Sarah & Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has been facing legal troubles as
Prime Minister of Israel. This is too bad since I’ve had admiration for Bibi
for thumbing his nose at a corrupt Obama, the Antisemitic United Nations, and
allowing Jewish settlements to proceed in Judea/Samaria which is legitimately
Israel’s land contrary to the propaganda of the fake-people known as
Palestinians. LET’S ALSO STIPULATE that Netanyahu has stood against Iran’s
nuclear weaponry ambitions when Obama was willing to wink to a faux slow-down
only to allow future nuke armament.
Bibi’s legal woes seem to be making inroads against his
government’s reelection in upcoming April elections. Since Israel is a
Parliamentary system, governments are elected by political party coalition blocs.
Apparently past political allies are breaking away hoping to form their
coalition bloc for government.
JRH 2/25/19
Your generosity is always appreciated:
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Can Netanyahu Lose?
BIBI'S BALANCING ACT
February 21, 2019
This April’s elections in Israel are no longer a sure
thing for Netanyahu, but even with his rivals teaming up against him, the race
is still Bibi’s to lose.
In recent weeks, the Israeli elections,
called for April 9, 2019, changed from a sure thing for Prime Minister Benjamin
(Bibi) Netanyahu to something approaching an actual race. The election is still
Netanyahu’s to lose, but it certainly has become more interesting.
On December 26, 2018, the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament), in
which Netanyahu’s government has a thin but stable majority, voted to disband
itself and to move up the elections planned for November 2019. The proximate
cause was Netanyahu’s desire to receive a renewed mandate from the public in
the face of the possibility of criminal indictments being issued against him
(one has already been issued to his wife) by the Attorney General, and
Netanyahu’s declared intention not to resign if indicted. Netanyahu probably
assessed that in the political constellation existing at the time none of the
other heads of party in the Knesset had the stature to defeat him.
In September, Lieutenant General (res.) Benjamin (Benny)
Gantz, the former Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF),
had ended the compulsory three-year “cooling-off period” for retired senior
officers. This event was widely anticipated by Netanyahu’s opponents, and there
had been much speculation—and elements of a “bidding war”—regarding his joining
an existing party. On December 27, Gantz registered a political party by the
name of “Israel’s Resilience (Hosen L’yisrael).” On January 29, Gantz announced
that his party had unified with the Telem list headed by former Chief of
General Staff and Defense Minister Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon, who would be number
two on the combined list. On the same day, he gave his first, much anticipated
programmatic speech, which was well received.
Since then, Gantz has become the main challenger to
Netanyahu. On February 21, after a lengthy tug-of-war with the former front
runner of the opposition, Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party (who felt he,
as the more experienced politician, should be at the top of the list), the two
parties agreed to run on a joint list, called “Blue-White” (the colors of
Israel’s flag), with Gantz first on the list, Lapid second and Yaalon, third.
Lapid had been under significant public pressure by the anti-Netanyahu camp,
which feared splitting its vote, and that cannibalistic infighting in the
Center would only help Netanyahu. The two parties have agreed that if the joint
list is able to form a government, Gantz would serve as Prime Minister for the
first 30 months, and Lapid for the next 18.
While handicapping polls is a mug’s game, it appears that
since Gantz’s Israel’s Resilience has been running at around 20 seats in the
120-seat Knesset in the polls, and Yesh Atid at 10-12, the combined list is
running neck-and-neck with Netanyahu’s Likud party, which is polled at around
30 seats (similar to their current number).1 It
may even enjoy a bounce due to the merger. This is dramatic, since Gantz’s
party didn’t even exist before late December.
Netanyahu’s strategy now largely consists in attempting to
besmirch his rivals’ records (slightly problematical, since both Gantz and
Yaalon served him as Prime Minister), and piling up achievements that highlight
his political and security experience. This includes taking credit, after a
decade of useful ambiguity, for attacks on Iranian targets in Syria; stressing
diplomatic successes with Arab and Muslim states, including visits to Oman and
Chad; spotlighting his close
relationship with the current U.S. President and his willingness to irritate
his predecessor; and taking an outsized role at the recent Warsaw Summit. (His
arranging to host a summit, in Israel, of the Visegrad Group states—Czech
Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia—did not work out as planned: When
Netanyahu and his freshly appointed Foreign Minister made remarks that annoyed
the Poles, the summit was summarily cancelled.) But will the strategy work
anyway?
To answer that
question we have to look at a series of deeper political trends in Israel. The
first is that Israel has a tradition, since 1977, of “flash-in-the-pan” center
parties, which do very well in their first election cycle and then dwindle
away—either by losing support or by being absorbed into a larger party—by the
next cycle or the one after. Israelis have for many years been unimpressed by
the choices given them by the Right and the Left, and by their leaders, and so
have plumped for new faces promising a “third way.” In the past 42 years, the
following center parties have come and (mostly) gone:
·
1977—Democratic Movement for Change—15 seats
(the third largest party in the Knesset).
·
1981—Telem (Dayan)—2 seats, Shinui -2 seats.
·
1984—Yachad—3 seats.
·
1996—Yisrael Ba‘aliya—7 seats, The Third Way—4
seats.
·
1999—Shinui (new)—6 seats, Center—6 seats.
·
2006—Kadima—29 seats (the largest party in the
Knesset, in both this and the 2009 elections), Pensioners—7 seats.
·
2013—Yesh Atid—19 seats (second largest party),
Hatnua—6 seats.
·
2015—Kulanu—10 seats.
These parties—with the notable exception of Kadima, formed
by breakaway, very senior members of Likud and Labor—were often headed by
non-politicians or unconventional politicians and strove to create lists of
mostly non-political candidates “untainted” by previous service in the
legislature or government. Yesh Atid itself was founded in 2012 and only
entered the Knesset in 2013; Lapid was then a media personality and political
newcomer. “Israel’s Resilience” is, therefore, only the latest example of a
long tradition in Israeli politics.
The second trend that Gantz’s meteoric rise illuminates is a
recurrent longing on the part of the Israeli public for a “man on horseback”—a
politically unsullied general who rises above mere politics yet is a proven
“safe pair of hands.” This phenomenon is partly due to the centrality of
security concerns in Israel, but also to the high level of trust in the IDF in
Israel, as opposed to political institutions. According to the Israeli
Democracy Institute’s Annual Index, the
IDF is the most trusted institution by 78 percent of the general public, as
opposed to the media (31 percent), the government (30.5 percent), the Knesset
(27.5 percent) and political parties (16 percent). Political debuts by generals
into Israeli politics have known their ups and downs over the years, and once
engaged, most generals have not proven themselves significantly different in
their political and executive capabilities than their civilian counterparts. Be
that as it may, half of the “third way” parties listed above were headed by a
former general or senior security official. In addition, many civilian parties
seek the “ballast” that former generals or security officials can provide to
their civilian-led lists (witness Labor’s recent “parachuting” of a retired
general to their number two slot).
Unlike in most states, however, the Israeli electorate’s
desire for the involvement of former generals in politics does not necessarily
stem from a conservative worldview. To the extent that the IDF command level
can be said to have a political orientation or culture, it has been, for the
past thirty years at least, moderate. Of the three former generals to have
become Prime Minister, two—Itzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak—headed the Labor Party,
and one—Ariel Sharon—broke with his Likud Party to form the centrist Kadima.
The majority of generals and former senior security officers who have gone into
politics in Israel’s history entered Left and Center parties.
In any case, the addition of Yaalon to Gantz’s list, and the
addition of yet a third former Chief of General Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, present
a serious challenge to Netanyahu’s self-professed image as “Mr. Security,” and
to a campaign strategy that stresses his foreign policy and national security
expertise and experience.
A third trend
in Israeli politics highlighted by the current race is the increased difficulty
of coalition building. No large party has ever been able to form a government
entirely on its own in Israel; the government has always been a coalition. The
head of the party with the most votes is the one Israel’s President first asks
to form a coalition government. In 2009 Netanyahu was able to form a government
by bringing in the Labor Party under Ehud Barak (against the opposition of many
luminaries within Labor); in 2013 Yesh Atid gave him the majority, and in 2015
Kulanu joined his coalition.
In the past, creative coalition-making was eminently
possible. In recent years, however, the political system has hardened. The
chances are vanishingly small that the parties to the right of Likud will join
a Left or Center-led government. However, many of their leaders are personally
ill-disposed toward Netanyahu, and may be positioning themselves to try to take
over Likud if Netanyahu is forced from office. The Arab party bloc will not
join a right-wing government, but has a significant problem with the Center
parties, which, in their desire to woo voters from Likud, often venture into
problematic rhetoric and policies from the perspective of Arab citizens. The
ultra-orthodox parties, which used to be ideologically flexible on security and
foreign affairs and have joined Left and Center governments in the past, have
in the Netanyahu years become ever more oriented toward the Right, in
consonance with the political leadings of their electorates.
It is therefore more difficult in general for parties of the
Center and Left to build a coalition, since any coalition that excludes Likud
and the right-wing parties would have to include both the ultra-orthodox and
anti-ultra-orthodox (Meretz and to a lesser extent, Yesh Atid) parties, which
are ideologically incompatible. Otherwise, they would have to depend for their
majority on the support of the Arab party(s), which they fear doing since they
leave themselves open to claims of “lacking a Jewish majority”—an accusation
that haunted the government of Yitzhak Rabin until his assassination.
The bottom line: For several decades it has been easier for
Likud to form a narrow government than for parties to its Left to do so.
The math may work out slightly differently in the coming
elections. This is to a large part due to the “electoral threshold,” a
mechanism built into Israeli election law, which was designed to prevent the
proliferation of small parties, which were perceived to have led to
un-governability and government instability in the past. The 11th (1984),
12th (1988) , and 15th (1999) Knessets, for
instance, each contained 15 parties, some of which had one or two seats but
held the pivotal role in close election results and therefore had inordinate
leverage and influence. In 2014, the Knesset passed legislation raising the
threshold to 3.25 percent of the vote: Since the Knesset has 120 seats, this
meant that the minimum number of seats a party needed to get into the Knesset
was four. That, in turn, led to the merging before the 2015 elections of
ideologically close parties to ensure reaching the required number of votes,
creating the Jewish Home party on the Right, and the United Arab List on the
Left. However, personal rivalries and stubborn ideological differences within
these “portmanteau parties” have caused them to collapse: Labor’s Gabbay
unceremoniously dissolved his alliance with Tzippy [sic] Livni, who after 20 years
(including an electoral victory in 2009 that she was unable to translate into a
governing coalition) recently announced her retirement from politics; the
Jewish Home split into three parties; and the Arab List has split into at least
two.
This could have led to the discounting and “loss” of a
substantial number of votes on the far Right, since they will be spread too
thinly over too many parties. In addition, Kulanu, Netanyahu’s Right-Center
partner, may not pass the threshold. This would strengthen the larger parties,
including their ideological enemies (Israel’s Resilience/Yesh Atid). Netanyahu
therefore put unprecedented effort into convincing the two remaining
modern-Orthodox, pro-settler factions in Jewish Home (whose leaders, Naftali
Bennet and Ayelet Shaked, split to form the own, secular, party, the New
Right), to join with “Jewish Power” (Otzma Yehudit), a far-right racist party
not in the current Knesset. This would ensure that votes cast for these three
parties’ would not be dustbinned due to their not crossing the threshold.
Netanyahu has promised the resulting, new, far-right portmanteau party the
Education and Housing Ministries and two seats in the Security Cabinet; He also
promised to put their representative in the 28th place on his
own Likud list, from which that representative would return to the new party
after the elections. This strategy should strengthen the Right bloc and prevent
the erasure of votes. But it is also risky, since some “soft” Likud and Jewish
Home supporters are dismayed by the entry of the racist, and perceived
anti-democratic, Jewish Power into their camp.
With the reshuffling of the party decks and the creation of
a new balance between the Center-Left and the Right, the ultra-orthodox parties
may return to their traditional balancing role.
Lastly, it is important to note the decline of the Left in
Israeli politics. Labor, which as recently as 1992 had 44 seats in the Knesset
(and 34 in 1996), had 19 seats in 2006, 13 in 2009, 15 in 2013, and 24 in 2015,
after it joined with the remnants of Kadima under Livni. The most optimistic
predictions say it will win 10-11 in the next Knesset. Meretz, the Zionist
party to the left of Labor, which had a peak of 12 seats in 1992, has five
seats in the current Knesset, and is expected to achieve a similar result in
the next elections, if it doesn’t disappear entirely due to the election
threshold. Livni’s party, the rump of Kadima, has folded. Why has this
happened?
The perceived failure of the Oslo process, and of the
unilateral withdrawals from Southern Lebanon (2000) and the Gaza Strip (2005),
key policies of Left- and Center-led governments; the continued stalemate on
the Palestinian issue (attributed by the majority of Israelis to a lack of a
viable Palestinian partner, especially since the split in 2007 between the Gaza
Strip under Hamas and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority/Fatah); as
well as demographics, have moved the midpoint of Israeli politics to the Right.
Centrist (or even right-of-center) parties like Yesh Atid and Israel’s
Resilience are delegitimized as “leftists”—a term of opprobrium in Israeli
political discourse today: The actual Left is largely seen as irrelevant.
Recent internal developments in Labor seem to indicate that the party is
shifting from seeing itself as a potential ruling party to a
democratic-socialist “woke” opposition, which may explain the internal
pressures to merge with Meretz on its Left.
The overarching
dynamics of the system as sketched above still work to Netanyahu’s advantage.
He enjoys the powerful benefits of incumbency, with its accompanying ability to
largely shape the political, diplomatic, and media agenda. His base disregards
his legal problems, either seeing them as the product of a conspiracy by
left-leaning elites and the deep state or shrugging them off as peccadillos
that should not bring down a strong and effective leader (especially since they
would return “the Left” to power).
To win, Netanyahu only needs his current coalition to do no
worse than before in the aggregate; the election is his to lose. However,
Netanyahu’s legal issues and increasingly polarizing political style, combined
with possible loss of seats due to inability of prospective coalition partners
to pass the electoral threshold, may have opened a narrow path to victory for a
“clean-hands” rule-of-law candidate of the Center-Left.
Even if Netanyahu is elected, it is not at all clear that
the indictments (which are expected to come before the elections despite the
Prime Minister’s ferocious efforts to push them off) and the court process they
will engender, will allow him to remain in office through his term. So whatever
the results of this election, expect more political reshuffling and possibly
even another round of elections in the not-so-distant future.
1A word of caution: Public opinion polls in
Israel historically slightly underestimate support for Likud.
__________________
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Joshua Krasna, a
former senior Israeli civil servant, lives in Israel, teaches at NYU’s Center
for Global Affairs, and is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute, as well as a fellow of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and
Security.
Since its
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