Gantz exit, haredi draft bill heralds end to ‘together we will win’ - analysis

The “together we will win” phase of Israel’s war on Hamas came to an official end on Sunday night when Benny Gantz pulled his National Unity Party out of the emergency unity government.

Truth be told, that phrase – “together we will win,” which was everywhere and on everyone’s lips in the first couple of months following October 7 – has rung hollow over the last several months. Extremists on both sides of the political spectrum – the Itamar Ben-Gvir far Right and the Yair Golan far Left – have reverted to the divisive and self-destructive antics and rhetoric of October 6.

Nevertheless, at least for the protocol, the continued inclusion of Gantz and his party in the government – with Gantz and his colleague and former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot among those in the war cabinet making the decisions on how the war is being waged – did not drain that slogan of all its meaning.

Gantz exit leaves hard-right with more power

“Together we will win” still had a semblance of truth to it when this government represented a wider swath of the Israeli public.

But with Gantz leaving the government, there is no longer a “together” element among the ranks of those making the political decisions about the war. Yes, reservists are fighting together; true, the country is bearing the trauma of the longest war it has known since 1948 together; but all hands are not together on the steering wheel guiding the ship of state. This government coalition is a hard-right, haredi government coalition. Gantz’s inclusion widened the circle and expanded the tent. His exit narrows it considerably.

The hands on the steering wheel now represent a narrower segment of the population. While undeniably democratic, the question is whether it is healthy for a slim 64-seat coalition to be making decisions about where and when to send soldiers to fight and die for the country, especially when 18 of those seats are made up of ultra-Orthodox parties that – in the main – do not send their own children to do the same.

Can a government representing a 64-seat coalition lead this country in a time of war? According to the democratic rules of Israel’s political game, it most certainly can. Should it? That is an entirely different question.

When Gantz brought his party into the government in October, just days after Hamas’s murderous invasion, he said: “At this time, we are all soldiers of the State of Israel. This is the time to come together and win. This is not the time for difficult questions; it is the time for crushing responses on the battlefield.”

Gantz was handsomely rewarded in the polls for sentiments such as these and for joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency unity government

In the weekly Maariv poll published on October 6, a day before Hamas’s brutal rampage, Gantz’s party – which in the last election won only 12 seats – was polling at 29 seats, with its position augmented by its stand on the judicial reform debate.

A week later, on October 13, after October 7 and after Gantz joined a unity government with Likud, the party garnered 41 seats in the Maariv poll (during that same week the Likud dropped from 28 to 19 seats). Entering the government – a “we are all in this together” act – was, according to that poll and successive ones, exactly what the public wanted to see.

Gantz’s joining the government at that time was exceedingly important because it gave the government wide domestic support, something critical for the successful prosecution of the war. It was important that the unity that surfaced on October 8 in the IDF’s tents and tanks – religious and secular, Left and Right, living and fighting together side by side – be represented in the government as well.

Wars are tough enough for governments to manage as it is. They become even tougher if the governments waging those wars are not popular or representative of the wider public.

To wage a war, a country needs both international legitimacy and domestic legitimacy. Israel, because of the hypocrisy and double standards of much of the world, has lost a good part of the international legitimacy to continue waging the war. Gantz’s leaving the government will chip away at the domestic legitimacy, as part of the country will now say they do not have representatives sitting around the table deciding life-and-death decisions.

One of the points that Gantz spoke about in mid-May, when he threw down the gauntlet and said he would quit the government if certain moves were not taken, was that the government take steps to do away with wholesale draft exemptions for haredim.

He came out against the plan that Netanyahu is trying to move forward and that was voted on in the Knesset late Monday evening – a plan for some increased enlistment that Gantz supported in the previous Knesset but which he has since said no longer meets the needs of the army that were made so much more urgent after October 7.

“The truth must be told: The presented outline will not lead to recruitment, certainly not in the numbers that the defense system and the State of Israel need, and it will not promote, even slightly, the national equality, which demands that everyone serves,” Gantz said last week.

If Gantz’s leaving the government will rob it of a wide swath of public support, the government’s pushing legislation further, which is largely seen as a way of concretizing the pre-October 7 status quo regarding haredi army service, will cost it even more.

For the government, during a time of war, to advance legislation that will codify into law wholesale exemptions for haredim – at a time when the army needs soldiers so badly that it is calling back into the reserves reservists who since October 7 have already spent four, five, and six months in uniform – will further erode public support in the government.

This government may be tasked with deciding whether Israel launches a war against Hezbollah. It will need moral authority, legitimacy, and support from as much of the public as possible to make that fateful decision. Gantz’s exit, as well as moves to solidify the haredi draft exemption, chips away at all of the above.

On Sunday evening, in announcing that he was leaving the government, Gantz coined a catchy phrase that works better in Hebrew than in English. What the country needs, he said, is lachkor, livchor, v’lachvor (“to investigate” – as in a state commission of inquiry into October 7; “to vote” – as in new elections; and “to join together”).

What it doesn’t need is a slim government wrestling with legitimacy issues and tanking support. Israel has gone from “together we will win” to “we will win with a hard-right and haredi coalition.”

It is questionable whether that is a formula for success.