Oui, the description of the political situation in Israel, recently drawn up by Professor Samy Cohen in the columns of the World, is correct. Nearly. The difference between “quite” and “almost” lies in the perspective that is one’s own.
Because if we widen the lens, in all senses of the word, to Israeli society, the photo becomes, as everywhere, more contrasted. On the one hand, the apathy of the Jewish population, put to sleep by the chief magnetiser “Bibi” (Benyamin Netanyahu), with, here too, as everywhere, a right-wing majority (including 80% of Franco-Israelis!), Supported by the range of religious communities, some of which are openly extremist. The greater the inequalities, the more the underinvestment in Arab minorities, the more the decay of the Palestinian question and others …
On the other, all the same, an extraordinary economic dynamism, marked by uninhibited creativity, the high-tech accelerator on the ground, an unbridled taste for life, a stubborn force of protest, mobilizing tens of thousands of Israelis. for a year, demanding an end to prevarication, respect for the law, support for the losers of successive confinements, the reality of an increasingly extensive integration of the Druze, Arab-Israeli and even Bedouin populations in a whole series of sectors (medicine, pharmacy, transport, construction), reality not perceived outside borders, cultural vitality and others …
All this to say that alongside the black of the democratic political situation, there is gray and even blue. All this being said, each country has its own balagan (bazaar in Hebrew). In Israel, that of the coronavirus is well on the way to resolution. That of politics and democracy, Samy Cohen is right, we are in the middle of it. But, the worst is not certain. First of all, the corpse of the left stirs again, it is one of the good surprises of this antepenultimate election. Then, the central axis of opposition which is the party “at the same time” of Yaïr Lapid, constantly criticized, asserts itself, in fact, solid on its bases and firm on the principles.
Finally, a double evidence is essential. On the one hand, the observation that Arab parties must actively participate in the national political game is becoming evident. On the other hand, the religious, racist, fascist extremist parties constitute a task on the political landscape, the worst being that they undeniably (or devilishly, in Jewish humor) have their electorate, a task for which the responsibility falls to “Bibi », But which can be fatal.
Because the master wizard of Israeli politics, moreover soon assigned to the benches of a court by the same justice that he is desperately trying to delegitimize, may lose this battle. Which, not only would betray the rule which means that, as in football, at the end, it is always Germany which wins, and therefore, that in the elections, at the end, it is always “Bibi” the winner, but above all would unblock political life and open society to a revitalization of democratic principles.
Much lost, much to gain, but nothing impossible: it is the equation of a small country, normal but also extraordinary in many points of view, and much caricatured.
Claude Meillet, Paris
