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.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/stepping-down-liberman-exposes-frailty-of-coalition-building/