In the general election on September 17, he narrowly failed to secure a majority for his Likud Party. It marked a sea change in Israeli politics and history, a visible blow to the right-wing hegemony that has not only prevented solutions to the ongoing crisis of the Occupation but deepened it. Yet in the end, for reasons we’ll explain, little may change in the short term. The concluding chapter of the election story has yet to be written.

It’s a complex story owing to Israel’s parliamentary system, whereby in a nation and a Knesset sharply divided over ideology, religion, and ethnicity, governments have ruled by fragile, shifting coalitions, often of parties not otherwise friendly, designed to distribute government spoils and satisfy competing constituencies.

The September election was a re-run of the election on April 9, in which Likud narrowly won a plurality. A new upstart party, Blue and White, led by General Benny Gantz, came close to upsetting Bibi’s long-time tenure. Gantz’s platform was not so different from Bibi’s, but he came close to defeating him in the wake of public disgust with Netanyahu’s corruption, for which he is under indictment for financial and political crimes.

Nevertheless, after Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin asked Netanyahu to form a governing coalition, he couldn’t do it. The Knesset has 120 seats, and Bibi could not cobble together 61 seats, even with all the concessions such deal-making entails. Therefore, a new election had to be called for September in the hope that some voters might rethink their strategy for moving forward out of the morass.

This time, Blue and White came out ahead with 57 seats committed to a governing coalition, and Likud with 55. The difference this time came from the open support of Benny Gantz from the Joint List, a coalition of small Arab parties that includes Hadash, a configuration of the Communist Party of Israel, and led by a Palestinian Israeli, Member of Knesset (MK) Ayman Odeh. The List also includes the exclusively Arab Ta’al, the Islamist Ra’am, and the nationalist Balad. The Joint List took 10.6% of the vote and 13 Knesset seats, becoming the third-largest party in Israel.

On the question of the Occupation, Benny Gantz does not appreciably separate himself from the hardline Likud position. Yet for years Netanyahu has run a fear-based politics of no rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, appealing to Jews to vote for him because “the Arabs are stealing the election” and “voting in droves” (as if as citizens of Israel it’s not their right to vote). In recent elections, Likud set up video cameras at Arab polling stations to intimidate voters.

What the Joint List found more to their liking about Gantz is that at least he did not engage in openly racist anti-Arab hate-mongering and seemed willing to talk with Palestinian leaders respectfully. More than that, Gantz invited Odeh to speak at a Blue and White-Labor-Meretz election rally in Tel Aviv, where he received a tumultuous ovation.

Even so, Gantz would not have allowed the Joint List to actually form part of the government: That would have ignited a firestorm of Zionist outrage. But for numerical purposes, in order to form a majority in the Knesset, Joint List votes would be counted.

With Gantz in office, existential questions of Zionism and Occupation would not be addressed, but perhaps other issues might be, such as Israeli child poverty, the highest rate of any OECD country, affecting nearly half of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Traditionally, the president offers the party with the plurality vote the right to try forming a governing coalition. That is what happened in April, and Netanyahu failed. Most observers expected that this time Rivlin would make the offer to Gantz. But he did not. Instead, on Sept. 25, he offered it again to Netanyahu. Because in the meantime, one of the Joint List partners, the Palestinian nationalist party Balad, withdrew its three seats in protest against Gantz, eliminating his lead, a move that upset Odeh over his Joint List partner’s apparent unwillingness to learn to work with Jews. As proof that life is more real than rhetoric, the numbers, now 54 for Gantz to Bibi’s 55, gave the nod to Likud. So Netanyahu was back in the hot seat, desperately trying to hold onto the prime ministership as his wall of protection against conviction on corruption charges.

Netanyahu floated the idea of a Unity government, with himself, naturally, continuing as prime minister, at least for two years, to be followed by two years for Gantz—though who knows what could happen in two years: Netanyahu has proved himself a master manipulator. An Israeli Unity government would cut out not only the Joint List, but the left-wing Labor and Democratic Union (Meretz) parties, both of which lost seats in the Knesset, and the right-wing nationalist and religious parties. The government would be right-wing and secular, and continue to do nothing about resolving Palestinian claims both within Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.

Gantz was unwilling to come into unity with the very party and man he twice ran against with considerable success.

One rather intriguing feature of a Unity government would be that the Joint List would then become the official leader of the opposition, entitling Ayman Odeh to be brought into consultation on state and foreign affairs and national security. It is anticipated, however, that in such a case, some loophole in the law would be found to prevent Arab representation at that level.

The importance of the Joint List vote, and of the plurality that voted for Gantz and against Netanyahu should not be underestimated. It can be seen as a sign that the left, however it is reconstituted, is not dead, but focused on pragmatic rather than ideological goals. The Israeli “Old Left”—the Labor Party and other leftist Zionists who founded and led the country for its first thirty-odd years—has been marginalized. It may be time finally to acknowledge that a successful reconciliation of Zionism and egalitarian democracy was always a highly problematic project, if not indeed impossible. It was bound one day to reach a critical crossroads.

The fact that Netanyahu was defeated at the polls, that once again he could not form a government, sent shivers down the spines of Reaction. Likud polled lower in September than in April, so this may open up space for other voices in the party calling for him to pass the baton to less abrasive—and less criminal—leaders. And once out of office, Netanyahu may well land in prison.

A Gantz government would be a relief to the American Jewish establishment, and to a plurality of voters in Israel, because it would offer some welcome stability to the country after all of Netanyahu’s chaos and offensively open racism. An Israel led by Gantz would be far more amenable to U.S. Democratic voters and politicians—and for better or worse, help to regain bipartisan American support. Notably, Netanyahu’s defeat elicited scant attention from the White House. A political corner may have been turned. Sixty percent of eligible Palestinian Israelis voted: An even larger turnout would make an even greater difference by shifting the balance of power.

If Gantz, too, is unable to form a government, the president has the right to call upon any MK to try and patch together a minimum of 61 votes. Or he could call for an unprecedented third election. (IPA Service)