The Israeli center could not hold
Opinion: We used to have a few centrist parties, but they vanished or became radicalized; what we have now are personality-driven echoes of one another with little to say about the challenges facing the country.
A central party can function in a country where the main ideological disagreement between left and right concerns, for example, the degree of government intervention in the economy. In such a case, the centrist party will present a compromise between loyalists of a free market economy and those who support government intervention.
But what message could an Israeli centrist party have on government corruption? That a prime minister who is gifted boxes of cigars is not corrupt, but a prime minister who receives envelopes stuffed with cash is? Or perhaps the opposite? And what would this centrist party propose in defense of democracy - that we compromise with demi-democracy? And what could it tell us about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that we should compromise on half a Palestinian state and half-Israeli annexation?
The Mapai party and its successor Labor were centrist. The Liberal party was centrist. The Likud Party used to be center-right and nothing more. In recent decades, however, the differences have become more acute, and parties that once referred to themselves as centrist are no longer that at all, or have failed to mobilize the masses and form a government under their leadership – with exception of Ehud Olmert's short-term rule.
The phenomenon is not unique to Israel: Many countries are experiencing a decline in their centrist parties, which either emptied themselves of ideological-political content or surrendered to populism. In the United States, the Republicans were once center-right and the Democrats were center-left, but both have been radicalized.
The center has also almost completely disappeared from the political landscape of Eastern Europe. The Italian government was hijacked by an alliance of neo-fascists and neo-anarchists. In Sweden (Sweden!) it took months until the two central parties managed to overcome the extremists in their ranks and form a shaky government that had a tiny majority. In Britain, well, the term centrist died a quick death the minute after the referendum on whether to leave the European Union was announced. And so on and so forth.
The vacuousness of the centrist parties in Israel is highlighted less through populism and more through the cult of personality: We have the Yair Lapid party; the Benny Gantz party; the Avi Gabbay party; the Moshe Kahlon party; and so on and so forth. There is no difference in ideology between them, only in the style of their election propaganda. Kahlon's party emphasizes its love for the ordinary man, who to its disappointment does not return that affection; the Gabbay party focuses on negating Netanyahu's governing skills; and the Gantz party is different for its militaristic style, which incidentally never used to be acceptable in Israel.
Former IDF chiefs of staff who entered politics were careful not to openly lean on their military service. Rabin, who commanded the IDF in the Six-Day War, did not present the bodies of Egyptian soldiers in his election campaigns, and Ariel Sharon did not appeal to voters with close-ups of targeted assassinations. Gantz's PR, on the other hand, emphasizes his military credentials. But celebrating the destruction and devastation of the bombed-out and impoverished Gaza is not worthy of the child of Holocaust survivors. Someone who knows how to destroy cannot perceived as someone who knows how to build.
Other personality parties use other tools to disguise their dearth of ideology — sometimes it is the integrity of the person who heads them, sometimes it is their beauty. Most of them enthusiastically adopted the "just not Netanyahu" mantra, or to be precise: "No to Netanyahu, yes to Likud." They are quick to declare their willingness to join the next Likud government, provided that it is not a Netanyahu one. But what if the notorious Oren Hazan is the Likud candidate for prime minister - will they join then?
