by Seth Frantzman, The Jerusalem Post
May 30, 2019
Polls show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely do well in snap elections in September.
In power for ten years, the Israeli prime minister appeared to stumble on Wednesday when he drove the Knesset to dissolve itself and call new elections. Ostensibly this was because Benjamin Netanyahu had failed to form a coalition government. But how could the master politician who has dominated Israeli politics for a decade and has thirty years of experience in the Knesset’s coalition politics end up in a situation like this? What if it is actually the best of both worlds for him? He continues on as prime minister with polls showing that he will likely do well in September, and his rivals have to fight over the scraps.
Netanyahu secured 74 votes to dissolve the Knesset. He got more support for new elections than he got for his coalition. If the smaller parties had been smarter, they might have refused to disperse the Knesset and forced the mandate back to President Reuven Rivlin. However, Netanyahu outplayed them, as he has outplayed rivals in the past. He got Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon to join Likud just before the last-minute Knesset discussion, ensuring that Kahlon couldn’t oppose new elections. This may have been cynical, but it worked.
Avigdor Lieberman’s resignation as defense minister last November backfired politically. |
Netanyahu has successfully pushed a narrative since calling elections in late December 2018. Let’s recall that defense minister Avigdor Lieberman resigned in November over the Gaza crisis. At the time, Bayit Yehudi’s Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked also appeared likely to resign and trigger elections. But no. Netanyahu convinced them of the importance of staying on. In early December, Israel announced Operation Northern Shield. Netanyahu could say that he had postponed any major operation in Gaza because of the threats in the North. Shaked and Bennett looked responsible for not bolting. Lieberman looked doomed.
But things changed in the first months of 2019. Lieberman’s hopes rose and Bennett and Shaked fumbled the campaign for their new party, the New Right. They fell short of the threshold. Netanyahu, as usual, needed those right-wing votes that might have bled over to the New Right, and he gobbled up enough of them on election night to keep Bennett and Shaked out of the Knesset. But Lieberman made it in with five seats and 4% of the vote. Math seemed to favor Netanyahu. So did Israel’s voters, who have become more right-wing and religious over the years. Several parties openly ran under various banners of being either the “new Right” or the real and authentic Right. Arye Deri’s Shas campaigned under the idea that Netanyahu needs a “strong Arye.” Indeed, he got 6% of the vote and eight seats.
Naftali Bennett (right) and Ayelet Shaked (left) fumbled the electoral campaign of the New Right. |
In the end the math wasn’t quite there for Netanyahu to form the right-wing government he championed. Instead, those he pilloried as “Left,” the Blue and White party of several former chiefs of staff and Yair Lapid received the same 35 seats that Likud got. But Blue and White leader Benny Gantz had no path to the prime minister’s office. He didn’t appear to try very hard either in the month and a half after the April elections. He let Netanyahu take the discussions down to the wire. When 100,000 did gather in Tel Aviv to protest on May 25, they were looking the wrong way. They were protesting Netanyahu’s drive for an immunity law, a “defense shield for democracy.” What they got was more democracy in the form of more elections.
There is some irony to Gantz saying that night that Netanyahu was turning Israel into “one-man rule” and Lapid claiming that “we’re not your subjects.” Dispersing the Knesset on May 29 enables Netanyahu to continue to rule. He continues to hold on to numerous ministries and concentrate power. While it’s true there will be more elections, it’s unclear if the electorate won’t simply slip into apathy.
| If Netanyahu continues controlling the narrative and demanding a strong mandate, he might find the coalition math in his favor. |
Netanyahu was off to a quick start to grab the narrative on May 29. He argued that the people had chosen him to lead and form a government, and Lieberman had prevented it. Now, Netanyahu may have the best of both worlds ahead of him. If he can keep the narrative going, blaming Lieberman and demanding a strong mandate in the next elections, he might find the coalition math in his favor and he will have two months to govern as he wants. This comes at an important time for Israel. The US wants to roll out a peace plan, and the new elections could postpone that. Netanyahu can also try to continue to seek a way out of a pre-indictment hearing on corruption charges. It was already postponed until October.
Disagreement over a draft bill for conscription of ultra-orthodox haredim contributed to the impasse in forming a new government. |
Netanyahu is super-conservative when it comes to any major moves in politics or strategy. He doesn’t want a war in Gaza. He doesn’t want a real political crisis that could give an opportunity to opponents. He wants to manage each crisis in such a way that all the small parties need him more than he needs them. That means giving the haredim most of what they want in the draft discussions, it means not rocking the boat on the continuing discussions about the Western Wall, it means not removing small bedouin communities such as Khan al-Ahmar or Susiya that caused international opprobrium. It means not causing another crisis related to deporting African migrants.
All in good time. Let the small parties fight over these issues, let them all claim they are more right-wing than the next party, while Netanyahu waits for elections. He has shown in the past that he can do magical things just before elections, always behind in the polls, he comes out ahead or equal in the end. Even when he loses – as Likud did in 2009, coming in second – he finds a way to win.
| Netanyahu has successfully managed coalition crises before. |
He has successfully managed coalition crises before. He signed an agreement with Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz in May 2012, averting elections. Ehud Barak even broke up Labor in 2012 in a move that helped Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu briefly neutered Yisrael Beytenu when Lieberman ran with Likud in 2013. Yair Lapid was even co-opted into the coalition in 2013 as Finance Minister.
It’s almost like people forgot all this on May 29 as Israel headed to new elections. Netanyahu doesn’t leave things to chance. He is conservative and contemplative. He doesn’t allow risk and crises to dominate. He certainly did not want Lieberman in his coalition, forever being able to scupper it. And he evidently didn’t want other Center or Left parties in. He also didn’t want to give Gantz a chance. So he chose what might be a better path: New elections.
| Netanyahu may receive more palatable and malleable choices on the Right in the next government. |
The New York Timesand others have headlined this as a defeat for Netanyahu. But what has he lost so far? He may lose Lieberman, who he doesn’t mind being rid of. He has gained Kahlon. Depending on how things play out, he may also receive more palatable and malleable choices on the Right in the next government that he hopes to form. And he likely knows that the Lapid-Gantz coalition in Blue and White may not be a long marriage. And he knows that Avi Gabbay’s Labor has internal struggles, as do the Balad-Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al marriages.
Netanyahu came through the smoke and mirrors of the coalition discussions unable to form a government. But in calculating the other scenarios, it may be the best of both worlds for him. At least, in the short term. And Netanyahu prefers to govern for short-term gains, not long-term strategies that require too much risk.
Seth Frantzman is The Jerusalem Post’s op-ed editor, a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a founder of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.
Three (3) Most Likely Coalition Scenarios after next elections:
1. Narrow Right Wing – Likud, UTJ/Shas, United Right
2. Right Wing – Likud, UTJ/Shas, United Right, Israel Betenu
3. Unity Govt – Likud (likely w/o Bibi) + Blue/ White
What happens depends on how the votes come out and possible party mergers.
There are no other likely scenarios.
@ Bear Klein: Bear, I have not questioned that Leiberman has great ability great drive and ambition. and a lot of energy. He is an extremely capable, intelligent and resourceful man. What I am saying is that his recent behavior seems unreasonable, erratic, unpredictable and out of character. Almost as if he no longer had any ambition to hold political office any more, but only wanted to stick it to politicians like Bibi whom he feels have given him a hard time over the years.
There was an article in yesterday’s Ynet News, reprinted from “The Media Line, that I think may sheds some light on Yvette’s possible motives. I quiote: “In January, Israel’s cabinet approved a law permitting the export of medical cannabis, thus paving the way for growers to expand into international markets. The country’s economy could reap hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the move, with the legal global market expected to reach $146.4 billion by the end of 2025, according to a recent report by Grand View Research.
A greenhouse growing cannabis on Kibbutz Revadim (Photo: EPA) (Photo: EPA)
A greenhouse growing cannabis on Kibbutz Revadim (Photo: EPA)
Last week, former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz was appointed chairman of a newly established medical cannabis company CFR. Last fall, former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak was named chairman of another medical marijuana firm InterCure. In addition, ex-Air Force commander Ido Nehushtan chairs Cannasure Insurance Service, and Nitzan Alon, a retired major-general, is CEO of the cannabis cultivator Canndoc.
Earlier this year, former police commissioner Yohanan Danino was appointed chairman of Together Pharma, a company licensed to grow, export and distribute medical cannabis products.”
As a former Minister of Defense, Leiberman probably knows these people well. It is quite likely that they approached him and offered to cut him in on this extremely lucrative new business opportunity.
Lieberman does have previous business experience. A series of public prosecutors harassed him about these business dealings , involving claims of conflict of interest,for nearly twenty years, Then the harrassment suddenly stopped a few years ago. An investigation that had been kept mysteriously “open” for over ten years was finally declaared “closed.” Deal, anyone?
Now Yvette has a golden opportunity to get rich legally by parleying his long-term government service, especially in the Defense area, into a senior position in a medical cannibis company. Why wouldn’t anyone in his position retire from a long but disappoining political career, by joining former governmental and military colleagues in a lucrative business career. And since he will be leaving politics, why not give the finger as a parting shot to those he thinks have wronged him?
As to what will happen to Bibi: I think that Franzman is wrong. With Parliament dissolved, Bibi has no countervailing force at all to insulate him from the wrath of the Attorney General, the public prosecutors, and the Supreme Court. By the time a new parliament assembles, he will have to go almost immediately to his preliminary hearing. I am reasonably sure that Mandelblit won’t agree to another delay. This won’t allow him time to build a coalition. During the campaign, drip by drip leaks from the Attorney General’s office (leftist journalists always have ready access to the attorney general, the public prosecutors, and the police), may cost him and the votes of whoever reluctantly turns out to vote for the second time in a year.. I think that Bibi’s number is up.
The one hopeful sign is that the rightist parties seem to have learned their lesson about the need for unity. Bennet, Smotrich, Peretz and Feiglin are saaid to be meeting and negotiating for the set-up of a joint “technical” electoral list. If the combined votes of the Likud , United Right list, and the haredi parties could get more than 60 seats in the Knesset without Leiberman, it is possible they would limit the arbitrary and unlimited powers of the judicial branch, and at least avoid any more unilateral withdrawals.
That would at least make a “right” government somewhat better than a Blue and White Labor government, which would support the continued absolute rule of the Supreme Court, and, if you read their platform carefully, are sympathetic to further unilateral withdrawals from Judea-Samari. (they don’t openly admit this, of course, but they do use the term “separation” to describe their policy towards Judea-Samaria. Peaceniks use this expression as a euphemism for unilateral withdrawal).
As to what will happen to Bibi: I think that Franzman is wrong. With Parliament dissolved, Bibi has no countervailing force at all to insulate him from the wrath of the Attorney General, the public prosecutors, and the Supreme Court. By the time a new parliament assembles, he will have to go almost immediately to his preliminary hearing. I am reasonably sure that Mandelblit won’t agree to another delay. This won’t allow him time to build a coalition. During the campaign, drip by drip leaks from the Attorney General’s office (leftist journalists always have ready access to the attorney general, the public prosecutors, and the police), may cost him and the votes of whoever reluctantly turns out to vote for the second time in a year.. I think that Bibi’s number is up.
The one hopeful sign is that the rightist parties seem to have learned their lesson about the need for unity. Bennet, Smotrich, Peretz and Feiglin are saaid to be meeting and negotiating for the set-up of a joint “technical” electoral list. If the combined votes of the Likud , United Right list, and the haredi parties could get more than 60 seats in the Knesset without Leiberman, it is possible they would limit the arbitrary and unlimited powers of the judicial branch, and at least avoid any more unilateral withdrawals.
That would at least make a “right” government somewhat better than a Blue and White Labor government, which would support the continued absolute rule of the Supreme Court, and, if you read their platform carefully, are sympathetic to further unilateral withdrawals from Judea-Samari. (they don’t openly admit this, of course, but they do use the term “separation” to describe their policy towards Judea-Samaria. Peaceniks use this expression as a euphemism for unilateral withdrawal).
@ Adam Dalgliesh:Liberman is not by any measure an innocent or choir boy.
I must point out however, he came to Israel from Moldova not speaking Hebrew with no money. Started working at the airport in menial jobs. Worked as a security guard. Got into the Hebrew University. Got himself into the Likud and was Bibi’s Chief of Staff. Later started his own party and rose to be Defense Minister and Foreign Minister.
How many immigrants are capable of such feats? He will not make it to his ultimate ambition of becoming Prime Minister and likely will not go down in Israeli history as a great leader. However, he sure did more than most immigrants.
As to what will happen to Bibi: I think that Franzman is wrong. With Parliament dissolved, Bibi has no countervailing force at all to insulate him from the wrath of the Attorney General, the public prosecutors, and the Supreme Court. By the time a new parliament assembles, he will have to go almost immediately to his preliminary hearing. I am reasonably sure that Mandelblit won’t agree to another delay. This won’t allow him time to build a coalition. During the campaign, drip by drip leaks from the Attorney General’s office (leftist journalists always have ready access to the attorney general, the public prosecutors, and the police), may cost him and the Likud the votes of whoever reluctantly turns out to vote for the second time in a year. I think that Bibi’s number is up.
The one hopeful sign is that the rightist parties seem to have learned their lesson about the need for unity. Bennet, Smotrich, Peretz and Feiglin are saaid to be meeting and negotiating for the set-up of a joint “technical” electoral list. If the combined votes of the Likud , United Right list, and the haredi parties could get more than 60 seats in the Knesset without Leiberman, it is possible they would limit the arbitrary and unlimited powers of the judicial branch, and at least avoid any more unilateral withdrawals.
That would at least make a “right” government somewhat better than a Blue and White Labor government, which would support the continued absolute rule of the Supreme Court, and, if you read their platform carefully, are sympathetic to further unilateral withdrawals from Judea-Samaria. (they don’t openly admit this, of course, but they do use the term “separation” to describe their policy towards Judea-Samaria. Peaceniks use this expression as a euphemism for unilateral withdrawal).
@ Bear Klein: Franzman’s analysis ias well as Bear’s are fascinating. I hope that either one or the other proves to be correct.
My own gut feeling is that despite his rise in the polls immediately after new elections were declared. Leiberman is through as a politician. And I also have the feeling he likes it that way.
I can’t see the Likud ever being willing to admit Leiberman into any coalition they lead again. His having first said he wanted Netanyahu to be the next Prime Minister, then reversing himself in only six weeks by refusing to join Bibi’s government , except if Bibi acceded to demands that everyone knew his other coalition partners would never accept, mark him as treacherous in the minds of the Likudniks. They will never trust him again. On the other hand, he has given no indication that he wants to serve in a Blue and White led government, either. So they are unlikely to trust him if they win the election. Although Leiberman may win the “hard core” antiharedi vote, and come back with a respectably sized delegation to the next Knesset, he has inspired too much distrust in the other power brokers to ever be invited into the next government. No matter which of the two largest parties leads the next government, he will be isolated and in opposition.
However, that may not bother him. A recent report in the Jerusalem Post (or was it Ynet News? Or both?) says that many retired Defense Department officials are going into the “medical marijuana” business, which is booming and is thought to have a really big future with “recreational marijuana” expected to be legalized in Israel and in more and more states of the US. Lieberman has been a businessman all his life, even before he went into politics.It is very likely that former colleagues in the Department of Defense, in which he has served for many years, will interest him in going into partnership with them and getting his share of the “golden rain” in this new, ultraprofitable field. In Israel as elsewhere, politic and business go hand in hand.
At his age, leading a minority party, and still in Bibi’s shadow, Leiberman is unlikely to achievemuch political power in his later years. But there is still time for him to greatly increase his fortune and leave a very comfortable inheritance to his children. Tony Blair in England, and Bill Clinton in the United states, have amassed great wealth since retiring from office. Barak Obams seems well on his way there. Why shouldn’t Leiberman, now over seventy, do the same?
He decide to remain in the Knesset as a gadfly, driving Bibi and everyone else crazy, while focusing on his private business interests. They say living well is the best revenge. Driving the political establishment crazy is another way of getting revenge. For a vindictive, embittered man like Lleiberman, his political ambitions frustrated, why not do both?
Things possibly could play out as Franzman speculates. Chance will be better if Bibi’s Sarah does not succeed in keeping Ayelet Shaked out of the Likud. The Likud will benefit in the polls by perhaps 4 seats or so Shaked ends up in the party she started with and fits into like a glove. She is possibly a PM candidate if she makes the Likud her long term political home. She might be the post Bibi Likud number one in the long run.
So Bibi might have to suck it up and try and force the Haredi to capitulate on the draft issue in order to form a government. Those who says he will NOT do this are mistaken. He certainly does not want to do this. Remember he before had Barak and Labor as coalition partners. In the last failed coalition attempts he almost begged Gabbi and Labor to join the coalition offereing both Finance and Defense Ministries among other political bribes.
Bibi will do anything short of asking the Arabs to join a coalition to form one.