The Center-Left Is Back

T

he center-left parties can congratulate themselves on the election results. They didn’t outright win this time around, but they managed to show that there is a real and viable anti-Netanyahu bloc.

In the previous election, in April, the Blue and White alliance, led by Benny Gantz, ran an aggressive “anyone but Bibi” campaign that backfired: It only managed to rile up the Likud base. This time party leaders took a different tack, running a dull campaign with vague promises.

Just a week before the polls opened, and sensing a surge to Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, Gantz and company initiated a campaign message that would take them all the way to election day: “a secular unity government.” Gantz, who has adopted a conciliatory attitude toward chareidi parties since his first day in politics, essentially capitulated to Yair Lapid by appealing to the secular, anti-chareidi base.

Blue and White achieved no small victory. Founded just six months ago, the political alliance (made up primarily of Gantz’s Hosen L’Yisrael and Lapid’s Yesh Atid) was plagued throughout this second campaign by poor cooperation among the party’s top brass. Gantz even hired a private security company to investigate who was responsible for the leaks that plagued the party in the first round. In the end both the existence of the investigation and its findings were leaked to the press, highlighting the party’s dysfunction.