“I didn’t lose my temper,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday. “I wanted to show [Yamina MK] Nir Orbach and other friends in the right wing of the coalition that we’re living in an intolerable reality, that I support them, literally, physically.” Even if his motive was collegial, the picture of Bennett shouting at Likud MK Miri Regev, making his way through a sea of Knesset ushers and MKs toward opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu (who fled the hall), conveyed fragility and exposed nerves.
No prime minister has ever acted that way; on the other hand, no prime minister has been the target of one thousandth of the scorn, the hatred and the curses that Bennett has. No wonder that when MK Orit Strock (Religious Zionism) approached and spewed billions of dangerous airborne bacteria at him, he fired back: “Get out of my face.” It wasn’t “misogynistic," as Likud members quickly and ridiculously claimed. It was hygienic.
The Electricity Law, proposed by United Arab List MK Waleed Taha, enshrines into law the prevailing situation in which illegal structures are connected to the power grid, water and phone lines. In 2014 this was done by means of an order published by the Netanyahu government’s interior minister, Gideon Sa’ar. In 2016, the finance minister in the Netanyahu government, Moshe Kahlon, extended the order. The United Arab List, as a member of the coalition, demanded that it be enshrined in law. This is not “the sale of the Land of Israel,” “the end of Zionism,” or “another step in granting the right of return” (the last exaggeration came from Netanyahu). It is banal legislation, which is also a matter of life and death. Pirate hookups to the electric grid have caused fatal tragedies in the Arab community. Families have burned to death.
Likud on Wednesday pretended to issue the cry of equality: Why the Bedouins, and not the “young settlers” – the illegal settlements built on private land in the West Bank. What unholy hypocrisy. For 12 straight years Netanyahu and the right were in government. Four of those years were simultaneous with the Trump administration, and they didn’t bother to pass such a law. Now they’re screaming like hyenas.
If MKs Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Religious Zionism) had not blocked the way of UAL chairman MK Mansour Abbas, and Netanyahu had been able to form a government with the votes of the Islamist party, that government would have received a premium electricity law from him, which Abbas himself made sure to point out in the heated Knesset debate on the bill. Netanyahu would have sent Avi Fahima, his own private electrician, to the Negev to oversee implementation. Even on Yom Kippur if necessary. And he would have canceled the Kaminitz Law, which stiffens the punishment for building without a permit, as he promised Abbas
For Bennett, what we saw in the Knesset on Wednesday brought up images of January 6 last year in Washington. It wasn’t an exact parallel, of course, but that was the spirit. And there is one clear outcome: the dubious connection between the coalition’s unlikely partners grew stronger. The zoo-like unruliness in the opposition benches, together with the nationalist-racist metaphors that accompanied it, put no one in the mood to break coalition discipline and cross lines. Not MK Orbach nor MK Yom-Tob Kalfon (Yamina), who were the target of repulsive, low insults; nor Abbas, Taha or their colleagues who were privileged to see Likud in its naked racism. “Our problem is that you are speaking here,” was just one of the interjections hurled at them.
“Better unruliness in the opposition than in the government,” Taha told them. And Abbas, in the Zen calm of his Cheshire-cat smile, mocked them: “Calm down. What happened? It’s just electricity-grid hookups.”