Will Israel get Republican/Democrat-style big parties?
The fate of Israel’s next elections will be determined within the next few days by the alliances forged or not forged between the parties on Israel’s political right and left.
Is Israel ready for a new political model? Is the divided, torn Jewish state, split by internal and external disputes, able to forge a model of two political blocs similar to the one of the US Republican and Democratic parties? Probably not, but that did not prevent the idea from germinating and taking over the political agenda and discourse of the past week. It was orchestrated by two people: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the right, and Labor-Gesher party Chair Amir Peretz, on the left.
Peretz went first, presenting what he dubbed the “Peretz road map for defeating Benjamin Netanyahu” in a Jan. 7 Channel 12 TV interview. The idea is quite simple, Peretz said. Rather than trying to unite the small Labor and Meretz parties (known in their current incarnations as Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp), all the forces on the left and in the center would be unified in one bloc comprised of Blue and White, Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp, he explained. Such a move is the only way to shatter the glass ceiling of Netanyahu’s hold on power, to imbue hope in voters that a political upset is feasible, to loosen the dependence on Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman’s capricious whims and to form a political bloc that forestalls a Knesset majority for Netanyahu’s Likud and its allied parties.
