Already five years ago a prominent American rosh yeshivah told me that we might be approaching the end of a miraculous period in which the secular Israeli government became the prime supporter of Torah learning on a scale unprecedented in Jewish history. If the new coalition guidelines are implemented that moment has arrived.
The incoming government coalition results from a concatenation of long-range political trends and a series of inexplicable blunders by veteran politicians. First we’ll consider the long-range trends. From 1977 until 2005 the Israeli public was divided primarily over the “peace process” a trend that became even more pronounced after the signing of the Oslo Accords. Each side was willing to offer the chareidi parties whatever was required to join their coalition to prevail on the issue of paramount importance to them.
Since the failure of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal Israelis have soured on the possibility of peace and concluded that further territorial withdrawals will only result in the creation of another launching pad for rocket and terrorist attacks. That consensus closed the great fissure in Israeli politics. With issues of war and peace dormant the possibility of new coalitions around other issues arose. Chareidi parties no longer hold the balance of power on the issue of paramount importance to most voters. Indeed for much of the non-chareidi public the chareidim themselves are now the most important issue.
Still Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was eager to retain the traditional alliance between Likud and the chareidi parties in forming his new government. One does not sever old and reliable allies when the political road map ahead is filled with potholes. Unfortunately the math did not work out. For one thing Netanyahu made two bad decisions: He did not time new elections to coincide with the height of his popularity and he decided to merge Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu whose leader Avigdor Lieberman immediately found himself under criminal indictment. As a result Netanyahu ended up with ten less mandates than anticipated.
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