The masochism of the Israeli Center-Left - analysis
Many great hopes of the bloc have come and gone.
By GIL HOFFMANBefore the split: (From left) Blue and White leaders Gabi Ashkenazi, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon thank supporters at party headquarters in Tel Aviv after the elections on September 18, 2019(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
On December 29, 2016, former environmental protection minister Avi Gabbay announced with great fanfare that he would be joining the Labor Party.Three months later, he already saw himself as fit to lead the party, and four months after that, he won the Labor leadership primary.After being crowned the great hope of the Israeli Center-Left, Gabbay fared poorly in the March 2019 election and was forced out in less than two years.Since then, many have eulogized Labor, which is currently polling below the electoral threshold and looking for a new leader. The likes of Benny Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi, Ron Huldai and Avi Nissenkorn have all chosen greener pastures.Many great hopes of the Center-Left have come and gone. Labor secretary-general Eran Hermoni mocked them all in an interview on the Knesset Channel on Tuesday, when he took out several disposable cups bearing the logos of Dash, Kadima, the Gil Pensioners Party, Kulanu and now Blue and White.The dual press conferences of Gantz and then Huldai Tuesday night could be seen as passing the baton from the former great hope of the Center-Left to the new one. But is the 76-year-old Huldai really the savior of the much-maligned bloc?There will only be one month in which that question will have to be answered. Political mergers among the Center-Left will have to be made before the February 4 deadlines for lists to be submitted to the Central Elections Committee.The Center-Left is currently divided among six parties with indistinguishable views: Yesh Atid, Blue and White, Huldai’s new party, Labor, and the unnamed new party of former Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah.By contrast, the much larger Center-Right has only four: Likud, New Hope, Yamina and Yisrael Beytenu.This divisiveness is only one symptom of the masochism of the Center-Left that has been harming it for decades.
Channel 13 political analyst Raviv Drucker, who does not hide his left-wing views, lamented last week that the Center-Left has repeatedly given up the premiership for its values. He gave three good examples and then one questionable one.Prime minister Ehud Barak could have formed a unity government when his coalition was crumbling in 2000, but he preferred the peace process that had already ended, paving the way to the premiership for then-Likud leader Ariel Sharon.Tzipi Livni could have formed a government in 2008, but she decided that she did not want to give in to the haredim (ultra-Orthodox), who were demanding the restoration of child welfare payments that were cut by Benjamin Netanyahu when he was finance minister. Netanyahu came to power instead.After the September 2019 election, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid blocked the formation of a unity government of Netanyahu and Gantz under a framework presented by President Reuven Rivlin that would have required Netanyahu to leave after only six months (with no loopholes).The final example was Gantz’s failure to complete a deal last week that could have maintained the unity government and made him prime minister next November. It is hard to believe that Netanyahu would have honored such an agreement, but it is possible that under enough pressure ahead of a final deadline, he would have forfeited his final exit points to keep the current government together.The bill that would have extended the deadline to pass the budget and prevented early elections was defeated by rebels in Likud and Blue and White who surprised Netanyahu, so that pressure never came.It is possible that Huldai will now garner immediate support and carry it to victory in the March 23 election. But the more likely scenario is that he will come and go just like Gabbay did, and the masochism of Israel’s Center-Left trundle on with more and more great hopes quashed.
