own mind; on the other side, we have the past and present officials at the Justice Ministry, who believe only they have that right.

This is a perfect example of how people like Talia Sasson, a senior official at the ministry who now leads the left-wing New Israel Fund, interpret the term "democracy's watchdog." Sasson recently said that Shaked cannot represent the Justice Ministry at various legislative meetings because Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber does not agree with her views.

There you have it: Justice Ministry officials are now saying outright that they are in charge of formulating the government's views rather than letting elected officials make policy. The ongoing spat emerged from disagreements over a bill aimed at curtailing state funding for provocative art, but it represents an even bigger demand from the Justice Ministry's bureaucracy: that only they can decide what the government's views are on the issues at hand, even if they have nothing to do with constitutional matters.

According to this premise, if there is a Knesset hearing about the dairy industry, and some ministers want to open it up for competition, they can be overruled by Justice Ministry officials who want "distributive justice." As a result, what carries the day is not what elected officials and ministers believe in but what Justice Ministry officials want.

How can supporters of this approach justify it? According to Sasson, "the attorney general represents the public interest," and this puts him above the ministers, who are just elected officials and have no legal qualifications.

There is nothing wrong with harboring a blind belief that the attorney general and his cohorts are gifted with some unique judgment that can never be flawed, but this works only in fairy tales. The dog incident and many other such incidents show that we would best be served if we stop believing in fantasy and accept that all make mistakes and occasionally even have ulterior motives when they discuss a topic that has to do with them. For all of democracy's faults, letting bureaucrats rule is still not a better alternative.

As Plato wrote in "The Republic," the guardians must know their place; otherwise, they won't wait for others to destroy the state but will do so themselves.

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According to Mendelblit's "fundamental view," he and his associates should determine the government and its representatives' legal positions in court, and in regard to criminal prosecution. The result is a centralized, distorted system that was shaped in the days of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak, by a small, unelected and non-transparent circle in the upper legal echelon and close confidants of Barak himself.

This system created an irresponsible amalgam of three separate legal utilities that harm the proper functioning of each and undermines the public trust. Instead of a "watchdog" for democracy, the legal system has become Cerberus, the multi-headed dog in Greek mythology that guards the gates of the underworld to prevent the dead from leaving.

The heads of this Cerberus are three functions currently crammed under the Attorney General's purview: The first is legal consultation pure and simple; in other words offering legal advice to the government on policy and legislative matters. The second is legally representing the government; in other words presenting its position in court, particularly when it is petitioned to act or desist (for example in the case of permitting American BDS activist Lara Alqasem to enter the country). The third is overseeing criminal prosecution; in other words pursuing criminal indictments on behalf of the state.

In actuality, for years now the Attorney General's Office has not legally advised the government. Instead, it issues dictates rooted in beliefs and opinions held by an informal circle of the clerical and legal elite. Essentially, the attorney general currently functions as a censor for government action on behalf of the High Court of Justice.

In the area of representation in court, the government's situation is even worse, because it cannot even argue for itself and is beholden to the whims of the Attorney General. Thus, for instance, former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz not only refused to represent the government's position in court over Jewish National Fund activities, he even forbade another Justice Ministry employee from doing so! According to Mazuz, Mendelblit and their cohort, that to which every citizen and organization in Israel is entitled – even the most reprehensible of sexual offenders and terrorists – the government is not.

In terms of responsibility for criminal prosecution, the current structure breeds unnecessary and unhealthy proximity between government ministers under investigation and the attorney general, who is ultimately responsible for deciding whether to indict them or not.

People are right to criticize the current state of affairs as unreasonable; but instead of their ridiculous demand to simply suspend ministers or the premier from their duties until a decision is made, indictments, like any other law enforcement issue, should be totally detached from the attorney general and transferred to an independent state attorney.

"Legal imperialism" is one name for Aharon Barak's approach of giving the courts unlimited authority and it is a fitting moniker for the attorney general's sphere of authority. Under these conditions, the government and its ministers forego true legal advice and representation and have to interact with the attorney general despite and separate from the investigations they are facing.

The solution is exceedingly simple – break it up.

First, any incoming government should be able to choose the legal adviser it sees fit. Second, the government should have complete freedom to choose who represents it in court – whether it be the attorney general, another state employee or even a private attorney with the proper expertise. And third, the State Attorney's Office will be completely separated from the attorney general, and will be headed by a state attorney who has no day-to-day contact with the government. We can only hope that the government and Knesset introduce changes in this spirit as soon as possible.

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Only one leader seemed to have been nearly forgotten in these celebrations – the most important, the one without whom it is doubtful we would be here today – Theodor Herzl. While his portrait can be seen on the Knesset wall or at any state event, his name was mentioned at the festivities out of an apparent sense of obligation. His character and his world were almost completely absent from the Zionist and Israeli story we celebrated this year.

This was not the case in the first decades of Zionism and the state. Then, it was not only his portrait that was everywhere. The standing of Herzl's ideas and actions was so obvious that he became the only person to have his name appear in Israel's Declaration of Independence. By including his name, Israel sought to recognize the achievements of someone who single-handedly formulated the plan for the establishment of the Jewish state, founded the Zionist movement and institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and Bank Leumi and worked for the recognition of the Jews' right to the Land of Israel by superpowers like Great Britain in a way that prepared the ground for the Balfour Declaration.

This attitude was likely also the result of a sense of guilt that while Herzl invested not only all of his energy, but his entire family fortune in the Zionist movement, after his death, the Zionist movement failed to assist his children. But first and foremost, his unique status was an expression of the fact that the history of Zionism cannot be understood without taking into account the tremendous and decisive influence of his character and his work on leaders like Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion, and many others.

Jabotinsky, a fierce and resolute polemicist who opposed Herzl's "Uganda Plan," always referred to Herzl with a kind of holy reverence he reserved for no other. Jabotinsky called him "the last Diaspora leader in Israel."

Ben-Gurion described him as follows: "There will never be another man as wonderful as he, who combined the heroism of the Maccabeans with the stratagems of David, the courage of Rabbi Akiva who died with the word 'One' on his lips, and the humility of Hillel, the beauty of Rabbi Judah Hanassi and the fiery love of Rabbi Judah Halevi."

An entire generation of young  Zionists, among them Ben-Zvi, Berl Katznelson, Yitzhak Tabenkin, and of course Ben-Gurion, were deeply shocked by Herzl's sudden death in 1904. The sense of crisis that ensured led them to the conclusion it was now their duty to devote their lives to Zionist immigration and action.

Herzl's image has faded from the Israeli public sphere for a number of reasons. With the passing of generations, many take the ideas of a Jewish state and its very existence for granted. As a result, the unique and impossible conditions in which Herzl operated are difficult to comprehend. In addition, while many movements and institutions have been established over the years to preserve the legacies of various figures from a number of streams of Zionism, its founding leader remains to a great extent without a home. With all due respect, it is enough to look at the number of resources the state dedicates to the legacy of figures like Begin and Rabin in comparison to the limited resources devoted to the legacy of the visionary of the state.  In Israel's many celebrations this year, we found the time to note the contributions of Reform and ultra-Orthodox Jews and even the Rothschild family. This is all well and good, as long as we keep in mind that they all opposed Herzl's vision at the outset. Beyond refraining from assisting Herzl in his efforts, they sometimes even fought him vehemently. On the 114th anniversary of Herzl's death, the time has come for Israel to show its gratitude for the Zionist visionary.

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In the past, the main threat to Israel was the possibility of a combined attack by neighboring armies. But in the past few decades, Arab states have become considerably weakened, sometimes even breaking down entirely, and the vacuum left behind is filled by powerful terrorist organizations – from Hezbollah to the north to Hamas and the satellites of Islamic State in Sinai to the south.

Terrorist organizations already existed in the time of the British Mandate as "gangs" that operated against the Jewish population. Since the state was founded, terrorist organizations have mainly taken action against us from inside sovereign Arab states: the fedayeen (guerillas) in the 1950s, which operated out of the Gaza Strip with the encouragement of Egypt; Fatah in the 1960s, from Jordan; and the various "popular fronts" that were active in Syria in the 1970s. In these cases, the terrorist groups were working under the auspices of the countries in which they were based, so Israel saw those nations as responsible for the terrorist activity.

The change came in the 1970s, when a civil war caused Lebanon to disintegrate and allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish "Fatahland" – which answered to PLO founder Yasser Arafat, not the government in Beirut – in southern Lebanon. In the 1982 Lebanon War, we caused the PLO to leave Lebanon for Tunisia, but weren't smart enough to fill the space it left behind, thereby paving the way for bigger troubles. In the past decade, the process has accelerated because most of the Arab governments are weakening and falling apart and because of Israel's policy of hasty withdrawals and lack of strategy.

The first two terrorist entities appeared as a direct result of Israeli withdrawals. The quick retreat from South Lebanon – which was not conditioned on the Lebanese army taking over after the IDF left – gave the territory to Hezbollah, which turned from a bothersome terrorist group to the possessor of a large stock of missiles. Not long after that came the disengagement and hurried withdrawal from Gaza, which contributed to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority rule in the Gaza Strip and to Hamas taking control of what would turn into yet another anti-Israeli terrorist entity.

In light of the destabilization of the governments in Egypt and Syria following the Arab Spring, a local branch of the Islamic State based in the Sinai Desert used the shaky Cairo regime to build an active popular resistance that the Egyptian military cannot manage to quash. In Syria, what started as a civil war and the collapse of the regime of President Bashar Assad in the country's south led to regions of Syria that face the Golan Heights falling into the hands of jihadi and Iranian militias.

Yes, other than the border with Jordan, Israel is surrounded by terrorist entities rather than sovereign governments of those same states. Luckily for us, we have not given up our control of defense and security in Judea and Samaria. Without the responsibility of a sovereign state, the embers of anti-Israel sentiment could flare up into a full-scale conflict at any moment.

The rules of the game have changed. Israel must insist that if countries leave sovereign territories to others, the result will be no man's land, where any actions – by Israel or anyone cooperating with it – do not count as invading a sovereign country. This stance will make it clear that Israel has the tools to fight the new kinds of threat, as well.

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Along the way, Iran turned Assad from an ally into a puppet. It secured a "Shiite corridor" of contiguous territory, through which it has transferred weapons and forces from Tehran to the Mediterranean coast. And perhaps most importantly from Iran's perspective, it established a permanent and significant presence of Iranian forces and proxy militias on Syrian soil. Now Tehran is focusing its energies on removing the one remaining obstacle on its path to regional hegemony – Israel.

Iran's goal is obvious and attainable. War with Israel is neither necessary nor worthwhile for the time being. However, a series of relatively limited moves can create a balance of deterrence to restrict Israel's freedom of action in Syria and enable it, if need be, to also apply pressure against the Jewish state on the nuclear issue.

This is how Hezbollah has managed – through measured confrontations – to tie Israel's hands on a number of important matters. Even when the conflict spiraled out of Hezbollah's control, during the Second Lebanon War, for instance, Israel was unable to obtain a suitable victory. As a result, the Shiite terrorist organization has remained in control of Lebanon and has stockpiled a massive arsenal of missiles pointed directly at the Jewish state.

The Iranians launched a drone to penetrate Israeli airspace, and the Syrians shot down one of our warplanes. In other words, the fight has moved to Israeli territory. This is a first and glaring step toward altering Israel's equation of deterrence against Syria and erases all the red lines Jerusalem has drawn in the proverbial sand. Our limited response to this Iranian-Syrian provocation – bombing several Syrian and Iranian military facilities – will ultimately come back to bite us.

Israel has thus far avoided intervening in Syria's civil war and Iran's overt efforts to establish a foothold there. All of our actions have focused solely on eliminating missile warehouses and factories (earmarked for Hezbollah) and keeping Iranian forces away from the Golan Heights border. This approach, which some decision-makers have undoubtedly propagated as level-headed and proportionate, is proving to be a total failure because it was faulty to begin with. It is aimless to cling to an approach of defensive proportionality against an enemy clearly and doggedly acting to change the strategic equation.

What is the alternative to the approach Israel has thus far adopted? It has to respond disproportionately to make it clear to the other side that we reject the equation of an eye-for-an-eye and a balance of deterrence. One possibility is to destroy the entire Syrian air force and its bases, which would undermine the viability of the Assad regime's and Iran's achievements in the civil war, and prevent similar aggression from the air against us for the foreseeable future.

Another option is for the IDF to enter the demilitarized zone east of the Golan Heights, from where Israel withdrew after the Yom Kippur in 1973 on the basis of Damascus' commitment to avoid taking any military action against us from Syrian territory; a commitment that has just been completely broken. Israel certainly has a number of other options at its disposal; regardless, the principle needs to be singular: Israel will exact a real price for any attempt to deter it from acting in Syria in self-defense.

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