THE PARALLEL-UNIVERSE politics that played out in Jerusalem this month were unusual, even for a holy city full of surprises. In the real Jerusalem on October 10th, Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister (pictured), was glad-handing Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, by welcoming her to a special session of his cabinet. In the otherworldly Jerusalem, Mr Bennett’s predecessor, Binyamin Netanyahu, was holding court with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the son-in-law and daughter of America’s ex-president, Donald Trump, and Mike Pompeo, his last secretary of state. It was as if the video had been wound back to 2020, before voters evicted them all from power.
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In office Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump embraced each other. Out of power, they still cast shadows over the politics of their countries. Mr Trump rails against the supposedly “stolen” American election of 2020. Mr Netanyahu accepts the result of the Israeli vote this year, but regards Mr Bennett as illegitimate. The faithful still address Mr Netanyahu as “prime minister”.
His Likud party remains the largest in parliament, whereas Mr Bennett presides over a crazy-quilt coalition of eight parties, stretching from left to right and including an Arab Islamist faction, Ra’am. But, for all its oddness, the coalition has proven more solid than many expected when it took power in June, and has changed the tone of Israeli politics. “I tell Americans it’s like post-Trump. It’s decompression,” says Merav Michaeli, the Labour Party leader and transport minister. “The craziness has gone. That in itself makes a huge difference. People are breathing again.”
If Mr Netanyahu casts himself as the proto-Trump, then the new coalition may offer an antidote to his polarising populism. That it represents a wide spectrum of Israeli society may offer a new model of consensus politics.
But first it must survive. The coalition will soon face its sternest test, over the budget. Israel has not had one in three years. With a two-seat majority, the government is vulnerable to the whims of any of its members. If the budget is not adopted by November 14th an election will be called. So far there has been surprisingly little brinkmanship, though. It helps that Mr Bennett has money to distribute: the economy is growing and ultra-Orthodox parties are not in the coalition to demand big subsidies for religious institutions.
With a budget in hand, the coalition will be hard to unseat before the next budget deadline in 2023. Removing it would require 61 votes for a new prime minister or an election, but Mr Netanyahu can muster only 53. The balance is held by Arab parties that are unlikely to side with him. Under the coalition deal, Mr Bennett is supposed to make way in two years’ time for Yair Lapid, leader of the centre-left Yesh Atid party and the architect of the government.
Mr Bennett…