A coalition in trouble: Israel's government is tumbling down - editorial

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.

Cracks in the current regime are appearing and widening, giving the impression that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is teetering on the edge. Or, as a Shas source was quoted as saying Wednesday on KAN Reshet Bet after Netanyahu shelved the party’s “Rabbi Law” following fierce opposition within the Likud and the coalition, “this government’s days are numbered.”

The coalition’s inability to advance this bill, one designed to give Shas jobs to dole out, was the latest but not the only indication of a coalition in trouble.

It was 10 days ago that National Unity Party head Benny Gantz pulled his eight-man faction out of the coalition, which at the time commanded 72 Knesset seats. Last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant broke with his party, voting against the government on a procedural measure to advance the controversial haredim conscription bill. Further, on Sunday, Netanyahu disbanded the war cabinet rather than accede to requests by his far Right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, to become part of it, a stinging rebuke and show of no confidence in the heads of the two parties that Netanyahu’s coalition relies on.

Crisis after crisis

Mini-coalition crises such as these have cropped up regularly over the last few months, and they raise the question whether five Likud members may eventually break ranks with the party and vote against it in key votes, depriving the government of its majority and bringing about its downfall.

The events on Tuesday where two Likud MKs – Moshe Saada and Tally Gotliv – went against party discipline and declared in the Knesset Constitution Committee that they would not vote in favor of the “Rabbi Law,” showed that the idea of Likud MKs voting against the government is not as far-fetched as it may once have seemed.

Saada and Gotliv’s opposition was buttressed by Likud mayors who lashed out at the government for bringing a pork-barrel bill to the Knesset during a war and at a time when they are struggling mightily to meet the needs of their residents.

It was an impressive display of the Likud rank-and-file saying there are certain things that just will not fly. Legislation aimed at securing wholesale IDF exemptions for haredim might very well be another.

When the Knesset begins discussing the haredi conscription bill in earnest, it will surely find passionate resistance that will make Tuesday’s opposition to the “Rabbi Law” pale in comparison. Consequently, a handful of Likud MKs who voted last week for the procedural motion to advance the exemption law may backtrack and vote against a bill they will be made to recognize goes against the will of their own IDF-serving constituents.

It is clear that this coalition ship is listing, and it is doing so with the country experiencing one of its most difficult periods since 1948: Fighting a war on one front in Gaza and being on the cusp of fighting another in Lebanon, slipping back into the divisive rhetoric that preceded October 7, and becoming isolated internationally.

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.

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. Much, however, is to be gained by going to the people and getting a government with a renewed mandate that it can use to build the necessary trust and confidence to move the country forward.