opinion
When Will the Israeli Right Stop
Eating its Own?
BY LIMOR SAMIMIAN-DARASH
pawel.gaul / gettyimages
H istorically speaking, those on the Israeli far-
right have tended to challenge the dominant
right-wing party.

We saw this, for example, when the far-right chal-
lenged the Likud Party over Menachem Begin’s
promotion of a peace deal with Egypt that led
to Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai. Ever since,
the far-right has behaved in a similar pattern. The
satellite parties became ardent opponents of
the ruling party, so much so that they were even
ready to topple the governing right-wing coalition.

In 1992, the right-wing Moledet, Tzomet and
Tehiya parties all quit then-Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir’s government over his participation in
peace talks in Madrid. The talks were not right-
wing enough for them. We know how that ended.

Tehiya did not pass the electoral threshold, and
the left under Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin came
to power. If that weren’t ironic enough, it was rep-
resentatives of the Tzomet party who, in the end,
helped approve the Oslo Accords.

Has the lesson been learned? Of course not.

In 1996, it was Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu
who members of Moledet and the National Union
party took issue with. For current New Hope MK
Benny Begin, who is now a part of a coalition
government with Ra’am and Meretz and has the
support of the Joint List, Netanyahu was not right-
wing enough at the time. The result: Opponents
of yielding 3% of the disputed territories in the
Wye River accord brought us Labor leader Ehud
Barak’s government, which sought to cede 97%
of the territories at Camp David. Ironically, the
successors to the opponents of the Wye accord
recently refused a deal to impose sovereignty on
Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, along
with 30% of the territory.

Time and again, the pattern remains the same.

This becomes even more troubling when we look at
what transpired on the left in the meantime. In 1992,
Meretz’s election campaign did not call for Rabin’s
replacement on the grounds that he was insuffi-
ciently left-wing, but rather to “incentivize” him in
that direction. To allow Rabin to form a government,
Meretz compromised on issues of religion and state,
beginning with its acceptance of the Shas party into
the coalition. One of their own, Shulamit Aloni, even
resigned from the Education Ministry in accordance
with the Haredi party’s demand.

In 2008, Meretz’s election campaign asked
voters to choose between Kadima’s Tzipi Livni
and Netanyahu, which again bolstered the domi-
It makes no difference who is at the helm of the right-wing
satellite parties ... The dominant right-wing party
must be bolstered and incentivized, not bullied.

nant party of the left-wing camp. No one argued
that Livni should not have their vote because she
wasn’t sufficiently left-wing.

By contrast, the Yamina party refused to join
a coalition headed by Netanyahu and Blue and
White Party head Benny Gantz because Yamina —
with six Knesset seats — was offered three senior
government positions instead of four.

Meretz’s current willingness to swallow the toad
in order to ensure the coalition remains intact is a
model of political loyalty and humility the likes of
which we have yet to see in this country. Meretz has
set no conditions and issued no threats toward the
government. The right-wing satellite parties, by con-
trast, have never treated the Likud in such a manner.

Now, we have seen the “unapologetic right”
prefer Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. We watched
them go from satellites to the decisive member
of a center-left government. Then Yamina leader
Naftali Bennett transformed into a left-wing prime
minister. Yet there are those who still fail to recog-
nize the pattern.

The alternative to purely right-wing policies is a
blatant left-wing government. Those who insisted
on focusing on the illegal Bedouin village of Khan
al-Ahmar not only failed to get a more right-wing
or moderate center-left government. Instead, they
got a new left-wing bloc, which includes Ra’am
and the Joint List.

It makes no difference who is at the helm of the
right-wing satellite parties: The lesson must be
learned. The dominant right-wing party must be
bolstered and incentivized, not bullied. Without
the mothership, the satellite will remain lost in
space. And this void will quickly be filled by a left-
wing government comprised of loyalists capable
of compromising quite a bit for the benefit of the
greater cause. JE
Limor Samimian-Darash is a senior lecturer
at the Federmann School of Public Policy
and Government at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. This op-ed was originally published by
Israel Hayom.

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