The Israeli government just lost its majority in the Knesset, but Netanyahu is still far from getting his own majority to replace it. What does the latest drama mean for Bennett, Lapid, Gantz and other key players?
Can it?
The immediate answer is that the government can, at least for now survive without a majority, as long as there are no additional defectors. Having passed a state budget, the government on paper has another eleven months before the deadline for passing the next budget arrives in March 2023.
Eleven months is a long time in Israeli politics and if the remaining 60 members of the coalition stick together, that is now the realistic life-expectation of this government. Of course, without a majority, it will be unable to pass any serious legislation, but lame-duck governments are no rarity.
Even in the case of further defections, most likely from Bennett’s dwindling party, the government could theoretically soldier on with a minority until there’s a majority of 61 MKs prepared to vote for an alternative government or for dissolving the Knesset and holding another election – Israel’s fifth in four years. At this point there are several possible scenarios.
Transitional government, with whom at the top?
The first scenario is that the government survives, despite Silman’s defection, until its next major test, either the 2023 budget deadline or some other crisis over the next eleven months. After all, it has managed to get this far, against all expectations.
For any other scenario to take place, there would have to be first more defections. If there are, the next likely outcome is a majority voting for new elections, but there’s a major question-mark looming over this scenario – who gets to serve as the prime minister of the transition government in the election period and until a new government is formed, if one can be formed, afterwards?
Under the terms of Bennett and Lapid’s coalition agreement, if at least two MKs who originally belonged to one of the two designated “blocs” in the coalition vote in favor of dissolving the Knesset, then the leader of the other bloc gets to serve as interim prime minister.
Since Silman was a member of the “Bennett bloc” and another defector is likely to come from that bloc as well, that means that should they then join the opposition in dissolving the Knesset, Yair Lapid automatically will replace Bennett as prime minister and remain in office until a new government is formed – which as we’ve seen in recent years, can be a very long time.
This seems a likely scenario, but while the right-wing opposition will be happy to humiliate Bennett, whom they see as a traitor, and make him the shortest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, there are others in the Knesset who would not like to see Lapid’s status enhanced by having him elevated to the position of prime minister right before a new election.
The other parties of the center-left (technically the “Lapid bloc”) Kahol Lavan, Labor and Meretz, would not be so happy to see him get another boost, which could marginalize them further. It sounds unlikely at this point, but it’s not out of the question that a member of one of these parties, as a preemptive move, would vote in favor of a dissolution bill, before a second member of the “Bennett bloc” does. In this scenario, early elections would be held with Bennett staying on as interim prime minister.
Can Netanyahu become prime minister in the current Knesset?
Netanyahu, as leader of the opposition, would of course love to turn the tables and get back into his previous office. But he needs sixty-one MKs to form his new government. With Silman’s defection, the opposition currently numbers sixty, but six of those are from the Joint List who will never support Netanyahu, leaving him in practice with only fifty-four. While more defections could happen, it’s very hard to see as many as seven members of the current coalition overcoming all the bad blood between them and Netanyahu’s Likud. A Netanyahu government without another election, therefore, is not a very likely scenario.
Can anyone else form a government?
At this point, the best chances would seem to be with Defense Minister and Kahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz. He’s a member of the coalition, but openly despises both Bennett and Lapid. Since the formation of the government, he has worked to keep his channels open to key parts of the opposition who won’t have anything to do with Bennett.
Could Gantz entice opposition parties to join a government he leads, while persuading enough of those currently in the coalition to reach a majority? It would be an intricate feat of political engineering that Gantz is unlikely to be capable of pulling off himself, but it still a possible scenario.
One example would be to get the ultra-Orthodox parties, some of whose members are already openly speculating about joining a government not necessarily led by Netanyahu, to join. Their price of entry could be getting rid of their nemesis, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who would be then banished to the opposition with the rest of his Yisrael Beitenu party.
In such a scenario, they would still have to stomach sitting with Lapid and Bennett, but neither of them would be prime minister, so it could possibly fly. Would they agree to break off their Bibi-shackles? Would Lapid and Bennett go along just to remain in government and keep Netanyahu out? Can Gantz pull it off? It seems near impossible, but stranger coalitions have been formed in this Knesset.
Another Likud PM?
A third possible candidate for forming a government in this Knesset would be an unspecified Likud member who is not Netanyahu. There are two things going for this scenario. First, Likud is by far the largest party in the Knesset, so it makes mathematical sense for it to be the base of a new majority.
Second, if Netanyahu is not prime minister, the right-wing and centrist MKs who previously vetoed another Likud government will no longer have the excuse to do so. But for such an outcome, Netanyahu would have to relinquish the leadership at least temporarily, something which he is unlikely to do without signing a plea-bargain in his corruption case.
For now the likeliest scenario is a return to the situation which existed over much of 2019-21, when the government was paralyzed, without the majority to legislate and with new elections forever looming. Just as Netanyahu was during that period, Bennett is now in office, but not in power.
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