Lapid and Bennett: The alliance that says everything about Israeli politics

In most democracies, a centre-left politician forming an electoral alliance with a right-wing nationalist would require some explanation. 

A shared vision, perhaps. A common platform. At the very least, a credible ideological bridge.

In Israel, it requires none of the above. It requires only one thing: a mutual enemy.

Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett announced their electoral alliance on 26 April ahead of this year's legislative elections. Lapid sits comfortably on the centre-left. Bennett has spent his career on the nationalist right. Together, they agree on virtually nothing — except that Benjamin Netanyahu must go.

That, in contemporary Israeli politics, is apparently enough.

Israel has never been a country where ideological consistency is a prerequisite for political ambition. The Knesset, elected under a pure proportional system that the country has always stubbornly refused to abandon, rewards fragmentation, deal-making and the endless reshuffling of alliances over principle.

The logic is simple and merciless. Get elected. Secure a ministerial post. Build a coalition — any coalition — that keeps you in power or returns you to it. The left-right spectrum exists in Israeli politics, but it functions less as a map of conviction than as a starting position in a negotiation.

Bennett himself is the perfect embodiment of this tendency. He has governed from the right, partnered with the left, served as prime minister in a coalition that defied every political category — and emerged from each experience with his personal brand largely intact. Lapid, for his part, is no stranger to the art of the convenient alliance.

Their new partnership is not a surprise. It is a symptom.

What proportional representation has wrought

The structural cause of this perpetual political theatre is Israel's electoral system. Under pure proportional representation, small parties can survive and thrive by winning a handful of seats. Every election produces a fragmented Knesset in which no party comes close to a majority. Coalition arithmetic then takes over — and in coalition arithmetic, ideology is a luxury that few can afford.

Israel has debated electoral reform for decades. The arguments for a mixed or majoritarian system — greater accountability, more stable governments, clearer mandates — are well known and widely acknowledged. They have never been acted upon, because the very politicians who would need to enact the reform are the ones who benefit most from the current system.

The result is a democracy that produces governments of remarkable instability, coalitions of breathtaking incoherence, and alliances — like that of Lapid and Bennett — that would be unimaginable elsewhere.

The spectacle ahead

The coming election promises more of the same. Netanyahu, for all his legal troubles and political vulnerabilities, remains a formidable operator in a system he has mastered better than anyone. His opponents, for all their numbers, are united by little more than their desire to see him gone.

That is not a political programme. It is not a vision for Israel. It is a coalition of grievances dressed up as an alternative.

Israeli voters deserve better. They deserve parties that stand for something beyond the next ministerial portfolio. They deserve an electoral system that rewards coherence and punishes opportunism.

What they are likely to get, once again, is a spectacle.