Prepare for blood, sweat and tears

Part of the public no longer has the patience to wait for the replacement of the current government. Dangerous internal processes, alongside a problematic security and diplomatic situation, make them long for the moment when, as they are convinced, they will win at the ballot box and finally restore sanity to the State of Israel. However, this is a mistake.

First, it is a mistake because that is simply not what will happen. Israel is facing a very challenging period, if only because the whole world is facing such a period. Instability has become the new norm: technology is advancing at a pace whose consequences no one can predict, and nation-states are increasingly destabilized by a combination of dangerous factors from within and without. Israel, as part of the world and as a country operating in one of the most chaotic regions on the globe, will be forced to deal with all these challenges.

Second, the processes led by the current government have exacted heavy prices, most of which we have not yet begun to pay. Chief among them is the decline in American public support for us.

Third, the internal problems in Israeli society have grown to such extensive dimensions that the next leadership will have to be the first in years forced to put an end to them. After so many years, road blockers will have to be prosecuted without bias, whether they belong to one side of the political map or the other. Also, the ultra-Orthodox autonomy that leaves so many Israeli citizens without full rights and without full obligations—almost in a kind of civil ghetto—will have to be dismantled. This necessary dismantling, for the good of the state as a whole and for the good of the ultra-Orthodox public itself, will not pass quietly.

Meanwhile, criminal organizations in Arab society will have to be brought to their knees and stripped of their power, or at the very least of the endless stockpiles of weapons at their disposal. If anyone thinks this will go smoothly, good luck to them. Finally, we will have to restore the balance between the branches of government, even though most representatives had and have a clear interest in blurring the disagreements and continuing to pass this hot potato on. But if we do not deal with it now, it will simply explode in our faces.

All these are the challenges of the decade. But because they have been neglected for so long, they have all rolled together to the doorstep of the next government, and the privilege of continuing to pass them on no longer exists. The promise of sanity is exactly the illusion that is about to explode in the face of the Israeli public. The next four years will not be years of sanity; they will be difficult years of struggle. But they can be years in which the public that cares fights shoulder to shoulder, not only on the battlefield, but also in the civil service, in the economic sphere, and in the diplomatic arena, to ensure a better future for our children.

The next government will be a government of blood, sweat and tears. The public and social language that will sustain it must be a language that looks directly at the enormous challenges and does not tell itself fairy tales about "ease" or how everything will go smoothly. Everyone is busy with the question of how to get the 61 seats and solve the representation problem. But the much more important question is: how do we build the ethos that will allow the public and its leaders to survive a period saturated with scandals, challenges, and civil frustration? We must write this ethos now.