In Israel, an inspiring political model that ... failed

This is the story of an audacious, inspiring political failure.

And even as its authors – the departing coalition government in Israel – prepare to clear out their desks and hand over power, it is very much worth telling.

That’s because, over the last 18 months, an alliance of sworn political enemies has managed to come together and work together. They’ve chosen cooperation over political combat. They resolved that scoring political points mattered less than getting things done.

They’ve shown there’s an alternative to the zero-sum partisan combat increasingly blocking the day-to-day business of government not just in Israel, but in other democracies worldwide, America’s included.

And they’re leaving less than halfway into their four-year term not because they’ve failed to deliver. They made good on their pledge to make democratic government function again, passing the first annual government budget in three years. They increased employment, oversaw one of the world’s most successful pandemic responses, and slashed a widening government deficit.

They’re on their way out because gladiatorial partisanship struck back, with protests and social media attacks decrying compromise as treachery.

The campaign, most vocally from the political right, began even as negotiations on forming the coalition were underway. With one parliamentary backer quickly jumping ship, the government took office in June of last year with just a single-seat majority in the 120-member Knesset.

When a further Orthodox conservative Knesset member withdrew support in April, the coalition no longer had a majority. Amid a series of other departures, new elections – Israel’s fifth in four years – were held at the start of November, paving the way for the return of right-wing populist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet if the coalition’s early demise is a cautionary lesson, there are also more hopeful ones.

The first is that 21st-century politics need not be an exercise in partisan cage-fighting. There is another way, but it requires politicians of vision, generosity of spirit, and no little courage.

In Israel’s case, three such leaders were key to making it possible.

Yair Lapid was the center-left politician whose party won the most seats among the coalition members in the 2021 election. But in order to get a deal, and no doubt in the hope of muting far-right fury, he agreed that the head of a smaller, right-wing party, Naftali Bennett, would get first crack as prime minister, handing over the reins only halfway through their term.

Abir Sultan/Reuters

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attends a Cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, Oct. 23, 2022.

Above all, there was Mansour Abbas, head of an Islamist party. He became the first member of a governing coalition in Israel’s history from the Arab citizens who make up about one-fifth of its population.

Still, remarkable though the alliance was on a personal level – Mr. Bennett, in a New York Times piece a few days ago, recalled meeting Mr. Abbas and finding “a brave leader just about my age who turned out to be something of a mensch” ­– the lesson with the most powerful resonance for America and other divided democracies is more practical.

It’s about how they got things done.

Mr. Bennett calls it the 70/70 rule. It involved setting aside the hot-button issues on which the coalition partners, and Israeli voters, were clearly incapable of agreeing: the future of relations with the Palestinians, and the divide between religious and secular Israeli Jews.

The focus was on the other 70% of the issues on which 70% of Israelis agree: transportation and infrastructure, schools, crime, and the cost of living.

“When you neutralize the most politically sensitive issues,” Mr. Bennett wrote, “ministers from left and right saw each other as decent people working for the good of Israel and not as the demons we’d been calling each other.”

It’s a compelling road map. And in at least one important respect, it ought to provide some reason for optimism: because the 70/70 rule also applies even in other divided democracies.

In Britain, for instance, the hot-button equivalent to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is Brexit, the 2016 referendum that took the country out of the European Union. That’s still a political third rail. But recent polling suggests a growing majority regrets the messy divorce that followed and, at a minimum, hopes for a post-Brexit arrangement with Europe restoring the main trade and other benefits of membership.

In the United States, polling consistently finds comfortable majorities in favor of not just infrastructure improvements, but issues like background checks for gun owners, a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers,” and the right for same-sex couples to marry.

On same-sex marriage, that’s actually led to a 70/70 moment in the U.S. Senate, which relied on rare bipartisan support to pass a bill this week that would write that guarantee into federal law.

And in the recent midterm elections, there were victories for a number of candidates who played down partisan issues in favor of a pledge simply to address voters’ everyday concerns: roads, housing, the cost of living, crime, and in Alaska’s sole congressional race, fishing.

Still, as the short-lived Israeli coalition demonstrated, the head winds against a politics of cooperation remain stiff.

Mr. Bennett still holds out hope. “We imprinted a unique image and model of how a highly polarized society can cooperate,” he wrote. “That beautiful image, once engraved in hearts and minds, cannot be easily erased.”

But it’s perhaps Albert Einstein who best captured that hope, and a recognition of the time, political vision, and grit that will likely be required.

“Failure,” he famously said, “is success in progress.”