Israel Effectively Has Two Prime Ministers, and This Arrangement May Become the Norm

The current Israeli government is based on a rotation agreement, whereby Naftali Bennett will be prime minister for two years (instead of the usual four-year term), after which Yair Lapid will be prime minister for the next two years. During each politician’s tenure as the premier, the other will have special privileges as “alternate prime minister.” While such an arrangement was first concocted by Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz to form the previous government, it didn’t last and elections were called before Gantz got his turn. To Shmuel Rosner, the fact that the new coalition is following this template amounts to a “constitutional revolution” in the Jewish state:

Bennett is a partial prime minister now; Lapid will be a partial prime minister in two years. In reality, neither can do anything without the consent of the other because of a law that in practice gives each veto power. So the result is something more like the ancient Roman system of two consuls and less like the traditional Israeli system of one prime minister.

[T]here were good reasons for returning to what was supposed to be a one-time arrangement. The problem is that it is now hard to see a future coalition that does not employ the same arrangement.

Clearly, indecision and gridlock are real risks for our political power-sharing future. But there are also potential benefits. While major contentious issues like the fate of the West Bank and the role of religion in society may be hard to settle under these conditions, it may finally be possible to resolve others—including obvious ones, such as passing a budget after two years without one, allowing for some public transportation on the Sabbath, [and] finally dedicating the necessary resources to deal with the surge of crime in Israel’s Arab community.

At a time when polarization is such a grave social and political threat, Israel might have awkwardly stumbled into a remedy: an enforced regime of compromise. If this government is a success—as any Israeli would hope—the result may be the civility and consensus we have been waiting for.

Read more at New York Times

More about: Israeli politics, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society