Can Israel’s Opposition Unseat Netanyahu?

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. The situation here, it's a bad situation. I was born here. I never saw a situation like this. More than two weeks after one of the most consequential elections in Israel's history, there are still so much uncertainty among voters about who will lead the country. 20 years. I think I have to go home quickly. It seems like the longest-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be on the way out. I don't really know if I'm in favour or not of Eisenkart because it's very difficult for me to believe in anyone nowadays in Israel. And so the spotlight has fallen on opposition leader Gadi Eisenkart, who is trying to make all kinds of deals with disparate political parties, who have different wants and different needs in order to actually build a coalition that could run the government. What I would like is the Israeli society to get unified and get together once and for all. But the choices about who to partner with and how they are just not simple. No, yes, to compromise. Yes, to go either with the religious or with the Arabs. And so today on the show, Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Helpfinger explains the kinds of compromises that Eisenkart will need to make if he wants to run the country. It's Israel's last chance to become a country with some sort of sanity to an insane place at the moment. And what will happen if he can't pull it off? It's Friday November 13th. David Helpfinger, welcome back to the Daily. Great to be here. The last time we spoke, you had prepared us for an election that a lot of Israelis thought of as existential and one whose results were going to be kind of messy and unclear. That seems to have borne out. We're talking to you more than two weeks after the election. We don't have a clear answer. And the path forward from what I can tell is going to be not just complicated, but also as you prepared us for. Have seismic political implications for a country that has been so long dominated by one guy. So catches up David on what has happened since election day. So the election was huge. There was an incredible turnout in this election. But there was no clear winner. Gotti Eisenkart, the leader of the opposition, was given the chance to form the government because he heads the largest coalition. But who will be in that government? It remains unclear and very much end up. He would have to put together a coalition that is incredibly diverse. And in some cases at odds with itself. That's an incredibly difficult thing to do. But he can't afford to fail. So he's got a month, the maximum of six weeks, to try to put together a government that can lead this country. What happens if at the end of that six weeks he is unable to get a government together? So if Eisenkart fails, it's likely that Netanyahu would be given the next chance to form a government. He would then get four weeks and then it could go to the parliament itself. The Knesset would have three weeks to choose a candidate. But if all of that fails, the parliament would dissolve and we'd have three months until new elections are held. Netanyahu is the caretaker prime minister. He's the incumbent. And if he remains the incumbent, while we go to new elections, it gives him an enormous advantage and a much stronger shot at winning again. So what does Eisenkart actually have to do over these next four or as you said six weeks to build a coalition? So with the four parties that are squarely in his coalition right now, he has a total of 48 seats in parliament. Ideally, he comes up with a coalition that has 61 seats out of the 120 in parliament. Behind it, at least, that's a simple majority, a real majority in parliament. And that's what he would love. But in this case, it seems really difficult to imagine how he could do that because the parties that are available to him are really at odds in important ways. They're ideologically diverse, they're ethnically diverse. You talk about Congress's hurting cats, imagine hurting lions or tigers. That's what we're talking about. These are people who are in some ways fundamentally at each other's threats. Okay, basically what you're describing is a really serious uphill battle to get people to come together to support him. Yeah, and he has to both negotiate with all of them and then figure out a coalition that he wants to govern with from among them and work out the most favorable deal possible to allow him to achieve the goals of him and his core coalition partners. So that's not an easy task to do. And, you know, it might seem like a month or six weeks is plenty of time. But, you know, I think you could easily blow through all of that time and come up with nothing. Okay, so then David, tell us about some of the different options that he actually has. Like, who could he potentially partner with? So first we have to remember that in his campaign, Eisenkot made a lot of, well, he made several really serious promises to the voters. And every one of those is going to make his life complicated. His options, you know, one of his options is something he ruled out in the campaign, working with Netanyahu himself. He could form a unity government, you know, so he could go in with Netanyahu after having campaigned against him. For obvious reasons, that seems like a non-starter. Yeah, I mean, it's frankly impossible to imagine now, not only because he campaigned against it, but because, you know, I think it would be just seen as the ultimate betrayal of the voters. I mean, the entire opposition coalition, probably that the top priority is getting Netanyahu in this government out. So bringing him back in or giving him a new lease on life would be just unforgivable. Moreover, it's hard to imagine Netanyahu agreeing to terms that Eisenkot could accept. And nobody trusts Netanyahu to live up to those promises that that would entail. He had a unity government once before. He promised to step aside and let his partner take over. You know, he broke the government apart before that happened. And, you know, nobody believes that he would live up to it again. Also though, I just sort of wonder what incentive Netanyahu actually has to pretend or try to form a government. Because if Eisenkot can't form a government, if Netanyahu can't form a government, if the parliament can't form a government, then everything gets dissolved. And then there's a new election, which as you explained, probably breaks Netanyahu's favor. So it really just feels like the logical thing, the thing that's in his actual interest, would be to sit back and just let everything fail. Yeah, no, I mean, like the clock is Netanyahu's friend here, right? So if anybody takes the bait and really takes them seriously, even to get into negotiations and earnest with Netanyahu, is to burn time, right? Okay, so I understand why partnering with Netanyahu is unlikely and potentially untenable. What about the other options that Eisenkot has? So one option, which he appears to be pursuing right now, is to work with the ultra-orthodox parties. There's two of them. You know, this is fraught with peril, too. After all, the ultra-orthodox have some asks that Eisenkot has vowed to reject. Above all, they want to keep their young men from having to serve in the military, and protect them against being arrested for draft evasion so that they can continue to study in Yashivas religious schools throughout their adult lives. They also want to preserve the very generous government subsidies that allow them to have a lot of babies and raise them and live their lives basically with government funding. Often not really working, you know, private sector jobs or any kind of jobs other than studying in these schools. And Eisenkot and his allies have promised to correct this because, you know, after all, they have run on representing soldiers and reservists who serve in the military and pay the taxes and hold down jobs. And whose money they feel is being, you know, shifted to these people who don't share in that burden and sacrifice. So to go into a coalition with the ultra-orthodox would require Eisenkot presumably to have to give up on some or all of those campaign promises, which again was usually important in inspiring voters to come out in large numbers. And one other thing though, David, that I think is really important that you told us in our last episode was that Eisenkot himself is a former Israeli military chief. He lost his son and two nephews in the war in Gaza. And so his platform that everybody should serve, it's not just really a platform, it is also very much sort of central to who he is. And so the idea that he would suddenly be willing to say, okay, you know, I'm going to give up on the central tenant about service and sacrifice. It doesn't feel like you'd be very eager just as a person what we know about him to do that either. No, it doesn't. I mean, but you're getting at something that's really interesting. First, yes, he sacrificed, he believes that all Israelis should share in the sacrifice and it's very personal to him, as you said. However, of all the opposition parties, Eisenkot's campaign left more wiggle room open to doing some kind of a deal with the ultra-orthodox, which is very interesting when you think about it. He left room for like having a small number of ultra-orthodox who were exempt from the draft. much smaller than the exemption is now. But still some, he left room to phase in a shift of, you know, that would require the ultra-orthodox schools to teach core curriculum subjects like math and English and science, which they're not currently doing. That's right. So that these people when they grow up can be productive members of society if they want to get out of the Ashivas. But he, you know, he was a little bit more lenient about doing that not so abruptly. There are other ways in which he kind of seemed to be extending, you know, a slight olive branch to them. You know, he's in this campaign, he says, to save Israel. And it seems to suggest that he believes that the priority now to save Israel is getting it to Nyahu out at all costs. And even if that means waiting or lowering the expectations or the aspirations for how to correct what he sees as the problem with the ultra-orthodox sector, it's just more urgent. The emergency is greater to get Nyahu in this government. How? Is there also any chance David that the ultra-orthodox could make a concession on their side about not serving? Like, is there any glimmer that they are willing to compromise on that point? Look, I mean, in the things that people have been saying publicly so far, it's very absolutist. You know, they're setting as their conditions for going into a government everything that they want. But given the choice that is before them, there could be a government that does not include them formed by Eisenkaught. That passes laws that they really don't like. They could be facing a loss of a lot of money and subsidies come a few months from now. I mean, there's a lot of ultra-orthodox who are exempt from the draft but don't really spend time in the Aschiva. Not every one of the thousands of ultra-orthodox men who are in Aschivas is the next great rabbi. You know, there's degrees of devotion and degrees of talent. And, you know, it's not impossible to imagine room for some compromise there. The question is how much? There is also danger in negotiating with the ultra-orthodox parties because that could take quite a lot of time in a limited calendar. And I've heard, you know, skeptics worry that whatever promises the ultra-orthodox political leaders get out of Eisenkot during this process, they could just run back to Netanyahu to see if he'd match or beat them because after all, he's been their partner forever. So that's really interesting. So basically, like whatever concessions Eisenkot might be able to get at the end of the day, he can't trust those either. Yeah, I mean, you know, if he gets them in writing, maybe he can, but just as there's risk in even trying to talk with Netanyahu, there is risk in talking to the ultra-orthodox. So far, David, all of these possibilities that you've laid out seem extremely remote. Yes, and we haven't even talked about the one that is, like, perhaps the most tantalizing. The Arab parties, the two predominantly Arab political parties, 119 seats in this election. That's a record. By all rights to outward observers at least, they should be the kingmaker's informing a government, and yet they are by far the most complicated option of all. We'll be right back. So, David, I want to talk about this possible path forward toward a coalition with the Arab parties. Can you just explain who those parties represent? Who are the Arab voters that we're talking about here? So people might not realize it, but 20 percent, fully 20 percent of Israel's population are Arab citizens. They share an ethnicity, a heritage, in many cases, a religion with Arabs across the broader Middle East. Yet, they're citizens of Israel, this Jewish state. They've been a minority throughout its history. They've been oppressed at times and to different degrees, but they do have full citizenship rights, and, you know, they go to universities. They're educated. They're, in many cases, middle and upper middle class. You go to any hospital. You go to any pharmacy. You'll find caring for Israeli patients, providing very good care, and they provide a lot of good care to soldiers in the Gaza war. They're like everybody else. They want safer streets in their communities. They want affordable housing. They want lower prices. They want a better life for their kids. It should be noted that they do not have to serve in the Israeli military. Many do, but they aren't required to, because, after all, and this is a historic thing, to serve in the military could force Arab citizens to have to fight against their brethren, their extended families, certainly their fellow Arabs and fellow Palestinians. So they haven't been made to do that. Historically, they also haven't had much representation in parliament. They've never voted proportionate to their share of the population. And just explain why that is. Many Arab voters for years chose to opt out of the political system, in many cases for political reasons, but in recent years, and particularly under this government, which has pursued some policies that Arab citizens find really bad, particularly turning a blind eye to violent crime in Arab communities and also pursuing very discriminatory housing policies that often lead to homes being demolished. Because of these things and other aspects of this government, including its rhetoric, very anti-Arab and often racist rhetoric, they've gotten more and more involved in government. They've been galvanized. They have. And the parties have also shifted. Arab political leaders, historically, they ran for office and they got into parliament, and then they chose to opt out of government. They sat on the sidelines, they preferred to protest and criticize and use their platform in parliament to be the opposition. And in particular, to speak for the disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank in Gaza, the Palestinian national cause was often the most important thing for Israel's Arab politicians. And what's happened in recent years is that Arab citizens and their leaders have started to say, you know what, we're going to like put the Palestinian cause maybe not to the side, but lower down on a list of priorities at least. And we're going to focus on improving the lives of the people who live here and get to vote here. Okay, so tell us about the Arab parties that got seats in this election. So there's a joint list, which consists of three smaller parties. They are secular and focus largely on the Palestinian cause, to some degree, but also on the civil and political rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. And the joint list, as I said before, has really focused on protesting Israeli governments from within parliament, as opposed to participating or trying to get hold of the leaders of power. Interestingly, it's the Islamist party, Ram, led by Mansour Abbas, that has become more and more interested in getting into government. Mansour Abbas would love to be a minister. He's worked very hard to say and do the things that he thinks are necessary for him to be acceptable to the Zionist and Jewish parties in the opposition. He's worked very hard to basically make himself kosher, if you will, to the Jewish parties so that he could be part of the next government. You're describing what sounds like a moderate, I guess, to an American listener maybe. Yeah, that's right. You know, when you talk to Abbas, he explains, listen, there was a long period of time in his career when he was not interacting with Jewish Israelis. And when he got into political life and started working with them and started listening to them, you know, it changed his view and his outlook. And it also affected where he stands on things. He has come so far as to say he recognizes Israel was born a Jewish state and always will be one. You know, he was one of the first on October 7th to condemn the October 7th attack by Hamas. He's condemned violence and terrorism and said it's only hurt the Palestinians. I mean, I think he's done everything he can to kind of sand off whatever edges might seem threatening to Jewish Israelis about working with somebody who's from an Islamist party. Right. Okay. I can see the problem with going into a coalition with the joint list because they are seen as sort of politically untenable because they are more hard line as you have described it. But with everything that you've told us about Abbas and Abbas's party, explain my partnering with them would be a problem for Eisenkott. So Eisenkott laid down four conditions for principles that he requires anyone joining his government to embrace. Three of them are pretty easy. You have to say that you recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. You have to say that you embrace the values of the Declaration of Independence, which includes equality for all. You have to agree that everyone in Israel should be subject to a requirement for a national service of some kind, military or civilian. But you now also, he added this under pressure in the campaign. You now also have to say that you believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be destroyed, militarily and governmentally. Now, you might say, what's wrong with that? Who can't get behind that if you're in Israeli, why would you disagree? And there's something to that, but to many Arab citizens of Israel, it's almost like one more step down a very, you know, I'd say it's a slippery slope, but it's a painful slope. And what you hear people say in explaining why they resist this is the feeling that they're being called upon to take a kind of loyalty oath with every one of these questions. And this would presumably not be the last. So, okay, today you say that you believe that Hamas is a terrorist group. Tomorrow, do you have to get called upon to say that you endorse everything that Israel has done to destroy Hamas? And do you have to say that you're behind everything that they might do to destroy Hamas? I mean, I think for Arab citizens, it's important to be able to, on the one hand, reject and condemn Hamas' terrorist acts without wanting the October 7th massacre to be then used to justify the killing of thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians. So that's the problem. It's this sense that this question won't be the last. Now, having said that, I don't think the joint list would change on this, but there's a lot of indications to suggest that if Montsorabas were given a coalition agreement to sign and he was required to say those words, I think he could find a way to say the words that Hamas is a terrorist organization. And I think there's reason to believe that Eisenkot would welcome that. The question is, can Eisenkot bring Montsorabas into a coalition and have the rest of the coalition stay with him? That's the problem. We'll explain that dynamic a little bit, David. What are the coalition members objecting to in that scenario? Well, okay, so several of his coalition partners as part of their campaigns rejected the idea of going in with the Arab parties. Chief among them is a Vigdor Lieberman. He's the head of the Israel-Baitaino party, and he has since the election declared repeatedly and fairly adamantly that under no circumstances would he go into a government with either of the Arab parties, really no matter what they say or do. So Eisenkot can't just do it. He risks losing Lieberman seats in Parliament. The challenge is how can he bring people on board without alienating other parts of the coalition? That's right. In every one of these cases, he's trying to bring people on who represent something that's objectionable to somebody else on his team. So how do you grow this team, let alone hold it together? Well, that's really interesting, David, because you're describing a political risk, of course, but let's talk about what's underneath that political risk, which is an objection from voters who do not want to see some of these leaders partner with the Arab parties. What is behind that objection? What are those voters afraid of if Eisenkot actually joins up with any of these parties that you've described? Okay, so part of it is clearly racism, but that's not all of it. People imagine all kinds of scenarios involving national security. So let's say Israel has a military confrontation or wants to with Hamas and Gaza or with militants in the West Bank or on its borders in Lebanon or Syria. Let's say this is a matter of some debate and let's say that the Arab parties are the swing vote. That's something that makes people deeply uncomfortable, at least the Jews in Israel. And frankly, I think it makes the Arab parties uncomfortable to some degree. They've said, for example, that they would sit out some of those decisions that they wouldn't seek to be in the security cabinet that makes those decisions, but it's not just decisions of whether to send troops into battle or not. There's the policy towards the Palestinians. And if a government has a slim majority and those Arab lawmakers could decide things one way or the other, I think for Jewish Israelis, for them to potentially see decisions on those national questions get decided or tipped by the Arab lawmakers, I think is a little bit too much for many of them to bear. It's a fear of divided loyalties and the best way to summarize the view from the Israeli right wing about this is just to describe one of the campaign commercials that Netanyahu put out. He did an AI video showing a future government led by Eisenkaht, and he had all the parties around the table. And at the end of the table was Manzor Abbas with his feet up and basically saying no, no, no, over and over again, in Arabic, to all the proposals to crack down on the Palestinians in one way or the other. And then when there was talk of a Palestinian state, he perked up and said, yes. And that's the fear that many on the right and some across the spectrum would have about Arab lawmakers holding a swing vote in the government. And even if they don't believe it, they're certainly fomenting it. That fear. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the truth is, even on the left, there's many people who are really uncomfortable with this among the Jewish opposition, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this. They'd have done it already. On the flip side, there are not a small number of people in Israel who think that it's time and necessary for, as it got to form a government that brings in the Arab parties or at least, at least Ram, there are people who see that Manzor Abbas could be, you know, a representative Israel to the wider Arab world or to the wider world at large. Maybe he could help expand the Abraham Accords to other countries in the region. Maybe he could help Israel restart a process with the Palestinians closer to home. I do hear people talking about the idea that there's this almost psychosis about Arab citizens that needs to be overcome. The issue is whether you can overcome something, this animosity, this hatred in many cases, that has existed for so long between these people who share the same land. And this mistrust that was compounded so egregiously, so recently. What happens if the Arab parties, and therefore the Israeli Arab voters, are basically ignored? What if at the end of the day, Eisenkot figures out some way to put together a government that doesn't include any Arabs? Like what does that say about Israel being a democracy? That's a great question, and that's one that I know is weighing heavily on people's minds. Because, you know, for years, for decades, whenever Israel has been accused of being an apartheid state, you know, of repressing Arabs, and whenever it's basically, it's treatment of the Palestinians and the occupied territories has been used to indict Israel at large. It is pointed to Arab citizens as it's get out of jail free card. They can vote. They can serve in the government. That's the line you hear. They can serve in the Supreme Court. They can serve in parliament. So what happens when they get 19 seats and could, you know, make a government, but the government doesn't form because they're afraid to? Yeah, how do you answer those who, you know, say that their votes don't count? Inside and outside the country. So the options for Eisenkut seem to range from non-starter to radioactive. And I wonder, David, if you have any sense of which at this moment looks most likely? It's very hard to know, and I've been warned many times not to take what's said publicly as any real indication, and that these things will take a long time and may look very different at the end from where they looked early on or along the way. But Rachel, there's one option that we haven't talked about, and that's what's called a minority government. He's got 48 votes to Netanyahu's 46 right now. So he could form a government just like that. I mean, he has the ability, but that would be seen as a very unstable government. And everybody thinks that it's a lot likelier to fall apart in a short time than if a coalition is bigger. So that's not a great option. What we have to remember is that there just are no good options here. Eisenkut has to figure out which of all of these bad options is least objectionable to the largest number of Israelis. And answering that question really comes down to what you think Israel should be and who it should be for. And if he bit's wrong, we could be looking at a lot more time with Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister. David Helpinger, thank you so much. Thank you, Rachel. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. President Trump called former and video chief Jensen Wong on Tuesday and urged him to keep fighting for his job, according to two people briefed on the conversation. The call was the latest example of the president defending and protecting Wong, one of the most important people in America's race for AI dominance. The call came after it was revealed that Wong had had an affair with a woman who US intelligence believed was a spy for China. And a doctor who was unhappy about repair work in his condominium shot and killed one person and wounded four others in and around his building on Thursday in Washington, DC. The shooting began before 8 a.m. at a gym in the gunman's building in the busy Logan Circle area where the shooter killed the building manager, police said. The shooter then returned to his unit on the 7th floor and shot four people on the streets below. from his balcony before shooting and killing himself. (gentle music) Today's episode was produced by Ricky Novetsky, Michael Simon Johnson, and Claire Tennis-Getter, with help from Jack Dezadoro and Alex Stern. It was edited by Maria Byrne and contains music by Marion Luzano. It was engineered by Chris Wood and our theme music is by Wunderly. Special thanks to Aaron Boxerman and Yonatan Reese. (gentle music) That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams, see you on Sunday.