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GWYNNE DYER: How the Arab vote changed Israel's election

Prior to the Oct. 27 election, few Arabs bothered to vote in Israel, but an effort to increase turnout made Arab parties king-makers

Aluf Benn, the editor of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, has been a steady voice of moderation and common sense for a long time amid the dogmatism and extremism of so many other observers, but he is about to give up.

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This is what he wrote after the Oct. 27 election.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc does not command a majority of the Israeli public, but no stable government can be formed without Likud (Netanyahu’s party). Voting is driven by identity and by tribal loyalties, not by voters’ reactions to external events or by their desire to reward or punish the outgoing government for its policies.”

Israel has reached a dead end, in other words. The country has got so tangled up in its own fears and fantasies that it literally cannot respond intelligently to real-world events, however striking they may be. Benn continued:

“Israel has experienced upheavals, each of which would have been difficult to imagine separately, let alone in such rapid succession: a judicial coup initiated by the prime minister to establish unchecked rule; mass protests against........

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