Gantz makes a three-horse race for Israel’s PM

Centrist parties merge; Left languishes after coalition failure

The unsurprising July 10 announcement of the merger between the Blue and White party of Defence Minister Benny Gantz and the New Hope party of Justice Minister Gideon Saar ahead of the November 1 elections has not changed the balance of power between opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponents, but it does redraw the lines of the bitter battle being waged over the identity of the Jewish State, writes Ben Gaspit.

“The merger takes Gantz from head of a party with single-digit polling figures into a strong candidate for the country’s premiership.

“This new alliance will turn the election from a two-pronged race between opposition head Benjamin Netanyahu and caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid into a trilateral competition. Now, rather than two blocs running for the Knesset — Netanyahu’s Likud, the ultra-Orthodox parties and the radical right against left-centre-Arab parties — the new constellation pits the Netanyahu bloc against a centre-left-Arab bloc and a security-oriented centrist one.

“This could be good news for Netanyahu’s opponents.”
The news is less sanguine on the left. Mazal Mualem writes the decision to call an early election caught the Israeli left in one of the most difficult situations it has ever faced. The historic socio-political movement, for decades the largest one in the country, found that it had lost most of its supporters.
“After many years in which the left took no part in government, the decision to join the coalition in May 2021 took a steep toll on Meretz and Labor. Both were forced to make major ideological concessions because the other parties that formed the coalition identified with the ideological right. Furthermore, they were sitting in a coalition in which the office of prime minister was held, at least temporarily, by the leader of one of those parties, Naftali Bennett of Yamina.

“The concessions that Meretz and Labor made centred mainly around the peace process. For years, both parties argued that Israel was gambling on its future because negotiations with the Palestinians were deadlocked, and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not believe in a two-state solution. Then, when the opportunity to remove Netanyahu appeared, the two parties said that they were temporarily willing to put aside their commitment to a two-state solution and their call for an end to the occupation if that would lead to Netanyahu’s removal from power.”