by Emanuel Shilo, Besheva, translated by Hillel Fendel
What exactly happened in the Knesset this past week that caused such drama and tension? The nationalist right-wing camps of both the coalition and the opposition accused each other of the same thing: selling out the national interest for their own narrow political interests – and many observers are totally confused.
1. Swords were drawn, tongues burning with searing accusations were let loose, and a huge storm of emotions and politics evolved in the Knesset. Above all, however, is the absurdity that it all revolved around a matter that the two sides actually agree upon.
More than 50 opposition Knesset Members (led by the Likud), and a similar number of the coalition (led by Naftali Bennett), support, in principle, the same thing: the renewal of legislation that will prevent Arabs of Judea and Samaria from becoming Israeli citizens by virtue of "family unification." That is, an Arab man from Yesha who marries an Arab-Israeli woman and then demands the right to move to and live permanently with his wife in Israel – need not receive that right. The 100+ MKs agree that affording this right opens the door to Palestinian Arab terrorists to actually live in Israel. [Translator's note: Statistics show that the terrorist danger is not only from those who move to Israel, but also from those who are later born to them.]
In addition, though this is not said too loud for fear of the "evil eye" of the Supreme Court, there is also widespread agreement on the demographic dangers of such "reunification." These are akin to a slow realization of the "Right of Return" of Arabs who lived in Israel before 1948. Both have the deadly potential of increasing the Arab minority to an extent that will directly threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel.
So if there is such a broad consensus that not passing the law is so dangerous, why are the two sides unable to find a formulation that they can vote into law? The answer is that the parties of both the opposition and the coalition have political considerations that are more important to them than this particular danger.
2. The opposition opposed from the outset the government's intention to extend the existing temporary no-reunification order for another year, mainly because it wanted to embarrass the coalition, create rifts among its components, and deal it a political defeat. [Translator's note: The opposition also presented its own bill, which it said was a more thorough alternative (see below) – but this raises the question why the Likud government of the past 12 years did not legislate it itself.]
From the standpoint of the Likud and the other opposition parties, they saw the vote on this bill as an opportunity to show how dangerous the coalition with the Arab Ra'am party actually is. The very existence of this government, which relies on the post-Zionist left and on the Ra'am party, is a greater danger than that of "reunification" of Arab families, they feel. As such, the political goal of shaking up this bad coalition is more important than the damage that will result in the failure to renew the current reunification bill. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Interior Shaked, of course, have ruthlessly attacked the Likud and Betzalel Smotrich for putting their political interests above the national interest.
The opposition's refusal to help the coalition pass the bill caused Bennett and Shaked to scratch the very lowest part of the barrel, politically and ideologically, in an attempt to find a formulation that would cause both Ra'am and left-wing Meretz to support it. As such, the bill was formulated to be more to the liking of the Arabs and the left than was originally planned. This of course caused Yemina rebel MK Amichai Shikli to vote against it. Two coalition Arab MKs abstained, and the bill did not pass.
The coalition, for its part, did not even try to pass the opposition's more thorough solution mentioned above: a Basic Law [equivalent to a constitutional law] on Immigration, including a clause that will allow a special majority to override a Supreme Court veto. Most of the coalition parties support such a bill in principle, but they know that the Ra'am party will quit the coalition if it passes. For them, therefore, it's either the Basic Law or the continued existence of the government – and they choose the latter, even if it means leaving intact the "existential danger" that they have been accusing the opposition of ignoring.
3. Thus, both sides have chosen not to agree on a solution to the problem of potential terrorists making their legal way into Israel, because of their political interests. Is one side more to blame than the other? The answer is yes, the coalition parties are more to blame. Why?
Firstly, because they are the government, they are in charge, and they have the responsibility to ensure Israel's military security and demographic integrity. If they put together a coalition that is not able to ensure these vital interests, they cannot cast the blame back on the opposition. If terrorists do in fact make their way into Israel, it will be on the Bennett-Shaked-Lapid watch and on their name.
Back during the coalition negotiations, Bennett and Lapid should have made sure to have Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas sign that in exchange for all the goodies he is receiving for joining the government, he will vote for the renewal of the immigration regulations – and that in general, he will be bound to coalition discipline. But they didn't want to rock the boat along their way to the new "government of change" that was just within their grasp. In order to replace Netanyahu as Prime Minister and head the government, they abandoned Israel's security and demographic interests.
If they convinced themselves at the time that this issue would not be a problem because for sure the nationalist camp would vote with them on this issue, this was a light-headed and irresponsible position to take. You can't wage a personal boycott of the Likud and leave the right-wing camp outside the government, and also expect that they serve as your spare tire whenever you can't count on your anti-Zionist partners.
The second reason why the coalition is more to blame than the opposition is because of the way Bennett and Shaked handled the negotiations on this entire issue. When the coalition needs help from the opposition, it cannot expect that it will receive this help for free. Bennett and Shaked should therefore have responded to Betzalel Smotrich's calls to negotiate and discussed with their rivals a fair price for their cooperation.
This does not mean that they had to pass the Basic Law proposed by the opposition, thus risking the collapse of the coalition and the toppling of the government. The opposition has plenty of other interests that could at least have been offered to entice them to vote for a renewal of the old bill, or for some other agreed-upon formulation. But Bennett and Shaked were determined not to grant the opposition anything that it could claim as an achievement. Instead of negotiating with the Zionist parties of the opposition, they turned to Meretz and Ra'am and offered them sweeteners and concessions that would have voided the family unification rules of much of their value. And as we know, in the end even these concessions didn't help them, because what was a sweetener for the Arabs became a red line for Amichai Shikli of Yemina – who therefore voted against the bill. And for Ra'am, the concessions were not enough, and two MKs abstained rather than vote in favor. And thus Bennett and Shaked found themselves both having made shameful concessions to Ra'am – and failing to pass the bill.
4. And yet, even after the coalition's failure to pass a temporary renewal, and even after the harsh words exchanged between the sides, it is still not too late to return to a bridging or mediation process. They can and should start negotiating right now in order to enlist the opposition's support for the re-legislation of the temporary law in its original format, in exchange for whatever price they can agree upon. [Translator's note: The negotiators should ostensibly not be Shaked, Bennett or Smotrich, between whom tensions are simply too high at present…] For instance, the government can offer to give up on its idea of passing a "personal" law preventing Netanyahu from running for the next Knesset.
As long as the coalition does not take this well-advised step, yet still expects to receive opposition support for free, the onus for the security and demographic breach that now exists (at least potentially) lies chiefly on the shoulders of Bennett, Shaked, Lapid, Saar, Ganz, Lieberman et al.
5. Incidentally, as these lines are being written, Prime Minister Bennett is in blatant violation of another of his recent promises. Shortly after entering office, he said, "[Incoming Finance Minister Avigdor] Lieberman gave me his solemn word, and to Saar and to Lapid, that he would not harm the hareidi sector." Not a month passed, and Lieberman announced last week the removal of government subsidies for childcare facilities – a direct blow at the large families of hareidim who depend on this support so that young mothers can go to work [Editor's note: the subsidy will continue to exist only for those families that have two working parents]. This is a moral offense that the religious-Zionist members of the government, who invested great efforts in convincing us of the ethical breaches of the previous government, must simply not ignore.