T. Belman. As Horovitz points out, the right wing block is polling 59 to 60 seats now which means this time is different. The public has got a taste of a centre left coalition and they don’t like it. Also, Horovitz doesn’t bother to report the many statements made by Lapid concerning kissing Biden’s ass, that I am sure will hurt his standing.
He’ll have about four months in transitional office to establish his credentials — to show that a PM can both protect Israel from its enemies and champion unity at home
By DAVID HOROVITZ, TOI 23 June 2022,
Provided Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid can engineer the demise of their government more efficiently than they held it together, the Knesset will next week pass the final readings of legislation to dissolve itself and set new elections for this fall — marking the fifth time the Israeli electorate has been dragged to the polling stations since April 2019.
Snap surveys published Tuesday night on Israel’s three main television channels ostensibly showed that, as with the previous occasions, election five will meet the definition of insanity (dubiously) attributed to Albert Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Four times from 2019 to 2021, the Israeli public elected a Knesset from which no stable, long-lasting and fully functional governing coalition emerged. And Tuesday night’s surveys were generally presented as showing that the current Knesset “blocs” — the eight parties in the outgoing Bennett-Lapid coalition, and the four parties in the Benjamin Netanyahu-led opposition — will again be “deadlocked,” with neither capable of mustering a Knesset majority, and the Joint List, a mainly Arab alliance, holding the balance of power between them.
Lazy or deliberate, this is a misreading of the electorate’s preferences. What all three surveys showed, in fact, is a sharp rise in support for the Netanyahu-led bloc — constituting Likud, the soaring far-right Religious Zionism party, and the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties. In the March 2021 elections, those four parties managed 52 seats between them. Sixteen months later, the three TV surveys put them at 59-60 seats — on the cusp of a Knesset majority.
Furthermore, it is by no means clear that Bennett’s Yamina should be automatically counted in the anti-Netanyahu bloc. Bennett himself did not rule out sitting with Netanyahu last year; quite the reverse, he publicly signed a pledge two days before the elections not to sit in a government led by Lapid and reliant on the support of Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party. Even two weeks later, after the results were in, he declared that “the will of the people” was for “the establishment of a stable right-wing, nationalist government.”
Bennett may or may not lead Yamina into the next elections. His long-time ally Ayelet Shaked might do so. Whoever leads it might want to maintain a certain ambiguity about its preferred coalition partners in order to maximize its diminishing appeal. (Yamina is polling at a weak 4-5 seats, barely above the Knesset threshold, at potential risk of extinction.) Whatever the case, while New Hope’s Gideon Sa’ar, Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman and Blue and White’s Benny Gantz have all this week made publicly clear that they will continue to resist Netanyahu’s return as prime minister, nothing similarly definitive can be said of Yamina.
While the pundits talk of ongoing deadlock, therefore, Netanyahu’s delighted anticipation that he is on the way back to the Prime Minister’s Residence on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street after Bennett’s immensely irritating interruption is understandable — and the latest polls will have done nothing to dent that confidence.
But while Bennett opted never to make his home at Balfour Street, there will be another prime ministerial resident for at least the next few months: interim prime minister Lapid. He will hold the reins of power, under a coalition agreement honored by Bennett, from the moment the Knesset dissolves, through the elections, and until a new governing coalition is sworn in.
Lapid is now a 10-year veteran politician, conciliatory and quietly effective. It was he who put together the country’s most implausible coalition, and his own 17-strong Yesh Atid party (rising in the polls) has remained unstintingly loyal to him and to it (in contrast to Bennett’s broken Yamina).
Lapid has twice put aside his prime ministerial ambitions — in partnering in 2019 with Gantz (who broke their alliance in 2020 to enter a predictably ill-fated coalition alliance with Netanyahu), and in ushering Bennett into power last year. He forwent his own speech during the raucous Knesset session last June when Bennett was sworn in to lead the government he had painstakingly assembled. He barely spoke on Monday when Bennett announced its demise.
Now Lapid is about to have his moment, and to take on the against-all-odds challenge of turning a brief premiership into a lengthy and substantial one.
Netanyahu will gleefully seek to discredit Lapid as a lightweight and, as he did with Bennett, as a danger to Israel’s security. He will attempt to stain Lapid as the proven partner of Ra’am, which the former prime minister repeatedly demonizes as a supporter of terrorism even though he, too, sought to forge an alliance with it. He will argue that Lapid’s only path to electoral victory lies in coopting the still more unpalatable Joint List.
Lapid will counter that his and Bennett’s coalition sought to restore respect and harmony to Israeli politics; that it worked to heal the economy, tackle terrorism, and maintain warm ties with the US while deepening the partnership to thwart Iran. That, unlike Netanyahu, it put the national interest ahead of the personal.
Proud though Lapid may be of the outgoing coalition’s achievements, its failure to hold together will be depicted by Netanyahu as a debacle. Furious though he and Bennett may be at the relentless pressure Netanyahu exerted on its members, the fact is that Netanyahu succeeded — that Yamina fell apart, and the unreliability of other coalition members accelerated its demise.
Understated by nature, Lapid will need to run a bold campaign if he is to thwart Netanyahu’s comeback. He’ll need to credibly explain why he and his allies regard Netanyahu as a genuine danger to Israeli democracy. He’ll need to highlight that Netanyahu is the man who mainstreamed Itamar Ben Gvir and his incendiary anti-Arab pyromania, and that a Netanyahu government will be toxic with Ben Gvir’s extremism. He’ll need to effectively debate Netanyahu one-on-one, or show Netanyahu unwilling to face him.
He’ll need to maximize the fact of his incumbency; this will be the first time in five that Netanyahu is running for prime minister from the opposition. As interim PM, Lapid will host high-profile visitors, starting next month with US President Joe Biden, be able to make resonant foreign trips, and seek to advance toward warmed relations with other regional players.
He’ll have about four months in transitional office to establish his credibility as a permanent prime minister — to show that a leader can be both competent and magnanimous, resolute and empathetic, and that commitments to the country’s internal unity and to a fierce defense against its enemies are not mutually exclusive.
Four months, and multiple limitations on what he is allowed to do as an interim premier.
Four months to reverse what the polls are really showing.
@Edgar
You can believe anything you want, I have no control over someone’s beliefs or likes and dislikes.
I don’t post my opinions (based on facts) “just to get an argument going”.
You argument is completely illogical and untrue.
There is nothing I can do if someone wishes to argue against facts and reality in order to rationalize their beliefs and prejudices.
When Lapid greets Biden on the tarmac in Israel it will be a meeting of two empty-headed clowns masquerading as “world leaders”. The main difference being that at least Lapid, unlike Biden, is not mean spirited and senile. To be clear, Biden didn’t need to become senile in order to be mean spirited…..he has been that way from the beginning of his lying racist career.
@ Edgar Like “Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann.
@SEBASTIEN-
Re my note regarding Reader, I meant no disrespect to him. I neglected to include that, I believe now that he disputes just to get an argument going, often from enjoyment of give and take.,
When young I was like that. I asserted that I could argue pro-or-con, on any given subject,…and I could, and DID. …AND enjoyed it immensely. So I understand the feeling. It is a form of challenging peoples’ brains to see what they can come up with spontaneously.
Jew arrested in stabbing of Arab to appear before court. Suspect still denied access to a lawyer
June 3, 2022
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/flashes/580142
In what kind of Jewish state is a Jewish suspect denied the right
The way Horovitz describes his angelic Lapid, he had 4 months in which to totally destroy the country’s struggling status as a “Jewish State” and hand it over to the Shkotzim..
@SEBASTIEN-
You should know Reader well by now. Along with many pithy, focused posts he has another attribute. He will be “agin it”. Reminiscent of Herbert Jenkins’ famous character “Bindle\” where his friend “Ginder Dick” is always “agin” anything positive.
Ben Gvir is positive. He knows what he wants, he honestly says so. He is a frue-blue Jew.I support his attitude. Arabs are a curde in Israel which has caused many thousands of deaths of completely innocent people.
The trouble for Ben Gvir is Tikkun Olom, Political Correctness and weak kneed politicians, not to forget Israeli secular leanings with people like Lapid, who has power, temporarily I hope, to do and has done enormous damage to Israel, both economically and internally..
The so-called “Israeli electorate” are not “dragged in to” anything. It is their own doing, because of the erratic voting patterns they have. Assuming no fraud…which is also a big assumption.
They wanted a change.. They GOT IT. They didn’t like it. YET, LIKUD bloc is polling ony 60. So who is at fault the LIKUD or the “electorate”. I say the stupid, obstinate, self destructive jealous, hating Israli nature causing this shambles of the past 3 years.
At such a perilous time. Of course Israel always has a perilous time in existing. BUT…3 years ago Israel was a highly respected and highly placed 1st world country. It is still living on the fumes of that regard. Enormous internal damage has been done by this outgoing group of mismatched, inept nonentities.
As usual we must …Wait and see.
I can now read the rest of Hurowitz article to see what else. he’s written.
@Reader
What poppycock. For all his conemnation and speculations about Ben Gvir, it is he who is utilizing his office and person to support people who deserve to be supported, and draw attention to outrages that deserve have attention drawn to them.
Jews should be free to walk the streets without be abused in Israel, they should be free to celebrate their national pride without being stoned, they deserve to be supported by the authorities to do these things and this is what Ben Gvir has been promoting, in part at least. Jews should not be forced to support the Arab dictates to prevent Arab violence. This is the very best way to reinforce the Arab street violence and the best way to increase attacks on the Jews.
@ Reader I know a precedent for Ben Gvir’s action. In West Harlem, mostly African-American residents asked that Alexander Hamilton’s house, adjacent to City College of NY, be moved to a nearby park with a high crime rate so Secret Service would have to come in and protect the park! I wonder if it was this that inspired him.
@Reader I am quoting above article, second to last paragraph.
Ben Gvir set up his office in area the police refused to defend knowing they couldn’t ignore an elected elite like himself. Brilliant move. How dare they act as though it’s ok for Arabs to attack Jews with impunity.
This is precisely the difference between leftwiing and rightwing Jews. It’s not that the right “knows who to hate” but that the left doesn’t know whom to love and protect.
Tho7gh I am secular, I would vote for Ben Gvir knowing he wiuld be part of Bibi’s coalition if i could vote.
@Sebastien Zorn
Who are you quoting?
Anyway, don’t try to explain to me about the “wings”, anyone who sticks to this theory is a useful idiot for the PTB.
Ben Gvir is a known provocateur, if he weren’t one he wouldn’t be around starting as early as the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005.
This is big. I wonder where Lapid stands.
Jerusalem Arabs Now Have to Prove Ownership Over Contested Property
By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency – 27 Sivan 5782 – June 26, 2022
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/jerusalem/jerusalem-arabs-now-have-to-prove-ownership-over-contested-property/2022/06/26/
@Reader
Right, demanding Jews should have equal rights to and be protected from the racist violence of Arabs is “pyromania.” This kind of statement highlights the very real and essential political differences among Jews.
Giving up land or rights to the Arabs is left wing. Saying Israel should just be a state of all its citizens is left wing.