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To add to this (which I feel is also a partial answer to lambertsimnel's original question here), if we look at politics as an iterated prisoner's dillema, the center-left parties have chosen a "tit for tat" strategy whereas Binyamin Netanyahu has chosen an "always defect" strategy.

Of particular note, at the start of the corona crisis, there have already been several failed elections. At the time, Benny Ganz's party ran together with Yesh Atid (and Telem) in a combined list, but since Yesh Atid refused to cooperate with Binyamin Netanyahu (after their own bad expereinces), Benny Ganz chose to split up the combined party and join Binyamin Netanyahu in the coalition, citing the importance of having a stable government for these difficult times (of COVID).

The coalition agreement stipulated that Binyamin Netanyahu will be the Prime Minister for the first two years and Benny Ganz for the final two years (elections in Israel are theoretically every 4 years). However, after two years, Binyamin Netanyahu disbanded the government (by manufacturing a disagreement so that the coalition could not vote together). Benny Ganz then learned his lesson.

(There are of course more disagreements and issues and a lot more nuance then what I can present in a short comment on an online forum, but hopefully this is a useful example to understand the sort of issues we are having)

Going back to my original post, I'm trying to say that the fact that whatever factors have lead to this sort of rotten situation (and that we stay in that situation continually) are the real problem, and not specifically the voting system. Even if we accept that proportional representation is the best system ever, it is not on its own enough to prevent the sorts of problems you see lately in democracies around the world.



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