The Israeli center-left has difficulty understanding how despite the coalition getting just 50 seats in most polls, the opposition’s ability to form a potential government is still uncertain while Likud is recovering.
At best, opposition voters wonder if all those millions of coalition voters are stupid at best, or at worst, the polls are just proof of what they already thought: they are indeed all stupid. After all, there is no logical explanation for their continued support for such a bad government.
But there is a very simple explanation: traditionally and consistently, the opposition is focused on declaring the government to be bad without establishing itself as the better option. The opposition is spending very little time examining the failings of its own leadership, to say nothing of its worldview. Any internal criticism or soul-searching is silence and damned as “Bibism” or on the grounds that “it benefits the government.”
But contrary to what the center and left tells itself, it’s actually quite easy to demonstrate that rightwing voters are far from an unthinking herd of lemmings: the day after October 7, a third of Likud voters and an even greater proportion of Religious Zionism voters abandoned those parties in polls. Many of them declared their intent – though probably through ground teeth – to vote for Gantz, who shot up to 40 seats.
This was a golden opportunity for the man to lead to a change within the center camp: no-one could blame him if he declared the day after October that it’s time to change tack and adopt rightwing positions when it comes to matters of national security. There would be no need to budge an inch on religion and state, the justice system, or even the settlements. All he needed to do was admit that the old strategy of containment and avoidance of conflict led by Netanyahu in the last few decades was now bankrupt.
Gantz could have collected even more former Likud voters during the long months of sitting and waiting between Khan Yunis and Rafah if he sharply attacked the emergency government and even left it for taking so long.
He could have gotten even more if he had demanded that the Philadelphi corridor be taken to choke off Hamas’ weapons supply already from the start, if he had accused the government of failing to occupy parts of the Strip and establishing a military government, or if he had simply noted the simple fact that the Shalit Deal signed by Netanyahu was one of the main factors leading to the strengthening of Hamas and October 7, and announcing that he would never sign off on such a thing.
In short, he could have crushed the Likud simply by noting the Likud government’s failings. But he fairly consistently avoided doing so, instead positioning himself as being possibly in favor of Hamas’ absurd demands. It’s no wonder that he dropped from 40 to around 25 seats or so.
And the tragedy is that Gantz is the least bad alternative. I think that if we appointed a basil plant as Opposition Leader in October 6, it would get 50 seats the next day in the polls. Unfortunately, that role is now occupied by someone with less talent than a houseplant, who managed to drop from his current 24 seats in the Knesset to around 15 in the polls, where he remains to this day with remarkable consistency.
Yesh Atid was founded over a decade ago, you will recall, as a center party aimed at attracting Likud voters, among other groups. It has since entirely abandoned that pretense, and in the past few years is not and cannot be more than a sectorial party for middle class secularists living in the country’s center, consistently trying to cannibalize the old Labour Party instead of getting center-right voters.
Since October 7, Gantz has beaten Netanyahu in almost every poll asking who would be a better Prime Minister. Recently even Bennet, who isn’t even in politics right now, manages that feat. It is only Lapid – the Opposition Leader, the Chairman of the second largest party, the man in the best position to replace Netanyahu – loses to him again and again and again in these polls.
Do his supporters, who speak all the time of the need for change and the many failures Netanyahu has racked up in his long years in office, ever thought of applying the same logic to their own leader, who has headed the party for some twelve years and whose political strategy has failed disastrously the whole time?
There is an alternative to Netanyahu. As I’ve often said, I think all the rightwing politicians outside the coalition are hitting all of the government’s true weak spots and are offering a truly better alternative. But it is human nature (or at least, the nature of the Israeli voter) to think in binary terms and remain loyal to his party, come hell or high water.
When the leaders of the opposition – both its Leader in the Knesset and its leader according to the polls – reveal themselves to be small, narrow-minded men fearful of arriving at the natural conclusions from the greatest disaster in our history, when they press the government consistently to implement an even worse policy than its present one, and when the rightwing opposition appears to be an electoral appendage to Lapid/Gantz (though this could easily change by the elections) – it becomes a lot easier for Likud voters to tell themselves that there is no better alternative to Netanyahu, and that Gantz and Lapid are a decisive reason why.
Elad Nahshon is a PhD student at Bar Ilan University, studying the political and social history of Zionism and the State of Israel.