Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party (on most issues, to the right of Likud), has quit the Netanyahu-led coalition government, leaving it with barely enough seats to remain in power. At fault for this sudden instability, argues Haviv Rettig Gur, is not the personality of either Liberman or Netanyahu, but the Israeli political system:

In the end, Netanyahu’s manipulative management style and Liberman’s peculiar brand of political tantrum are both symptoms of a larger malaise: the stark fact that no Israeli politician or party can actually win an Israeli election. Even after doing better at the ballot box than any ruling party in a decade, Netanyahu can still find his coalition brought down to an untenable one-seat majority by the political maneuvers of a single Avigdor Liberman. . . .

A political system cannot be built on the assumption that every one of its actors will always pursue the common good. Liberman’s withdrawal, with all the havoc it is wreaking to the right and to the elected prime minister, is probably the most strategically wise move open to him, given his party’s collapsing electoral standing. While his stated reasons for the move may be questionable, there is nothing immoral in Liberman’s decision to leave.

The real culprit is the architecture of Israel’s politics, which allows a single Liberman or [Jewish Home leader Naftali] Bennett or [Shas leader] Aryeh Deri to topple a prime minister who—by any measure—is the nation’s preferred choice to run the executive branch.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”