We Need Elections and We Need Them Now

We need elections and we need them now. Giving the people the opportunity to let their vote determine the answer to the critical questions that are tearing us apart is the only fair solution with a chance to bring healing and to avoid disaster.

For many months, while some have called for elections, many have insisted that now is not the time. We’re in a war. Elections are divisive and we need to be united in fighting this existential war together. But if these reasons were ever compelling, after over a year and a half of war, they are far less so. Like it or not, we have reached the point at which the continuation of the war has lost its absolute consensus and has itself become a point of deep contention, with a recent poll showing that 69% of Israelis prefer to stop the war and return the hostages. However divisive elections are, the alternatives are now far more dangerous.

What are the alternatives? Israeli society finds itself divided into two camps locked in a power struggle fueled by a complete lack of faith, as it was in the days leading up to October 7^th. We aren’t on a collision course — we are in the throes of an ongoing collision that can only be progressively more destructive. The pro-government camp argues that the “deep state”, consisting of the media, the courts, the attorney general, the secret service, and civil protest movements, are all conspiring to overthrow the democratically elected government representing the will of the people. The anti-government camp argues that it is the government that seeks to undermine democracy by erasing any checks and balances on its power, even while it pursues policies not supported by a majority of Israelis, like granting a draft exemption to the Haredi community, and prioritizing the war against Hamas before bringing home the hostages.

Both camps hold a certain amount of power, and both grow ever closer to an attempt to use their power to overcome their rival, and to achieve the fantasy of “total victory”. For the pro-government camp, this means firing the head of the secret service and the attorney general, ignoring Supreme Court decisions that don’t please them, and ultimately taking control of the court. For the anti-government camp, this means declaring Netanyahu “unfit” to serve as prime minister. But “total victory” of one camp over another means certain defeat for all of us.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand” said Lincoln a few years before the American Civil war, about 80 years after the declaration of American Independence. As we approach Israel’s 77^th birthday, if we want to prevent the current power struggle from deteriorating into a civil war, the first thing we need to try is to test the claim upon which both camps base their legitimacy- that they represent the will of the majority, which their opponents try to override using undiplomatic means. Even though government supporters will often argue that elections are meant to be held only every four years (which in itself is a rather absurd statement given that this is almost never the case in Israel), they will not be so brazen as to pretend that it is legitimate for the democratically elected government to act against the will of the majority. They will just argue that we don’t need to check. But anyone willing to step out of their own bias for a moment can readily admit- we are at a point where we do need to check. And any camp’s fear that they will lose if the people are given the chance to choose cannot be taken seriously in a democracy. If your path lacks the support of the people, it shouldn’t be the one we’re pursuing.

If anyone has earned our faith in the last year and a half, it is the people of Israel as a whole, not any one camp or another. Elections are the only way to give us the opportunity that we deserve to determine the answers to the critical questions that divide us in the post-October 7^th world.