The Joint List—an alliance of Arab political parties—emerged from the most recent Israeli election as the third-largest party in the Knesset. Thus Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party now tasked with trying to form a governing coalition, must consider if he should court the Joint List’s support. To Ben-Dror Yemini, the positions taken by group’s parliamentarians, who have vocally supported terrorism and remain committed anti-Zionists, should disqualify them as political allies:

Two surveys conducted this year both show that a clear majority of the Arab public supports some form of participation in an Israeli coalition government. The problem remains the colossal gap between the will of the Arab public and the will of its leadership.

Almost every possible scenario for a future government is met by pundits saying—and rightly so—that the chances of it being formed are slim. But . . . out of all the options, a minority government supported from outside by members of the Joint List, even if not all of them, is not the least likely.

To prevent the worst possible scenario from becoming a reality—a third round of elections in less than a year—Blue and White must sacrifice one of its two core principles in order to form a coalition: either team up with Netanyahu despite the party’s “anyone but Netanyahu” policy, or partner with the Joint List, despite promising it wouldn’t do so.

Blue and White acts under the banner of bringing back sanity into politics and reducing polarization in society, but establishing a government with the support of provocative lawmakers like the Joint List’s Ofer Cassif, [the sole Jewish member among them, who has accused Israel of “genocide”], would only make things worse and Israel would become even more polarized. . . . A coalition partnership with Arab factions can wait.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.