Israel General Discussion: Annus Horribilis

[Vosem]

Ohana to Foreign seems like it would make a lot of sense -- can't think of a different empty-suit Bibist likely to play well in Western media? Katz was already a disaster once (...though I guess that doesn't mean he can't be brought back), whereas that seems like a threateningly high position for someone like Barkat who reads to me as an actually plausible alternative to Bibi himself.

(Also it would feel very strange if Levin didn't get Justice after placing first in the Likud primaries on a platform of reforming the legal system. Would that indicate Bibi sees him as a threat, or is it that he wouldn't actually be very well-suited for such a role?)

[Vosem]

What are the odds that Ben Gvir brings the government down within the next 2 years? The man has higher ambitions and I don't think kahanists would hesitate to blow things up if they don't get what they want.

Higher than zero, but they might be lower than Bibi knifing RZ at an opportune moment and calling an early election to cripple the party. (Though maybe the odds of this are lower after the whole 2019-2022 saga, who knows).

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Being cynical, at his age now he sees "the future" as somebody else's problem?

I feel like retirees might think like this, sometimes, but probably not people who just won a new term as head of government after a continuous 3-year campaign.

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Has Bibi actually backed down here? Or is he just biding his time while preparing to strip the court's authority?

Deri serving as a minister is deeply unpopular, even among a plurality of Bibi's supporters. Also, Bibi has no particular reason to care whether Deri, with whom he has an alliance of convenience, is a minister or not. So, he's backed down here, but he has no particular incentive to fight the Court on this question.

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Is there any chance Otzma’s overreach will create a backlash that can bring the whole of the right down?

Sure -- at the moment the government is pretty unpopular and is not doing well at the polls. That said, there is no election expected until 2026, and under the present electoral laws which tiny parties hit the threshold and which don't can overwhelm even decently-sized swings.

If an election were somehow forced right now, though, you would expect Bibi to lose. But there are like 3 more years to go.

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The most surprising thing is that even with all of the protests, divisions and the complete trainwreck management of the approval of this bill, Netanyahu would probably still win a snap election, according to polls.

Of course, in an election period everything would, probably, be different but it speaks volumes that, currently, the Opposition is just not capable to form an alternative to Bibi Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is down in the polls at the moment, although not by very much and it is indeed the case that if there were a snap election right now he would still be competitive.

Part of what has happened over the past few years is that there has been a great deal of educational polarization, with much of the more upper-class wing of Netanyahu supporters (including New Hope within Likud itself) having set itself against him; this likely contributes to media depictions where it seems like Netanyahu does not have supporters.

(But, that said, the possibility of a renewed Netanyahu victory is very much in spite of the reforms being broadly unpopular, with 29% of Likud voters opposing the reforms (source in Hebrew), and in fact only half being committed supporters.)

If you add up all the Likud MKs who have voiced a desire to halt the process and add them to the opposition, there is now a Knesset majority in favor of halting the process. It looks like there are 5: Gallant (currently Defense Minister), Chikli (currently Social Equality Minister -- incidentally, this guy was the dissident who brought down the Bennett government by crossing over to Bibi, attempting to re-rat), Dichter (currently Agriculture Minister), Edelstein (long ago and far away, a Soviet dissident sent to the literal gulag for committed Zionism), and Bitan (who had been widely believed to be a fat and useless hack). But it looks unclear as to whether the dissident Likud MKs are coordinating with each other, or whether they can be bought back by Netanyahu -- reporting on Gallant's being fired from the position of Defense Minister has him possibly being replaced by Dichter. Also, Bitan -- himself getting investigated for corruption charges -- would be a most unusual dissident, though the others are pretty logical ones.

[Vosem]

Checks and Balances is one of the best ways to defend liberty

There's depressingly little real evidence for this given how much sense it makes on paper and how thoroughly most Americans believe it.

...is that the case? America has a far older constitution than most other developed democratic nations and has done a very strong job at maintaining the freedoms that it considers fundamental, like freedom of speech (far broader in the US than other nations), the freedom to bear arms (barely or non-existent elsewhere), and the freedom not to have soldiers quartered in your home (never seriously questioned). A comparison to, for example, Britain -- which has a similar culture in many ways, but no written constitution and parliamentary supremacy -- seems to leave checks and balances looking very good to my eyes.

[Vosem]

Checks and Balances is one of the best ways to defend liberty

There's depressingly little real evidence for this given how much sense it makes on paper and how thoroughly most Americans believe it.

...is that the case? America has a far older constitution than most other developed democratic nations and has done a very strong job at maintaining the freedoms that it considers fundamental, like freedom of speech (far broader in the US than other nations), the freedom to bear arms (barely or non-existent elsewhere), and the freedom not to have soldiers quartered in your home (never seriously questioned). A comparison to, for example, Britain -- which has a similar culture in many ways, but no written constitution and parliamentary supremacy -- seems to leave checks and balances looking very good to my eyes.

Such a strong job that African Americans only exercised some of the rights you cite from the 60s onwards...nevermind the Patriot Act and how civil liberties were crushed in favour of "yeehaw I can buy an AR-15 therefore I'm free".

Ah, yes, Britain's control orders and TPIM notices were certainly much fairer than anything the Patriot Act did, and the left and the right are probably both very happy with Britain's free speech record. Certainly Britain has no restrictions on 'hate speech' or anything of that nature. (Oh wait).

Also, yes, somebody who cannot buy an AR-15 in the modern world is not considered free by the American mainstream on civil liberties, nor would they by the people who created that mainstream. (Britain also once had a right to bear arms, incidentally -- only for Protestants in 1689, but still -- and I observe that this is an excellent example of the American checks-and-balances system preserving a right that Britain's parliamentary supremacy has ditched).

But seriously, this is the Israel thread, if we're not going to tie this to the debate over Knesset supremacy/the Israeli Supreme Court we should move this to another thread.

[Vosem]

Checks and Balances is one of the best ways to defend liberty

There's depressingly little real evidence for this given how much sense it makes on paper and how thoroughly most Americans believe it.

...is that the case? America has a far older constitution than most other developed democratic nations and has done a very strong job at maintaining the freedoms that it considers fundamental, like freedom of speech (far broader in the US than other nations), the freedom to bear arms (barely or non-existent elsewhere), and the freedom not to have soldiers quartered in your home (never seriously questioned). A comparison to, for example, Britain -- which has a similar culture in many ways, but no written constitution and parliamentary supremacy -- seems to leave checks and balances looking very good to my eyes.

Such a strong job that African Americans only exercised some of the rights you cite from the 60s onwards...nevermind the Patriot Act and how civil liberties were crushed in favour of "yeehaw I can buy an AR-15 therefore I'm free".

Ah, yes, Britain's control orders and TPIM notices were certainly much fairer than anything the Patriot Act did, and the left and the right are probably both very happy with Britain's free speech record. Certainly Britain has no restrictions on 'hate speech' or anything of that nature. (Oh wait).

Also, yes, somebody who cannot buy an AR-15 in the modern world is not considered free by the American mainstream on civil liberties, nor would they by the people who created that mainstream. (Britain also once had a right to bear arms, incidentally -- only for Protestants in 1689, but still -- and I observe that this is an excellent example of the American checks-and-balances system preserving a right that Britain's parliamentary supremacy has ditched).

But seriously, this is the Israel thread, if we're not going to tie this to the debate over Knesset supremacy/the Israeli Supreme Court we should move this to another thread.

Full of strawmen, weird non-seqiturs, and just plain sociopathic rhetoric to rival jaichind's...no point debating with such a bad faith, paid up member of the hyperauthoritarian cult of American exceptionalism.

…what part of that was a strawman or a non sequitur? You brought up the Patriot Act and gun rights (!?) as examples of America valuing civil liberties less than Britain; I pointed out that Britain enacted measures very similar to your first example and that your second example is a civil liberty that Britain abandoned. (I guess the free speech stuff you didn’t discuss, but it seems like the central civil liberty to me and like one where Britain’s record is remarkably bad relative to peer nations. Also, I discussed it in the initial post which you were quoting).

And, yes, my family made huge sacrifices and struggled for years to assimilate to “yeehaw I can buy an AR-15” culture, with that as substantially the end-goal, so I am in that sense very much “paid up” to right-wing Americana. It is more the case that we have paid in, though.

[Vosem]

Well, I hope one day your country’s government lets you write whatever message your cryptic gif was meant to convey.

[Vosem]

If Netanyahu backs down then the protestors will merely continue to protest to demand his resignation. 

Conventional wisdom on Hebrew-language Twitter seems to be that if he backs down RZ will leave the coalition, and he will either make Gantz the Defense Minister in a coalition government (…unlikely IMO, we’ve already tried this once) or Israel will go to new elections (IMO very likely). At the moment it distinctly seems like Netanyahu would be disfavored but that it wouldn’t be hopeless, but it’s hard for me to think of a government taking a defeat like this and then winning the next election anywhere in the world.

[Vosem]

There's one weird trick that would politically disempower the Haredim forever while also striking an unprecedented blow for democracy: acknowledge that Gaza and the West Bank are fully Israeli, granting all residents full citizenship and the right to vote. The likes of OY would be politically irrelevant  in such a country.

The actual residents of those territories are deeply opposed to Israeli annexation, as is the international community. (Also, the Gaza Strip is under the control of a regime strongly opposed to the Israeli state; it would need to be reconquered first, by force. At that point you might as well include Egypt).

My guess is that very eventually there will be a successful voting rights/annexation movement among Palestinians in the West Bank, as I've written elsewhere; the long-term demographic trend, without Gaza, is that the area is getting more Jewish and eventually the independence of the remaining area will not be a realistic demand. But I think this is still very far away, and this projection is dependent on the sort of demographic analyses that have been wrong in the past; between 1995 and 2015 everybody, including the Israeli right, thought that the long-term trend of the region was to become more Palestinian.

At this point keeping the fiction of a "Israel-Palestine conflict", or sham "two-state solutions", is an insult to intelligence. This is not a matter of self-determination, but a constant abuse of the basic human rights of 1/2 of the population under Israeli control. The state of Israel rules everything between the Jordan and the Sea and will never withdraw from the West Bank, let alone East Jerusalem. The only way to ensure the Jewish character of the existing state is through the disenfranchisement of most Palestinians. This political regime, based on on the privileged status and the supremacy of one ethnic or religious group over another, is not a democracy. Israel-Palestine will never be a democratic state until everyone living in that country has the same legal status and is protected from abuse by the same set of laws.

It is usually right-wing parties in Israel who favor extending an offer of citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank (Bennett -- still probably Israel's next PM in the near future -- wants to do it specifically for residents of Area C, it was the Likud that extended an offer of citizenship to East Jerusalem Arabs in 1981). Left-wing parties are uniformly opposed. The thing that stops this from happening -- besides international pressure -- is the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian independence declaration of 1988, and the Israeli government's agreement to cede some control within the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority.

Given 21st-century demographic trends it would not be especially threatening today to the Jewish character of the state to annex the West Bank and give citizenship to every Arab who lives there. It will be even less threatening in 20 years.

What would be threatening is incorporating Gaza: Gaza is a huge Arab city with a sky-high fertility rate and if you include it in "between the Jordan and the Sea" then a Jewish demographic majority is impossible. But there is no reason for Gaza to be part of that state (and as the June 2007 civil conflict showed, Gaza does not even really seem that interested in being part of a state with the West Bank); its history, political preferences, and economy are completely different. Nor is there any particular reason for Israeli ultranationalists to want it, which is why it was easier to withdraw from 2004 than the religiously significant West Bank. There is no reason that, when a government arises there that chooses peace, Gaza couldn't be a prosperous independent port (with extensive natural gas reserves) separate from both Israel and Egypt. Some argument might exist that Israel would have to pay Gaza reparations to apologize for bombing it repeatedly instead of just unilaterally ending the terror of the al-Qassam Brigades.

This is probably the only form of the two-state solution that would work; anything based on modern ethnic borders in the West Bank really does start to look like a bantustan. Ultimately, the first step on the road to peace will be when the Palestinian Authority (and the Israeli state) acknowledge that people in Yatta and Tulkarm, not just al-Quds, deserve the option to have Israeli citizenship.

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IMO Israel should restrict voting rights to those who served in the IDF, otherwise the Haredim will multiply and take control.

Maybe another idea is imposing a punitive tax on ultra-orthodox Jews, who aren't that much different than the Taliban.

If Israel has a democratic future it needs to be majority Secular/Reform/Conservative.

How come some poor people deserve welfare, and others deserve disenfranchisement?

[Vosem]

Haredim are the Jewish equivalent of the Taliban.

"How come some poor people deserve welfare, and the Taliban doesn't?" is your question.

Right, right. So, how are we going to determine if someone is officially Haredi? We're going to need some official government procedures for this. Are we going to go by appearance? Perhaps smell? Blood quantum? Do they get welfare if they vote the correct way?

(Are there any other groups that should be excluded for political/racial/religious grounds? Heck, I live in the Cleveland area, and there's an Afghan-American community here; sometimes I encounter a father with two sons on a hiking trail by my home. Do we need to make sure none of them have Taliban sympathies?)

Heck, maybe we should think about privileges besides voting. Should these people really be allowed professional licenses? Citizenship? Fair trials? (You wouldn't let someone in the Taliban have a fair trial, would you?)

[Vosem]

So this might be nice from some perspectives as something approximating an easy way out, but there are a number of key flaws with your reasoning here. I think before getting into any of that, though, it is worth noting that even just annexing the West Bank and granting Israeli citizenship to all people in the former Mandatory Palestine excepting the Gaza Strip would yield a nation with 5 million Arab citizens out of a nation of about 12.5 million. Not a majority, of course, but not an insignificant change either, and the Israeli right would probably be severely kneecapped in the short term and have to significantly change long-term.

The first major issue is that the current situation of Gaza is quite simply untenable. Its population density is almost on par with that of Hong Kong and only getting higher. The PA would never consent to a 1 state solution without some sort of solution for this situation, nor should they. The obvious solution is to allow some citizens of Gaza to migrate to the new Israel-Palestine, but this hypothetical state is already over 40% Arab, so at some point that's going to become incompatible with a continued demographic Jewish majority.

The whole point is that it isn't going to be incompatible; if you take Gaza out of the equation, Jewish fertility rates are higher, immigration is overwhelmingly Jewish (or Jewish-adjacent, particularly from eastern Europe), and emigration is overwhelmingly Palestinian. Unless the government changes its immigration policy radically (or multiple different trends within Israel itself reverse), the arrangement would be sustainable ~forever (or until the really really really far future).

This is a far-future prediction (ie, a prediction of something that I think will happen >10 years into the future); much like many of my other far-future predictions, it is written with many underlying assumptions ('trendlines/sometimes second derivatives will continue moving in the directions they are moving now'), and it ignores 'unknown unknowns'. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that whatever historical trend will change Israel and Palestine the most over the next 20-30 years is something we are not even discussing in this thread. (Some of my other far-future predictions involve fairly radical economic changes happening.) I think the state that would result from this happening decades from now would be substantially less than 40% Arab. A further consequence of this movement being successful would be the PA getting destroyed or neutered (maybe some successor to it would exist in a federalist scenario).

In general, far-left and far-right discourse both often assume that poor populations must have higher fertility than rich populations, which was true for most of the 20th century but has really come apart in the 21st. CIA World Factbook records a higher 2023 fertility rate estimate for the US than for Brazil, for instance. Many developing countries -- such as India, which once had such high fertility that the famous far-right novel Camp of the Saints simply assumes the world will inevitably be overrun by Indians -- have fertility rates below replacement and falling fast. Birthrates lag TFR, but it is already basically baked in that the world will reach a population peak sometime in the 2040s or 2050s and afterwards global population is likely to fall really rapidly.

The second major issue is that of Palestinian refugees, some 3 million of whom live outside of the former mandatory Palestine, mostly in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It is impossible to overstate the importance of solving this issue; indeed, I'd say a solution is impossible without it. With a 1 state solution as it is usually construed, a single state constituting all of former Mandatory Palestine, this isn't that big of a deal, but if you're still trying to maintain a demographic Jewish majority this is yet another group of people you have to find a permanent solution for that doesn't include settling in the new state.

Like in any other democracy, immigration policy is going to remain a live political issue in Israel forever, but I doubt any kind of Jewish-majority state would enact a friendly immigration policy to people who identify as Palestinian refugees. My long-term guess is that these people assimilate into the societies in which they're living. (Given how many there are, I frankly question whether some kind of hypothetical militarily-triumphant Palestine would actually let all of them return. The world has long since moved on.)

[Vosem]

Haredim are the Jewish equivalent of the Taliban.

"How come some poor people deserve welfare, and the Taliban doesn't?" is your question.

Right, right. So, how are we going to determine if someone is officially Haredi? We're going to need some official government procedures for this. Are we going to go by appearance? Perhaps smell? Blood quantum? Do they get welfare if they vote the correct way?

(Are there any other groups that should be excluded for political/racial/religious grounds? Heck, I live in the Cleveland area, and there's an Afghan-American community here; sometimes I encounter a father with two sons on a hiking trail by my home. Do we need to make sure none of them have Taliban sympathies?)

Heck, maybe we should think about privileges besides voting. Should these people really be allowed professional licenses? Citizenship? Fair trials? (You wouldn't let someone in the Taliban have a fair trial, would you?)

Haredim are a small sect of Judaism. Al Qaeda/the Taliban are a small sect of Afghans. Most members of either group would self-identify as such (if not with that same term).

I'm a Conservative Jew, actually, so this is quite like one of those Afghan-Americans saying that people who self-identify as a member of Taliban shouldn't get voting rights. Nobody would have an objection.

In fact, if this was said by another one of our more bigoted posters, the response would be much less severe. Haredim who actually pay taxes/don't live in the settlements should get full voting rights (and even those who don't should get full individual rights)

Haredim are 2 million people and growing extremely rapidly; they are not, actually, a very small sect of Jews. (They used to be in the quite recent past, though). I am sympathetic to your position here: anyone who posts on AAD will know that I've called Satmar a malevolent cult. I think the problem of hyper-religious subgroups out-reproducing the rest of society is a problem that will eventually come for all First World societies, and Israel is simply ahead of the curve of the rest of us. Substantially I support the current protests because I think a Haredi-supported coalition getting to pack the Israeli Supreme Court would be a very negative outcome. (And my main objection to an 'only taxpayers get to vote' law in most societies would be slippery-slope stuff; disenfranchising anyone sets a dangerous precedent to some extent).

But taking away the right to vote based on personal beliefs is just making a mockery of any sort of democracy; you're preordaining the result at that point. Why hold the election at all?

[Vosem]

If Netanyahu was actually about to do something that would endanger military aid or Iron Dome supplies from the US, the IDF would coup him in 5.2 seconds, most likely.

Question here: has a military coup ever happened in a country that has been as wealthy and an established democracy (within its internationally-recognized borders) as Israel? Wouldn't that turn Israel into something akin to Kemalist Turkey?

In terms of post-WW2 coups in Western democracies, Greece 1967 and Chile 1973 both come to mind. France 1961 and Spain 1981 both constituted real attempts. In the United States during the 1960s (Operation Northwoods) the government considered the possibility of a coup to be quite serious. Turkey obviously has had many military coups.

It would be a very singular event in the history of post-Cold War democracy (and really post-early 1980s democracy), but then Israel is a very singular country with, for now, a very singular demographic situation.

[Vosem]

I think the problem of hyper-religious subgroups out-reproducing the rest of society is a problem that will eventually come for all First World societies, and Israel is simply ahead of the curve of the rest of us.

I don't see it. What groups in Christendom are really like the Haredim? The obvious examples are the Mennonites and Jehovah's Witnesses. Maybe you can make a case for Calvinists in the Netherlands, but I don't know to what extent they segregate themselves from broader society. There are pietistic Lutherans in Finland but they are a very small group.

Besides Laestadians in Finland (and actually also the US), other groups I was thinking of would include fundamentalist Mormons, certain Old Believers, subgroups within the Amish world (Swartzentrubers), and Old Order Mennonites (who actually have lots of colonies in Latin America) as examples of groups like this. (I don't know that Jehovah's Witnesses actually have remarkable fertility in the way that other groups like this do). Haredim are a much larger fraction of Israeli society than these other groups are of their societies, but as long as high fertility rates are sustainable they will become a large fraction of society eventually, and given the continuously falling fertility rates of mainstream society probably faster than we think.

I'm not familiar with groups like this within Islam, but then I'd imagine you would have much more knowledge than I would there.  

Presumably there are other groups in other countries that I can't name, but I am comfortable in saying that none of them are significant. Evangelicals in Brazil and elsewhere don't count because they are part of broader society. The same is true of Mormons. I know you said the First World specifically, but I will also add here that I'm not aware of any groups like this in the Islamic world.

I agree with this, but at least within the US conservatives have noticeably more children and have them at younger ages, and the gap between conservatives and liberals has been gradually growing in size since ~1990, before which it didn't exist. There are conflicting surveys on just how heritable political preferences are, so it remains something of an open question how much this will end up affecting American society. (There really isn't evidence for a gap like this in Europe, but I wonder about Latin America; Santiago, Chile, is supposed to be the metropolitan area with the lowest fertility rate in the Americas, while I've purely anecdotally noticed that conservative Chileans -- both politicians and just people I met when I visited that country -- tended to have large families, belying the country's low fertility overall. This is entirely a guess, though.)

It seems self-evident that religious people are more fertile than irreligious people, and perhaps in the long run this will lead to increased religiosity in society. Groups like the Haredim being the beneficiaries appears to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

I think the Haredim being so politically organized, both in Israel and the US, is a specifically Jewish phenomenon; you don't really see Amish bloc-voting in ways deliberately meant to position their community as kingmakers. (On reflection, many of these groups -- including Haredim -- seem to be particularly strong within the US, as opposed to other parts of the First World, and perhaps in some deep way to be the result of a specifically-American memetic environment). But "persistent closed-off ultra-religious high-fertility subgroup" does not seem to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

[Vosem]

All of these groups participate in the labour market. Haredi participation is exceptionally low and if you deduct the faux jobs in their educational system male employment sinks to around 30%. there's nothing really like them

Sure, but it would be possible to change welfare policies to make this kind of behavior impossible, and I think Haredi society would persist. (There might be greater defections to mainstream society in that case -- it's already the case that in Israel many more Haredim leave Haredi Judaism than do in the United States, in my understanding. But the whole society would not go away). I think sustained exceptional fertility rates are a more interesting characteristic, and a more relevant one for the future of humanity -- not just Judaism or Israel -- than labor market non-participation, which wouldn't survive probably-eventually-inevitable anti-welfarist politics.

[Vosem]

All of these groups participate in the labour market. Haredi participation is exceptionally low and if you deduct the faux jobs in their educational system male employment sinks to around 30%. there's nothing really like them

Sure, but it would be possible to change welfare policies to make this kind of behavior impossible, and I think Haredi society would persist. (There might be greater defections to mainstream society in that case -- it's already the case that in Israel many more Haredim leave Haredi Judaism than do in the United States, in my understanding. But the whole society would not go away). I think sustained exceptional fertility rates are a more interesting characteristic, and a more relevant one for the future of humanity -- not just Judaism or Israel -- than labor market non-participation, which wouldn't survive probably-eventually-inevitable anti-welfarist politics.

Also Labor market participation is higher in the US among the specific populations when compared to Israel, so there certainly is a case for nurture creating an environment  that allows this population to do what it wants all the time vs some of the time.

Oh, interesting, I hadn't realized that. I think it might be the case that there are more 'intermediate' cultures in Israel -- still-religious but not Haredi groups -- compared to the US, where the Jewish mainstream is much more secular than Israeli Hilonim and Jews are not really that large of a fraction of society overall.

Additionally....


https://twitter.com/AsiaElects/status/1645134880429277184?s=20

This is one of the more volatile pollsters, but that's still a big change which can't just be explained by samples. So is it just the court battles  and popular protest movement plus Gantz just doing well in a environment where security is in the news (for multiple reasons), or is there even more going on?

I think it shouldn't be underestimated how much 'failure to get a priority through' hurts governments even when that priority is very unpopular. If you didn't like Bibi's court-packing scheme, you obviously still dislike Bibi, but if you did like it -- or just didn't have a strong opinion -- he now seems incompetent and like a weak leader. It also seems like Gantz has done a good job positioning himself as a credible alternative to the voters who were the most moderate and gettable Bibi supporters in 2022.

https://twitter.com/ZamZamCola/status/1645119446409793537

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Why did New Hope splitted from National Unity?

There's lots of speculation about this, though the stated reason is that they believe Sa'ar should be in the narrow war cabinet. (The narrow war cabinet is a troika currently governing Israel, consisting of Netanyahu, Gantz, and Yoav Gallant. Ron Dermer and Gadi Eisenkot are observer members.) The most likely reason is that Sa'ar is maneuvering to be a player in the next elections; there is a large bloc of voters who have abandoned Bibi, and are currently answering Gantz in public polling, but are not really incredibly natural Gantz voters and are probably winnable for Sa'ar. (There are others who intend to try to appeal them -- Bennett is likely to have a comeback, as is Lieberman, and there may be more breakoffs from Likud -- and it is possible that this lane will be very crowded in the next elections. That would probably be advantageous for Bibi since it would make forming a government without him harder.)

What are the odds of a Meretz-Labor union?

Decently high, since it's happened in the recent past. At the moment polls have Labor as very unlikely to get in, and they will probably need to reach an agreement with either Meretz or Gantz to remain relevant. It seems kind of dead, though -- in the future if it survives it will probably survive as an appendage to someone, and even popular figures associated with it (like Herzog) are likelier to just start their own parties than try to regain control of it. In hindsight Gantz choosing to form his own party and being so successful at getting the support of the most important Labor institutions (in particular, recruiting Nissenkorn, the chairman of the Histadrut) basically killed it.