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ISRAELI GOVERNMENT - It may seem unusual to write an article addressed to Israel, not only to its political leadership, legislative, judicial, and security institutions but to the entire Israeli society in the hope that a rational person among them will read this article and be prompted to pause for self-reflection.
There’s little joy in witnessing one of the most intriguing political experiments of Israel’s recent history come to an end.
The greater the challenges Israel faces, the more it becomes apparent that its current government is utterly inept and chaotic, simply not up to the tasks at hand.
Governments, like empires, don’t collapse in one day. Rather, one crack appears, then another, and then another until the whole edifice comes tumbling down under the weight of ambition, arrogance, an inability to adapt, and losing touch with the needs of the people.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Netanyahu government is endangering the country’s national interests in terms of security, and damaging Israeli society to the extent that it might take years to repair, if that is possible at all.
The Jewish majority, which wouldn’t dream of giving up on Zionism as the guiding vision for Israel, has an even greater responsibility to ask itself whether it has set the bar for Arab participation in a ruling coalition too high. It must consider whether suspicion of Arab participation is reasonable, and fact based, or a psychological leftover (with racist undertones) from when Israel was still a fragile and insecure place that should now be dispensed with. Ultimately, Jewish Israelis must recognize that Arab participation is integral to maintaining the security and well-being of all citizens.
The war in Gaza is heading in the unfortunate, though all-too-familiar, direction that invasions of this nature usually take. After inflicting immeasurable devastation, not only on the military capabilities of Hamas but even more so on ordinary Gazans, the Israeli military is, for all intents and purposes, occupying this tiny and densely populated strip of land that it abandoned nearly two decades ago after it became obvious that remaining there was a security burden.
Now, and under much worse conditions, Israel occupies most of Gaza and is engaged in guerrilla warfare with Hamas that is exacting a heavy price. Tragically, and at the expense of ordinary Gazans, Hamas has a strategy-less Israel exactly where it wants it: engaged in a prolonged, low-intensity war in which its army loses soldiers and uses excessively disproportionate force in retaliation that exacerbates the humanitarian crisis for ordinary Gazans and results in Israel becoming increasingly internationally isolated and domestically divided.
At this time, the country needs leadership whose judgment it can trust and which it believes will place national interests above partisan politics.
Since even coalition partners are saying that this government is on its last legs, it would be far better for it to fall now, rather than limp through the current Knesset session and into the summer recess with the coalition parties carping at each other, the military and political echelons exchanging accusations, and anti-government protests picking up steam. All this projects weakness and disunity at a time when the exact opposite is needed.
One thing is clear: With Netanyahu in power, peace and justice are unattainable. If the fight over ultra-Orthodox conscription does bring down his government, there’s a chance — however remote — that this could change.
It is time to pull the plug on this government and quickly set a date for new elections. Nothing is gained by drawing out an inevitable process of keeping an unpopular, gaffe prone coalition in place. Much, may be gained if the Israeli electorate votes in a more centrist coalition government, with a renewed mandate that it can use to rebuild the necessary trust both domestically and internationally so to move the country forward and resolve the many existential crisis this abhorrent coalition has brought upon the nation of Israel.
(Mihran Kalaydjian has over twenty years of public affairs, government relations, legislative affairs, public policy, community relations and strategic communications experience. He is a leading member of the community and a devoted civic engagement activist for education spearheading numerous academic initiatives in local political forums.)
