© Unknown
Naftali Bennett with Israel's Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi, May 27, 2021
The planned 61 majority was altered by an abstention from Palestinian-Bedouin lawmaker
Said al-Harumi from the conservative Palestinian Islamic United Arab List (Ra'am), which is part of the government, because of yet more imminent Israeli village destructions in southern Israel. The first term in the rotation agreement between the far-right Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid is Bennett's - he is supposed to be Prime Minister until August 2023.
Bennett, of the religious-Zionist settler party Yamina ("rightwards"),
is the most rightwing Prime Minister Israel ever had.
Many Zionists, especially on the left, are celebrating. The new government might mark the end of the long Netanyahu era, which has lasted longer than any other premiership, by far, including Israel's 'founding father' Ben-Gurion. Netanyahu has ruled now for 12 consecutive years, and the 1996-99 term adds another 3.
You could think it was Independence Day -
thousands were celebrating with confetti and Israeli flags at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, as well as in other locations in Israel that identify themselves as bastions of the left.
But this is the Zionist left, and when it's Zionism, the relativity is inside a paradigm which is rightwing in its ultra-nationalism.
And that's how
Naftali Bennett is now going to be sanitised as a liberal: because he is supposedly this dragonslayer who ousted Netanyahu. The dragonslayer's party only got 7 seats in the last election - Lapid's party got 17 - but the Israeli logic says that this is the necessary pragmatism to make it work, to just get through this one, as it were.
Comment: