The bloc that serves in the military has won. Common sense has prevailed. The draft-evasion bloc has suffered an unprecedented defeat. No atomic bomb. No blockchain. And perhaps, with a little diplomatic wisdom that has been missing in recent years, Israel can avert not only the sanctions looming over it but also those already imposed.
But there is no time for celebrations. Between another election, during which Benjamin Netanyahu would remain caretaker prime minister, and a coalition with the Arab parties, supported either from within the government or from outside it, the second option is preferable. True, Likud appears poised to emerge as the largest party. But the draft-evasion bloc has been defeated.
The Yashar! party election headquarters
(Photo: Tal Shahar)
We did not go to the polls so that nothing would change. We did not go to the polls so Netanyahu could continue deceiving us. We did not go to the polls so Itamar Ben-Gvir could become defense minister. And if achieving change requires breaking campaign promises, so be it.
There is no need to conduct an opinion poll among voters of the pro-change bloc to know that, given a choice between perpetuating the Netanyahu-Goldknopf-Smotrich-Ben-Gvir government, even in a caretaker capacity, and forming a coalition with the Arab parties, an overwhelming majority would prefer the latter.
And now is precisely the time to break promises that were unnecessary from the outset. There is no coalition without the Arab parties.
There had been concerns that the draft-evasion bloc would try to evade the election results by arguing that the Zionist bloc lacked a Jewish majority. But unless the exit polls are completely wrong, that argument has also collapsed.
Now that the results are before us, a hand must be extended to anyone willing to accept the fundamental principles. And no, there is no need to turn Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra'am party, into a Zionist.
But if we trust Arab doctors to save wounded IDF soldiers arriving from the battlefield, it would be somewhat ridiculous to reject Arabs when it comes to politics.
Would that constitute breaking a promise? Between the promise to replace the draft-evasion bloc and the promise not to form a coalition with the Arab parties, the former is a thousand times more important.
After previous rounds of elections, if I may be permitted to recall my own sins, I published calls for a national unity government.
No more coalitions dependent on a narrow sectoral minority, I wrote at the time. No more political extortion. No more trampling the majority. Instead, a coalition representing the political center and the majority of the public.
Not this time.
There is no need for such a coalition, because the bloc that won is the national bloc. It is the centrist bloc. And the bloc that lost is the one that imposed the tyranny of the minority upon us.
Likud should have been a natural partner in a unity government. But it has erased the distinction between itself and Ben-Gvir's party. It was supposed to safeguard the rights of the majority. Instead, it surrendered completely to every whim of the parties that dragged Israel to unprecedented lows.
So we must look to the future. A coalition formed by the pro-change bloc — the national and Zionist bloc — would include lawmakers who represent the Likud of old far better than the members of Likud's current parliamentary slate.
Given the composition of the winning parties' parliamentary lists, such a government would effectively be a national unity government even without Likud.
So please, Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman and, certainly, Yair Golan: Form a government. As quickly as possible. You have been given a historic opportunity to bring about historic change. Do not waste time.