How did a small party like Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) manage to create a deep coalition crisis that forced Netanyahu to leave the hospital for a Knesset vote? Why do small parties succeed in imposing their will? This article analyzes the chaotic roots of the crisis in the Israeli political system and offers an innovative solution.
By Israel Piekrash
In 1972, Edward Lorenz, one of the developers of chaos theory, gave a lecture at the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). After conference organizer Philip Merilees failed to contact him, he decided on his own to formulate the title for the lecture - "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" It was a successful promotional insight that later became known as the "Butterfly Effect."
The Butterfly Effect is a term taken from chaos theory. According to this theory, even when certain systems have fixed and rigid laws, their outcomes cannot be predicted because they are too sensitive to changes. For example, although the weather system is influenced by rigid physical laws, the future weather cannot be accurately predicted because even a small flutter of butterfly wings could lead to a chain reaction that would change the outcome.
During the past month, it seemed to me that the Israeli political system operated in a similar way to the Butterfly Effect. In both cases, these are complex systems where small changes can lead to unexpected and significant results. A small event that could not have been predicted created a major crisis. Itamar Ben-Gvir and some members of his party decided to vote against sections of the state budget due to a dispute over police officers' salaries. Unexpectedly, the Prime Minister himself was rushed from the hospital to participate in the vote and prevent a coalition defeat.
This event left behind difficult questions. How is it possible that the October 7th massacre does not threaten the coalition's political survival - while the dispute over police salaries led to such a severe crisis?! How did we reach a situation where any small party can dictate its terms to the government for any reason it chooses?!
Inspired by chaos theory, I wish to argue that although we cannot predict how Israeli politicians will actually behave, we can identify the reasons that allow small groups to extort the majority in Israeli society. My hope is that if we change these reasons, we can change the characteristics of our political system and avoid this grim outcome.
Photo credit: Koby Gideon, GPO
The Three Options
In 2019, Israel entered a new era. The sharp contradictions between different groups in Israeli society intensified and deepened, and for the first time in our history, the 21st Knesset dissolved without forming a new government. This was due to Netanyahu's criminal investigations, which led to a justified demand by many in Israeli society not to join governments under his leadership. As a result, Netanyahu lost his political ability to maneuver freely between centrist and right-wing parties, and as an alternative, he chose to rely on the extreme right, such as Ben-Gvir's party.
Since then, all election cycles in Israel have only three possible outcomes: No Government, Extorted Government, and Contradictory Government.
(a) No Government is a reality where the intense internal contradictions between different parties force the Knesset to dissolve without forming a government. This occurred in the 21st and 22nd Knesset.
(b) Extorted Government is a government that buys its stability by satisfying the contradictory needs of coalition parties. This creates a situation where even a minority group in the coalition can impose its will on the majority of Israeli society. This type characterizes the current serving government. The most prominent example of this contradictory conduct is Netanyahu's demand not to end the war as long as Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while simultaneously trying to accommodate the ultra-Orthodox parties' demand not to draft their members into the IDF. A policy of war with fewer soldiers.
(c) Contradictory Government is a government where there are intense internal contradictions between its components. The contradictions are so intense that they cannot all be satisfied, and therefore these governments tend to break apart quickly. This type characterized the Netanyahu-Gantz government of 2020 and the Bennett-Lapid government of 2021. Both governments were based on the "Alternate Prime Minister" model, which indicates a lack of trust between coalition components.
This approach also characterizes the current opposition's political mindset under Yair Lapid's leadership. On one hand, in his latest speech on December 21st, Lapid refused to accept the government's latest attempt to further deteriorate Israel's already weak democracy. He cried out to the crowds "There will be no compromise. We will not bend. We will not surrender. We will never join the government!" On the other hand, the opposition remains divided because the heads of Zionist parties refuse to cooperate publicly with the heads of Arab parties. These two decisions together greatly narrow the opposition's political maneuvering space.
The main difference between the two types of governments is in their priorities. An Extorted Government will try to square the circle. It will first prefer to satisfy the contradictory needs of coalition parties and only then try to create as much national policy as possible. A Contradictory Government, on the other hand, will prioritize the opposite approach. This means that in both options, the governments are expected to act with internal contradiction and be extorted by small groups. Even former PM Bennett held his position when his party had only six mandates, and both right and left governments chose to distribute coalition funds[1]. The difference is in the priorities.
Therefore, all these poor options lead to the same result - the State of Israel is gradually losing its resilience. Israeli governments of all kinds have lost their ability to fulfill their main task of planning and implementing long-term plans. Just in the last month, a series of difficult data was published: In the education system, Israeli students dropped 32 points in mathematics and science in international comparison. This is the sharpest decline in OECD countries and Israel's lowest since 2007. Serious crime in Arab society has reached another low. In 2024, 230 additional citizens were murdered, with the murder cases solve rate standing at only 14.8%. There has been a significant increase in this during the current government's tenure.
Even in terms of negative migration data, Israel is experiencing a severe crisis. During the current government's years in office, there has been a significant jump in the number of people leaving. In 2019, at the beginning of the political crisis, the difference between the number of leavers and returnees stood at 15,800 Israelis leaving. In 2024, it stands at 58,900 leavers. There is also a decline in surveys regarding the number of Jews who want to stay in Israel, from 84% in 2019 to 64.5% in 2024.
In simple words – Israel is experiencing a social collapse. It's no wonder that Israel has deteriorated in various international indices. We are losing our qualitative advantage and we must not accept this.
The Israeli Chaos Theory
When looking at the political system from this perspective, we might believe that the current political crisis is rooted in the question of "Yes-Bibi/No-Bibi" debate. However, I believe the situation is much more complicated. There is no doubt that since 2019, the crisis around Netanyahu has led to severe deterioration, but upon deeper examination, one can identify the social conditions that enabled the crisis. Israeli society consists of groups that believe in contradictory values. Therefore, all coalitions from right and left are forced to operate under impossible conditions of internal contradiction.
In the graph above, one can see that since the 1980s, the Israeli political center has increasingly split into small and medium-sized parties. A new series of ideological disputes and demographic changes created this change: immigration from the Soviet Union, the emergence of the Shas Party, the bitter conflict between the ideology of Greater Israel and occupation opponents, and the struggle between pro-Palestinian Arab parties and Zionist parties. On the other hand, the Haredi and Arab parties, which are in dispute with the Zionist political center, are growing. Therefore, since the 1980s, it has become increasingly difficult to form stable coalitions. The crisis around Netanyahu only intensified the phenomenon and did not create it.
As such, the central question is why Israel fails to cope with its internal contradictions? After all, many democratic countries in the world manage to deal with no less severe crises. Why is it that we, who belong to such a creative, scientific, and determined society, who escaped persecution and managed to do the unimaginable and establish the miracle of the State of Israel after 1,800 years of longing and dreams – why is it that we specifically fail to unite and overcome internal contradictions?! Here, in my opinion, the answer lies in the centralization of Israeli governance.
In the state's early days, there was concern that such a polarized and tribal society would not succeed in running a modern democracy. Therefore, the state's founders conceived the Israel "Melting Pot" method: Israeli society would be built on a centralized government structure that would not recognize any sub-group. Thus, all Israelis would be forced to part with their tribal identity and be forced to merge into the new Israeli nation.
However, as could be expected, this method was not well-received by everyone. Two distinct religious groups - the National Religious public and the Haredi community - each declared immediately upon the state's establishment that this method was unacceptable to them. Thus, many breaches were created in the system - such as the state-religious education system that is based to this day on the Religious Education Council. This council can supervise the educational content implemented in the religious education system in a semi-autonomous manner. Not only does this council contradict the basic logic of the melting pot, but this autonomous right is granted only to the National Religious public and not to other groups such as secular or Arab citizens. On the other hand, the religious public was also quick to impose their views on others when possible, such as through the Chief Rabbinate institution.
Thus, centralization led to the opposite result than expected: it allowed the government to directly control Israeli society without a constitutional mechanism to restrain and moderate its power. Therefore, all disputes funneled into the political system, which was forced to decide between contradictions in matters of religion, culture, and values. Instead of unity, we got disintegration.
In the first decades, it seemed that it could still be overcome. Indeed, many ambiguities and contradictions were created in the governmental fabric: religion and politics were intertwined, no constitution was signed, Arab society was brutally pushed to the margins, and policy beyond the Green Line was not defined – but despite this, Israel grew stronger.
However, as the decades passed—and especially since the 1977 transition of power that ended three decades of Labor party rule—the number of groups holding contradictory values multiplied, and consequently, the rifts within the political system widened.
The multiplication of disputes under one centralized authority created an "All or Nothing" game. Any small group can threaten with a veto and coalition dissolution for any reason it chooses, and governments were forced to operate with increasing internal contradiction. This is a chaotic system sensitive to changes whose results cannot be predicted or managed. In this situation, all groups in Israeli society that want to protect their way of life can only do so by force – in the Knesset, in courts, or on the street. All groups and authorities in Israeli society are playing power games and nothing more.
Photo: Participants in a tour by the Anahnu Movement in Jerusalem. Credit: Anahnu Movement, May 2024.
Therefore, our hope to reunite the majority of Israeli society to grow in security and stability lies in decentralizing the Israeli governmental structure. Only then will all disputes not be concentrated under one authority. Instead of a chaotic system based on "All or Nothing," we will unite the majority of Israeli society through constitutional recognition and equal rights for all groups within Israeli society.
For this, we must tell ourselves the truth: we're all in the same boat. We need to rebuild trust between us so we can stop the crisis we've fallen into. Any other political strategy based on political biases, tribal warfare, and subjugation of the other will not succeed.
This vision, called "Equal Liberties" in our movement, forms the basis for our movement's constitutional approach. You are invited to delve deeper into it here.
[1] "Coalition funds "are funds allocated through coalition agreements rather than formal legislation.
Comments