Israel’s third round of elections should provide the country with a normal government and spare it a convoluted and expensive veto-based coalition, incapable of making any important decisions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be participating in the election while under indictment and without immunity, while preparing for his first court hearing, scheduled for two weeks and a day (March 17) after voters decide his fate at the ballot box. If he decides to resign and if some other politician replaces him as head of the Likud, a national unity government could be formed immediately. But this is not likely to happen. Netanyahu will not resign and his party will not depose him, while the Blue and White party cannot form a government or join a coalition with Netanyahu in his current state. His legal situation would prevent him from serving as a minister during the rotation period in which Benny Gantz is prime minister — because, according to Israeli law and court rulings, a minister must resign once he is indicted, whereas a prime minister is only required to resign once he is convicted peremptorily. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Gantz would agree to serve under a prime minister who is required to show up in court every day.
While the message of the Blue and White party — which has focused on a national unity government ever since it was first formed — could switch to support for a national unity government without Netanyahu, that doesn’t seem to be a real option right now. Even Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman — with all his talk about a secular, liberal unity government — realizes that there will be no such thing as long as Netanyahu is a part of it, so he has been making do with all sorts of new terms and conditions (such as his refusal to form a government supported by the Arab Joint List). Anyone who takes these terms seriously will see that just by meeting them, it would be impossible to form a new government. The biggest hope now is that Israel's most enigmatic politician (Liberman) will come around and agree to a coalition with the support of the Arab Knesset members, so as to avoid a fourth round of elections.
