Leftist lawmaker's resignation offers Israel's Bennett staying power
Now that Meretz Knesset member Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi has quit the coalition, the interim balance of power has shifted to the right.
Israeli fighter pilots have a saying that means the greatest threat you face is the one you cannot see. It's particularly apt in the latest crisis rattling Israeli politics.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his alternate, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, have been feverishly fighting to stem further defections from the right-wing flank of their rickety government coalition and preventing the Islamist Ra’am party from bolting as well. They were preoccupied by tightening control over Bennett’s shrunken Yamina and pursuing deals for support from outside the coalition with the opposition Joint List and perhaps ultra-Orthodox opposition lawmakers. But the latest blow landed from a completely different direction.
On May 19, Knesset member Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi of leftist Meretz announced she was quitting the coalition. Her stunning move, of which she did not give advance warning to her party leader or colleagues, leaves the eight-party coalition with only 59 seats in the 120-member Knesset, which means that she could vote May 25 with the opposition to disperse the Knesset. Rinawie Zoabi would thus provide opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the votes he needs to call new elections and bring down the “government of change” that replaced him almost a year ago.
A member of Israel’s Arab minority, Rinawie Zoabi was a rising star in the Zionist Meretz party who championed Jewish-Arab co-existence. Party leader Nitzan Horowitz had circumvented the Meretz primaries to place her high on the list of Knesset candidates before last year’s elections in order to ensure gender parity and strengthen the party’s standing among Arab voters.
