Events have been moving swiftly since Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced on June 20 their intention to dismantle the government. Two days later, the Knesset voted by a margin of 110 to zero to approve in preliminary reading a bill to disperse itself. By all accounts, the coalition government will likely come to an end this week.
What does this mean for Israel in the coming months?
That means that a caretaker government, led by Lapid, will take over. While his freedom of action will be constrained as legislation is essentially frozen in place, his influence will nevertheless be considerable, Ilana Shpaizman of the department of political studies at Bar-Ilan University told JNS.
“Lapid is going to have a lot of power,” said Shpaizman. “He’s going to manage this country for at least six months, and perhaps even longer.”
“In terms of the Iran deal, there’s no limitation on Lapid, because Israel isn’t a formal party to the deal and [will not be] signing the agreement itself. He can travel abroad to convince the United States, the European Union, and so on. He’s limited only in procedural things, like legislation, budgets and nominations,” explained Shpaizman.
However, Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that he doesn’t believe Lapid will flip on Iran.
“Lapid is often maligned as a lefty by the Israeli right, but his position isn’t soft on Iran,” he said.
When Lapid was foreign minister and the No. 2 man in the coalition, his job was to maintain good ties with the United States, “full stop,” said Schanzer. “But I think as prime minister he will have to hold the line on Iran. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pivot toward a more hardline position relative to where he was before, when his job was to present Israel in the best light, primarily to the United States.”
The United States, too, now finds itself subject to limitations, he noted. “Most people are focused on the restrictions of the sitting government in Israel, but there are also the restrictions in the White House—self-imposed, but restrictions nonetheless,” he said.
“[President Joe] Biden was looking to visit Israel and then visit Saudi Arabia. It was going to be a very presidential visit, with foreign policy achievements, possibly even steps toward normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” said Schanzer.
“But American policy is not to interfere in the electoral process of friends and allies. We’ve already seen statements coming out of the State Department that the United States has vowed to respect the electoral process,” he said.
“The president is going to have to decide whether he wants to move forward with major foreign policy initiatives. He is going to have to decide whether he wants to go ahead despite America’s long-standing policy of not tipping the scales in one direction or another. If he hands this government a victory, it will look like he’s putting his thumb on the scale,” he noted.
While American limitations are self-imposed, Israel’s are more concrete, imposed by its legal system. As a result, there will be a flurry of activity in the next few days. Bennett alluded to it at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday: “Soon, unfortunately, the State of Israel will head toward elections, during which certain government actions will not be possible. Therefore, I ask that all ministers, in the days and hours that are left, clear their desks in order to expedite carrying out what may be done before the dissolution of the Knesset.”
According to Shpaizman, the Knesset will indeed be working overtime in the coming days.
“If you look at the Cabinet meeting this week, you’ll see that it’s very busy, three times more than usual, because they’re trying to push through a lot of nominations and programs—things that they cannot do once they become a caretaker government,” Shpaizman said.
Israel’s first mistake is saying it is 74 years old and always on the defense and apologizing for its existence, instead of 5782 years old and on the offense and Israel’s history is the history of the world.
This is what G-d gave us and millions of Jews were murdered for and giving away to either Abbas, of Muslim Brotherhood and the other aligned with Hitler, to kill all Jews, only adds to the body count, when the real issue is that the Arabs are on Jewish land and not the reverse and that there is nothing to discuss, for all that is given away has still cost many Jewish lives.
You can’t make peace with someone who wants to kill you. The Left always caters to the Nazis, German or Islamic.
Muslims and Christians promote their Gods, but not the Jews and yet whatever comes out of Israel is G-d inspired and the best and that isn’t a problem to sell to the world in offering what is G-d blessed and the best and Israel doesn’t need to crawl for acceptance, but to have self-respect and accept itself and offer this to the world, whether religious or not.
Israeli leaders have made so many unnecessary mistakes and are always in trouble and the worst public relations in the world. Stop it already.
Our Shalom International, since 1989, has done over 1500 rallies an events and over 5000 media and many times faced the radical left and we always use our 5782 years of ‘occupying’ The Holy Land, where our G-d resides and G-d willing, we’ll be there another 5000 years and the Left has always backed off in not having anything to say and besides we are not betraying all murdered for being Jews and we don’t ignore the millions of Jews slaughtered for their faith before the Holocaust and we don’t betray them either.
Any Israeli government needs to stop feeding us all more drek and excuses and stop allowing the Arabs, who want all Jews dead to dictate Israel’s survival, as both a Jewish State and model to the rest of the world.
Feel pride in an awesome history and contributions to all, in spite of every attempt to wipe us out and we’re still here and for good reason.
No More appeasements. No more excuses. No more allowing the laws to be violated. Stop listening to Biden and EU, who are enemies of Israel and save yourselves first and all Jews around the world can feel good about Israel knowing what it is doing for humanity, including Arabs, who also want peace