Now that Gadi Eisenkot has received the mandate from President Isaac Herzog to form a government, Israel, amid a whirlwind of November rain, seems to be flying toward some magical Land of Oz.
Fantasies. Dangerous illusions.
Eisenkot has spoken of an emergency government and a unity government. Absolutely right. Israel needs unity.
But for now, that unity exists only in theory. What is actually taking shape is an effort to keep Benjamin Netanyahu out of power, the overriding ambition of the change bloc.
The problem is simple: You cannot preach national unity while making the exclusion of Netanyahu your starting point.
The personal ambitions of individual leaders who dream of replacing Netanyahu only deepen the contradiction. And the notion that Likud will simply dispose of Bibi to make a unity government possible is a chimera.
The numbers don’t disappear
Eisenkot cannot escape the arithmetic.
Likud won 27 seats to his Yashar party’s 21. Netanyahu’s bloc has 53 seats, while the bloc opposed to Netanyahu has 48. Neither has the 61 seats required for a majority.
So Eisenkot begins his attempt to form a government requiring substantial support from somewhere else, whether inside the coalition or from outside it.
That leaves uncomfortable possibilities: the Arab parties or United Torah Judaism, with its seven seats.
UTJ is angry with Netanyahu after his governments failed to deliver the sweeping military-service exemption the haredi parties sought. That has suddenly made the Ashkenazi haredi party an intriguing potential partner for Netanyahu’s opponents.
And then there is Avigdor Liberman.
The Yisrael Beiteinu leader, whose party also holds seven seats, has spent much of his political career battling the haredi parties. Liberman has held almost every major position in Israeli politics except prime minister, and his feelings toward Netanyahu are hardly a secret.
Yet even Liberman now says that, in circumstances as dramatic as these, a government with the haredi parties must be considered a realistic possibility.
He is talking to them. On Sunday, he meets Eisenkot.
The haredi paradox
Anyone who knows Israeli politics understands the enormous paradox here.
For three years, Israeli soldiers and reservists of all ages have repeatedly left their homes, families, jobs and businesses to fight. Their lives have been turned upside down by war.
How can they now be asked to accept a political deal that preserves an exemption from military service for tens of thousands of other young men?
Liberman’s allies are trying to find a compromise, suggesting the immediate enlistment of some 20,000 haredim rather than the far larger number potentially eligible for service.
Perhaps this could offer Eisenkot a way out.
But it would not be easy. Israel is at war, and the demand for equality in military service is no longer an abstract political argument. It is something hundreds of thousands of Israeli families have lived for three exhausting years.
The Arab-party dilemma
The alternative is support from the Arab parties, an option that has effectively been declared politically impossible.
This is not about racism. Israelis on both the right and left want greater integration of Arab citizens into Israeli society.
The problem is political.
Since Oct. 7, the Arab parties have taken positions that make their participation in a Zionist governing coalition extraordinarily difficult. The Joint List speaks of “genocide” in Gaza and demands an end to Israeli military control there. The Arab parties also refuse to embrace Israel’s definition of itself as a Jewish and democratic state.
Imagine members sitting in the Italian parliament who refused to recognize Italy or its Constitution.
The reaction would be explosive.
In Israel, too, such an arrangement would provoke opposition not only on the right but across much of the Zionist political spectrum.
And then there is Bennett
Naftali Bennett understands the dilemma perfectly well.
So far, he has committed himself primarily to the idea of a Zionist government without Netanyahu.
But Bennett has never been a man of the left. He has already had the extraordinary experience of becoming prime minister while leading a party with only six Knesset seats.
And he is young enough to wait.
Why sacrifice his political future now when another opportunity may come tomorrow?
That is Eisenkot’s real problem. In the coming days, he will negotiate not merely with political parties but with men who themselves aspire to become prime minister. He will be dealing with factions whose interests collide and whose numbers do not naturally produce a stable government.
Everyone speaks of unity.
But everyone also wants something.
Real unity
Israel needs a genuine unity government. Not a clever parliamentary construction held together by mutual hostility toward one man. Not a coalition whose members agree primarily about whom they want to exclude.
A real national unity government means right and left governing together.
And if Netanyahu leads the largest party in the Knesset and commands a 53-seat bloc, pretending that national unity can simply be constructed around him is not serious.
You can oppose Netanyahu. You can try to defeat him. You can build a coalition without him if you have the numbers.
That is democracy.
But don’t call it national unity.
If Eisenkot truly wants the emergency unity government he says Israel needs, eventually he will have to confront the question everyone is trying to avoid:
Who is prepared to sit down with Netanyahu as an equal and make it happen?
