What’s Ayelet Shaked’s Next Move?

For Ayelet Shaked, conservatism is not just a political philosophy, her friends say, but a way of life. With the collapse of the coalition, will the now-outgoing interior minister rise above the controversy around her and chart her own, new hard-right course?

By Hilo Glazer, HAARETZ June 28/22

Few cabinet ministers have brought about a revolution in their areas of responsibility and left a genuine imprint. Ariel Sharon did so as minister of housing and construction, as did Benjamin Netanyahu in his capacity as finance minister, and Moshe Kahlon, during his tenure as communications minister. There are other examples – some recalled in a positive light, others negatively – but in any case it’s a short list. Three years ago, a new name was added to it: Ayelet Shaked.

At the beginning of 2019, when her tenure as justice minister in Netanyahu’s government drew to a close, Shaked boasted of making 330 appointments of judges and court registrars, a record number, and declared, “I broke the paradigm of the judicial system.” With no fewer than four new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, her assertion was not without foundation. Shaked, who is today 46, had wrought deep transformations in the judicial system.

Her popularity among the right-wing camp was then at its height. She was dubbed the “iron woman” and surveys started to examine her suitability to be prime minister; one found that if she were to head Likud, she would do as well as Netanyahu in an election. At the time, she did not rule out the possibility of running for that top spot.

Her political clout extended down to the grass-roots level. Some 600 supporters, who were committed to her personally, organized in five WhatsApp groups under the name Sayeret Shaked – “the Shaked commando unit.” “We wanted to disconnect her from [Yamina party leader Naftali] Bennett, says Shlomo Levy, who works in real estate and was behind the project. “We saw her as a candidate for the premiership.”

The aspirations of her fans were a nightmare for many on the left. Her hectic term in the Justice Ministry showed that Shaked wasn’t just another politician who was all talk and no action. At the time, Shaked looked like the photographic negative of the Likud wheeler-dealers who saw themselves as potential heirs to their party’s leader, Netanyahu: Suddenly, hawkish rhetoric was accompanied by operational capability.

But exactly a year ago, with the formation of the governing coalition by Naftali Bennett – which will officially come to the end of its road next week, after the final vote is taken on dissolution of the Knesset – her status headed south. After a late-night conversation with her husband, Ophir, Shaked decided to join that coalition with Meretz and the United Arab List, though both she and Ophir were well aware that the move would “devalue” her in the eyes of the right-wing camp. However, it’s doubtful whether they anticipated how fast and steep the fall would be.

Her supporters’ groups shut down instantly; Sayeret Shaked simply evaporated. Many of her admirers turned their back on her, and even her loyal political and legal consultant, Yakhin Zik, attacked her publicly and declared that what she had done was unforgivable. In public appearances – condolence calls, ceremonies, fundraising events – Shaked found herself denounced viciously by right-wingers, who called her “disgraceful,” “traitor,” “collaborator.” Internal surveys taken prior to the developments this week indicated that she was the least popular minister in the cabinet.

Is this the end of Shaked’s rise to the top? Her close circle says it’s too soon to write her off. “On the surface, the right-wing public is against the government, but the attitude toward her is far more forgiving than toward the others,” says Alon Dvir, who resigned as Shaked’s chief of staff two weeks ago. “What I hear from the leaders in the settlements are comments like, ‘Yesterday we demonstrated against the government, but we appreciate you [Shaked].’ At various events and during tours, they still give her a warm welcome.”

In April 2019, when Shaked and Bennett’s Hayamin Hehadash party didn’t get enough votes to enter the Knesset, it took her only three months to recover and in July, ahead of yet another election, she headed a united slate including Hayamin Hehadash and other hard-right parties such as the Union of Right-Wing Parties. Now, with the dissolution of the government and a new election looming, the unavoidable question is: Will Shaked now succeed in rising to the surface after the depths to which she plummeted?

• • •

Before the ground-shaking decision this week by Bennett and Yair Lapid regarding the demise of their coalition – about which she was informed just minutes before it was publicly announced – Shaked had been planning a comeback campaign among the bastions of the right wing. Whereas Bennett had seemed to have given up on that electoral base, Shaked was pursuing the same hawkish line as before. As interior minister she was intent on deporting asylum seekers and was very tough on the issue of refugees from Ukraine. She recently approved establishment of a number of new Jewish communities in the Negev to block expansion of Bedouin locales there, supported the use of so-called admission committees to block Arabs from purchasing homes in certain Jewish communities, and generally spearheaded moves that are music to many conservative ears.

While some ministers had been walking on eggshells in what was apparently a futile attempt to preserve the coalition, Shaked had been acting both above and below the radar to tighten her hold on deep-right circles, wielding the immense power of her ministry to achieve her goals.

A case in point is the advisory committee on revoking citizenship of Israelis who have been involved in acts of terrorism. In March, she appointed to the committee Gilad Sarig, a senior official in Bank Hapoalim, who in the past identified himself as being active in Haymin Hehadash, Bennett and Shaked’s former party, and two other prominent right-wing personalities who had criticized Shaked publicly since the establishment of the coalition: Morris Hirsch, former chief military prosecutor in the territories; and Sarah Haetzni-Cohen, head of the My Israel extra-parliamentary movement that Shaked helped to found in 2010. After their appointments, the intensity of the criticism of the three appeared to have abated.

An apparently similar rationale led Shaked to appoint attorney Doron Nehemia as the public’s representative on an Interior Ministry humanitarian committee that deals with asylum seekers. Nehemia is one of the founders of Nativ Balikud, which seeks to strengthen liberal elements in Likud. Before the formation of Bennett’s coalition, Nehemia assailed Shaked from every possible public platform; since the appointment, his protest has been muted. He attributes that to being preoccupied with personal matters and to his lack of interest in social media. Be that as it may, the matter of appointments to committees is only one example of how Shaked has mixed policy and politics. The Interior Ministry is the perfect platform for that, as it oversees local governments in the country. Shaked often crisscrossed the country, visiting local authorities, and being especially attentive to right-wing mayors and council heads. Examples include Benny Biton (Dimona), Miriam Feierberg (Netanya), Aviram Dahari (Kiryat Gat), Tomer Glam (Ashkelon), Yehiel Zohar (Netivot) and Shai Hajaj (chairman of the Center for Regional Government) – all from Likud.

 

While some ministers had been walking on eggshells trying to preserve the coalition, Shaked had been acting to tighten her hold on deep-right circles, wielding the immense power of her ministry to achieve her goals.

And there are additional moves on Shaked’s part that have smacked of politics: splitting off the settlement of Sha’arei Tikva from the Shomron (Samaria) Regional Council in a way that benefits council head Yossi Dagan, who wields great influence in Likud and views the settlement as an electoral obstacle; supporting the ultra-Orthodox community of Kiryat Ye’arim (aka Telz-Stone), outside of Jerusalem, which sought to expand into land belonging to the adjacent Arab local council of Abu Ghosh, contrary to the recommendations of a committee that examined the subject; and promoting construction of new neighborhoods that will enlarge the municipal boundaries of six cities – five of which have mayors from Likud or Yamina, Shaked and Bennett’s current party.

Above all, though, looms Shaked’s tough positions on immigration. Her ministry is currently drafting a new law to prevent infiltration of foreigners into Israeli territory, it seeks to expedite the deportation of asylum seekers to Sudan and is working to send back to the Democratic Republic of Congo hundreds of its citizens who have found a home here. That reverses a 20-year-old policy of the ministry to grant collective protection to DRC citizens in light of the civil war that raged in their country, and without the need to consult experts in the Foreign Ministry.

An Interior Ministry team is presently formulating legislation that would allow withholding part of the salaries of asylum seekers, with the money being returned to them only on their departure from Israel. A similar law was struck down by the High Court of Justice two years ago, because it was said to have a disproportionate impact on the rights of workers whose salaries are already extremely low. Shaked has devised a new version that would sequester salary based on income level: It would involve 6 percent of the salary of those earning the minimum wage and 20 percent of every shekel above that.

One of Shaked’s chief allies in implementing her hard-handed policies is Tomer Moskowitz, whom she appointed to head the ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority. Moskowitz has earned a reputation as an official who exploits all the administrative tools at his disposal to advance the deportation of asylum seekers. Among refugee aid organizations his hyperactivity is even generating nostalgia for the staff of Aryeh Dery, from Shas, the former interior minister.

“In the past, asylum requests were hardly ever granted, but they weren’t rejected, either, and people remained here as long as the request was pending,” says Sigal Rozen from Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual, which deals with refugees and migrants. “In contrast,” she adds, “Moskowitz is displaying great industriousness. More requests are being examined – and, of course, rejected. The committee for humanitarian affairs, which used to hang on to requests for 10 years, is suddenly issuing a great many more replies, all of them negative. There are some tough cases, but apparently nothing is sufficiently humanitarian for the humanitarian committee.”

• • •

Why has Ayelet Shaked (née Ben Shaul), who grew up in a secular, liberal environment in the upscale Bavli neighborhood of north Tel Aviv, made it her mission to expel the asylum seekers from south Tel Aviv? How did Shaked – a graduate of the city’s Ironi Dalet High School, a former leader of an entire Israel Scouts troop, a computer engineer who’s married to a kibbutznik and is known for being quite stylish – become a right-wing symbol in almost every recent government – a woman who sees the rabbis as a source of authority and has become the natural ally of some of the most racist and homophobic politicians in the Knesset?

That question, which first came up when Shaked entered politics a decade ago, remains open. However, interviews conducted by Haaretz in recent weeks with many of her friends and colleagues suggest that no one perceives her combination of traits as an anomaly. Shaked, they say, was right-wing and conservative almost from the day she began thinking for herself. Her good friend Einat Peled recalls when, as 20-something women, going out one night in Tel Aviv turned into a political event. “We were hanging out on a ‘white night,’” Peled relates, referring to the annual all-night cultural event in the city, “and at some point Ayelet asked me to go someplace with her, and suddenly I find myself at a parlor meeting with Gideon Ezra” – a right-wing politician.

Shaked’s biography shows several reasons for her decision to strike roots in right-wing soil. Her maternal grandmother belonged to the centrist General Zionist party, her father was a Likudnik. In the army, her service as an education noncom in Sayeret Golani – an elite unit of the gung-ho Golani infantry brigade – brought her into contact with members of the religious-Zionist movement, and proved to be a milestone in her life.

“A young woman from north Tel Aviv who grew up in a solid home, the cream of the crop, meets a soldier like me – a settler, religious, from Gush Etzion [the settlement bloc near Bethlehem],” says Assi Levy, an officer in the unit who is still part of her circle of friends. “In the encounter between those stereotypes there was a mutual eye-opener. I was surprised at how much interest she took.”

Levy also rejects the “ice princess” image. “She had incredible energy,” he recalls. “She was known as Ayelet hamishtolelet”– rampaging Ayelet.

Amir Schutz, another old friend from the unit, relates that “nine of the 17 members of our team were religious, and that’s where the deep connection between Ayelet and the national-religious public was forged. I am originally from Kiryat Arba [an urban settlement abutting Hebron]. She used to visit me there on Shabbat and we would hike in the territories. It was the first time she saw what a settlement was.” He adds: “She was conservative already then.”

Following her army service she studied electrical engineering and computer science at Tel Aviv University, and advanced in the world of high-tech – but her heart lay elsewhere. The scenes of the 2005 evacuation of Gush Katif, the bloc of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, prompted her to vote for the first time for the slate of the National Religious Party-National Union, led by Rabbi Benny Elon. It also energized her political drive.

A member of the Likud party put her in touch with Benjamin Netanyahu at about that time. It was in the aftermath of his resignation from the Sharon government as finance minister, when he led Likud to an all-time low of 12 Knesset seats. The ambitious young engineer didn’t hesitate, in 2004, to take the rather lowly post of office director for Netanyahu, and also put her pride aside a few years later when Netanyahu asked her to help find a chief of staff who would be her boss. Shaked consulted with Erez Eshel, who is involved in the religious-Zionist movement, and he recommended Naftali Bennett, whom he knew from their joint service in the elite Maglan reconnaissance unit. She and Bennett met in a café in the Renanim Mall in Ra’anana – and the rest is history.

Shaked used her time in Netanyahu’s office as an accelerated internship in politics, carefully observing the wizard of campaigns and talking points. Two years later, Bennett and Shaked left the bureau in a huff, after they both had fallen from grace with Sara Netanyahu, the then-prime minister’s wife. However, whereas Bennett spoke publicly about his soured relations with Sara Netanyahu, describing work by her side as a “course in terror,” Shaked made a point of not maligning her. People who worked with her attribute this to the mythological standing of the veteran Likud leader, in her eyes. “She admires him, hates him and trembles at him all at the same time,” one of them says.

In 2008, she returned to high-tech as a product manager at Texas Instruments. Ofer Friedman, her superior at the time, notes that “she had an exceptional ability to mobilize and captivate people. In terms of drive and focus and energies and an ability to set and achieve targets, I never encountered another employee with capabilities like hers. It was astonishing.”

But Shaked was still infected by the political bug. By day she was an engineer, but her nights were devoted to My Israel, a right-wing movement she’d helped to establish in 2010 that exploited social media in an unprecedented way, using sweeping and at times unrestrained rhetoric: posters dripping with blood, publication of ministers’ phone numbers, a campaign to get actor Dvir Benedek removed as a presenter for a bank ad campaign after he expressed solidarity with artists who refused to appear in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, etc. The company she worked for knew about her extracurricular activities.

“She maintained a total separation,” Friedman says. “What she did in My Israel was not present at all in her work. Everyone in the company really liked her. It took time before we saw that she had become a public figure. At a certain stage I got it: She had become a celeb.”

* * *

In 2009, Netanyahu returned to the Prime Minister’s Office. Shaked, knowing her path in Likud was blocked, looked for an alternative political framework. She, Bennett and Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, a former Israeli army chief rabbi, established a movement called The Israelis with the aim of running in the Knesset election. In 2012, Bennett decided that the optimal platform for him was Habayit Hayehudi (the Jewish Home), an amalgam of rightist groups including the former National Religious Party. He suggested that Shaked join him as the top woman on the slate – after Emily Amroussi, a popular media figure who had been Bennett’s first choice, decided to pass.

Shaked was placed in the party’s fifth slot. There was the feeling that something new was developing in the Israeli right, and Habayit Hayehudi, running together with Ha’ihud Haleumi (National Union) in 2013, won a resounding 12 Knesset seats. Shaked was appointed party whip. Her identification with the public that sent her to the Knesset became absolute; her bureau was staffed by an overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews.

Nevertheless, Shaked, who in the past had stated that “whoever wants gay marriages shouldn’t vote for us,” was still apprehensive about being seen as a politician who had abandoned her north Tel Aviv origins. After vetoing a proposal in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation to grant tax credits to single-sex parents, she had her spokeswoman review the hundreds of negative comments that appeared on her Facebook page and explain to each person individually why she had to vote as she did.

The same approach would characterize Shaked as she continued in pursuit of a political career: a determined promotion of conservative values, along with a wink at her allies in the liberal camp – while maintaining close relations with journalists identified with the left. In fact, Shaked grants reporters unusual access. “She gives briefings like she breathes,” says a senior official who worked with her. However, even those who are critical of her for playing up to the media note that she always means what she says. “You can’t tell her ‘good morning’ without it getting into the media,” the official says. “But she is also very straight and fair. One time I asked: ‘Ayelet, did you leak that?’ Right off she admitted that she had.”

Habayit Hayehudi fared less well in the 2015 election, but Bennett spotted an opportunity then to demand the justice portfolio for her. Shaked wanted it badly, but was fearful of the implications. “Ayelet was in a panic,” says her former aide, Zik. “She was certain that if she got the Justice Ministry, the state prosecution would be on her case. In situations like these, Ayelet consults with everyone she knows. She started to call everyone she knew, until at one stage [strategic adviser Moshe] Klughaft told me to take her phone away. Which I did.”

According to Zik, “Even after she got [the ministry] she didn’t relax. She said: ‘Yakhin, you’ll end up visiting me in prison.’ I told her: ‘Ayelet, no one goes to jail because they’re late to a Scouts activity,’ and she said, ‘I was never late to a Scouts activity.’”

The door into Likud was open to her. There was talk of a guaranteed slot in the opening trio. But at the moment of truth, Ayelet decided that it wouldn’t good for her or for the country.

Moti Sonnenfeld

* * *

Shaked’s term of office in the Justice Ministry, from 2015 to 2019, changed the face of the judicial system in general and of the Supreme Court in particular. Now, staffers from her bureau are willing to reveal how they went about locating and promoting conservative judges.

“You would look at the judge’s CV – where he grew up, where he studied law,” says Zik, who was responsible for the files of the candidates for the lower courts. “We also had a group of attorneys we consulted with, who had appeared in court before those judges. We took their impressions into account. For example, if someone said: ‘This judge is leftist but fair.’”

Zik notes that a key element in the process was the winnowing of candidates whose CVs contained “red flags.” An example was the candidacy of attorney Dana Briskman, who had worked in the High Court of Justice unit in the state prosecution and clerked for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. “[Former Supreme Court President Miriam] Naor was ready to commit suicide to get her appointed to the district court,” Zik recalls. “But I said, ‘Over my dead body’ – and I won.”

Relatively neutral notations in someone’s CV were also warning signs, he adds: “A candidate who studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for example – which is considered to be very left-wing and activist – that didn’t disqualify them, of course, but it was an indication to check them out more thoroughly. If they went on to clerk for some nonprofit organizaton, and from there to the state prosecution, that would earn them the rubric of ‘not one of us.’ In contrast, people who studied at Bar-Ilan, clerked in the Defense Ministry, say, and went on to a private law firm would have greater potential to be a conservative judge.”

Zik’s successor in Shaked’s bureau was Alon Dvir, who was only 30 when he assumed that important role. Dvir conducted thorough investigations of incumbent judges and of attorneys who were candidates for the bench, working under the supervision of Shaked’s adviser, attorney Gil Bringer, who has since become deputy director general of the Population and Immigration Authority.

“I called Prof. Alex Stein in the United States and asked him if he wanted to be a justice of the Supreme Court,” Dvir relates, though he isn’t willing to reveal how the name of Stein, who was then teaching at the Brooklyn Law School, first came up. Bringer, too, is mum on this subject. “In general, it was clear to us that our candidate could not be someone who had spent 20 years in the state prosecution … So we looked for someone from the outside.”

Stein’s name immediately stirred objections from various circles. “At one point, Ayelet said, ‘If the appointment turns out to be a mistake, I’ll have your head,’” Bringer says. “I said to her, ‘It’s on me, I’m convinced about him a million percent.’” Stein was appointed in 2018.

* * *

Shaked finally found the people she was looking for, and after her four years in the Justice Ministry it was obvious the Supreme Court had undergone a face-lift. But right-wing voters didn’t reward her: In the Knesset election of April 2019, Hayamin Hehadash didn’t cross the electoral threshold. Even before that, Shaked wasn’t happy with the party’s distance from the political home of religious Zionism.

“That’s where I saw her experience her biggest personal crisis,” says her friend Einat Peled. “She really didn’t believe in that move, and leaving Habayit Hayehudi was hard for her.” In the end, Bennett and Shaked got another opportunity, in September 2019, thanks to the political deadlock, and this time they entered the Knesset.

People close to Bennett and Shaked find it hard to explain their hold over each other, which has lasted more than a decade. In their view, their relationship has long since become something that one cannot explain in political terms – perhaps psychology can explain it. In any case, beneath the surface there have been innumerable bitter disputes between the two over the years, and also situations in which they acted against each other in secret.

In 2016, Netanyahu pondered firing Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, with whom his relations had deteriorated. Bennett, education minister at the time, saw an upgrade opportunity and sought to obtain the defense portfolio, which he coveted. But Shaked had a different idea. She contacted Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, who until then had insisted on remaining in the parliamentary opposition, and suggested that he seek the defense portfolio for himself. She was also clandestinely involved in the subsequent talks between Netanyahu and Lieberman that brought the latter into the now-doomed coalition.

Shaked may have taken that course of action because she saw a propitious moment to expand the coalition, or perhaps when it came to the balance of forces vis-a-vis Bennett, she preferred to preserve her status as a powerful justice minister who was more popular than he. Whatever the case, Bennett saw how his loyal No. 2 began to work to deprive him of the job he hankered for – and blew his top.

Two years later, Lieberman resigned and Bennett saw himself as the natural candidate to replace him. He gave Netanyahu an ultimatum: the defense portfolio or a new election. However, Netanyahu announced that he himself would retain the sought-after ministry (which had meanwhile passed into his hands). Some people in the political arena believed that Netanyahu’s decision stemmed from a supposed message from Shaked, delivered via Netanyahu’s adviser Nathan Eshel, to the effect that Bennett would not follow through on his threat. (Shaked denies this vehemently.) Bennett, who was aware that he would become a laughingstock if he caved in, announced that he would hold a press conference the next day – with the intention of declaring his resignation. But Shaked talked him out of it.

Bennett hasn’t always been on the less fortunate side in his convoluted relationship with Shaked. After the collapse of the Hayamin Hehadash project and the declaration of yet another election that September, it was decided that Shaked would be the leader: She was slotted in in first place on the Yamina slate, which was actually an amalgam of four right-wing parties. At the same time Shaked spoke at Yamina headquarters after the election and called for a continued alliance between the different components, Bennett informed the Speaker of the Knesset that the technical bloc was being dismantled and the others were breaking away from Yamina. That move was not coordinated with Shaked, who took it as a searing insult.

Following the last Knesset election, in March 2021, Shaked was marked as one of the key figures who would determine the course of events in national politics. At that decisive stage, various figures sought to mediate between her and Sara Netanyahu in order to examine a possible return to Likud. Moti Sonnenfeld, a Haredi businessman with close ties to Shaked, suggested hosting a meeting at his place. Netanyahu’s people were in favor, but Shaked vacillated. “The door into Likud was open to her,” Sonnenfeld says. “There was talk of a guaranteed slot in the opening trio. But at the moment of truth, Ayelet decided that it wouldn’t good for her or for the country.”

In the meantime, the street was seething. Likud activists were sent to demonstrate outside the homes of Yamina members, in protest of their move to forge a “coalition of change.” Rabbis entered the fray as well. Netanyahu’s loyalists in the media sowed fear among the public about “the dangerous left-wing government” being formed. On the day before that government became a fait accompli, a meeting took place between Shaked and some right-wing media people in Yamina’s offices in Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hahayal neighborhood. Among those invited were screenwriter Roy Iddan, journalist Ariel Plaksin, adman and illustrator Or Reichert, activist and commentator Sarah Haetzni-Cohen and radio broadcaster and satirist Yotam Zimri.

For his part, Zimri describes this group as “right-wing influencers who were in touch with Ayelet and supported her at all sorts of junctures.” She hoped on that occasion to muster their support for Yamina’s entry into the new coalition that was taking shape, although they had come with the aim of dissuading her.

Zimri: “Our phones were taken [from us] when we entered. We told her that the move she was about to make would sever her from us for good. She herself admitted that it would be a government of paralysis and promised that it would not veer leftward, but that at worst we would all remain stuck in the same place.”

Zimri recalls that Shaked emphasized her anticipated appointment to the committee that selects judges. “She said she knew how to work with Ilana Seker [the Bar Association’s representative on the committee] and marketed it as the continuation of the revolution she had started in the Justice Ministry. After the meeting she sent us all a message in which she said that we had led her to understand many things and that it had been an important meeting. She hinted that she had decided to drop the idea [of entering the government]. We celebrated, we believed we had succeeded in torpedoing the idea. She really pulled a fast one on us.”

The right-wing influencers weren’t alone in making a pilgrimage to Shaked to get her to retreat. Zik, the devoted aide, met her in Sonnenfeld’s home in Ra’anana. In that discussion, too, Shaked noted the upcoming appointment of four new Supreme Court justices as the principal justification for joining the government. “She said, ‘I have to be inside in order to finally overturn the balance in the Supreme Court,’” Zik recalls. “We know what happened in real time. There were four candidates that the right-wing camp marked, and not one was promoted to the court. [Justice Minister Gideon] Sa’ar sewed it all up with [Supreme Court President Esther] Hayut, and Shaked wasn’t even relevant in the discussion.”

Her grass-roots man, Shlomo Levy, remembers going to her office in the Knesset. “I sat across from her and broke into tears,” he says. “I tried to understand: Never mind Bennett, who gets first prize, but what’s your rationale for entering a government like this, which erases a 10-year career and wipes out the status you garnered as the princess of the right and as the strongest woman in the national camp? I told her she was doing irreversible damage to herself and to the Jewish people.”

However, other voices were heard in conversations with her friends from the Scouts. “I can tell you that we, as left-wingers, very much wanted to see the previous group [i.e., Netanyahu’s government] not remain, so we very much backed her up in this context,” says Jaimon Levy-Isaacs, one of her friends from youth movement days. “Look, Ayelet is the biggest mensch there is. In this case, I told her personally that possibly I and a friend who backed Yesh Atid would vote for her next time in order to reward her. She said, ‘That is exactly what I am looking for – people who will appreciate the step we took and will vote for us so that we can change the political map.’”

Was Shaked fearful that if she supported a Netanyahu-led government she would in effect be divorcing herself from a certain social milieu? Her confidants reject that theory. On the other hand, she lost many right-wing fans. Some of her once-close aides severed relations with her. Zimri and his friends told Shaked, each in their own way, that as long as she remained in the government they would have nothing to do with her. She didn’t attend the right-wing community’s traditional Purim party this year in the settlement of Elkana, probably knowing she would not be welcome there. Shaked did in fact return to being a senior minister and member of the security cabinet, but in the natural circles of her voters she seemed to become more isolated than ever.

Shaked at a meeting of the Judicial Appointments Committee. Her term in the Justice Ministry changed the face of the judicial system and of the Supreme Court.Credit: Emil Salman

* * *

In the meantime, Shaked has still conferred with her friends, and not only those from the Scouts. Shiri Dolev, president of the giant spyware company NSO, is a good friend from their student days. Two years ago, it was revealed that the Defense Ministry had asked the company to develop a program that could assess people’s chances of contracting COVID. Shaked took part in the deliberations, but did not mention her close friendship with the company’s president.

Shaked is also well connected to Israel’s economic elite. Barak Rosen, owner and CEO of the Israel Canada real estate group, is a personal friend and also offered her a job in the past. Despite this, an Interior Ministry committee moved ahead with a construction plan that will benefit Rosen and could net him millions. When the details became known, Shaked said she had not been aware that Israel Canada had certain rights regarding the land earmarked for development, and stated that she would transfer the handling of the matter to Construction and Housing Minister Zeev Elkin.

During the period of uncertainty about the continuation of her political career between April and September 2019, Shaked met in Savyon, an affluent local council in central Israel, with businessman Moti Ben-Moshe, who owns the controlling interest in the Alon Ribua Kahol private holding company. Last month she celebrated her 46th birthday at the home of another acquaintance from Savyon, businessman Ofer Chibotero, an industrialist, whose wife is a childhood friend of Shaked’s. One of those who showed up for the party was singer Aviv Geffen; theirs is a relatively new friendship, but they are growing closer. Shaked also attended Geffen’s 49th birthday celebration in May, and the two went together to a performance of the Friends of Natasha band at the Caesarea amphitheater.

“I met her through Moshe Klughaft and since then we’ve become friends,” Geffen relates. “We sometimes consult with one another. I often tell her that in my view, it’s time she ran for prime minister.”

But with all due respect to the popular singer, Shaked knows that she needs more than that to regain her political clout. If she wants to chart her own course now that the coalition has fallen, it’s not impossible that she will choose to end her partnership with Bennett – assuming he even continues in the world of politics. However, contrary to the image she has acquired of being a cold, decisive and unrestrained politician, conversations with her colleagues paint a completely different picture: of someone who is almost pathologically hesitant and is determined to please both the public and those close to her.

These traits are evident from the following anecdote: By law, when Bennett and Shaked wanted to split from Habayit Hayehudi, they needed another MK to join them. Their choice was Shuli Mualem, who was given the fifth slot on Hayamin Hehadash’s slate, in April 2019. In the election later that year, with Shaked heading the slate, she felt indebted to Mualem, but this time there was no realistic place left on the crowded roster of candidates, which as noted constituted a merger of four parties. Bennett met with Mualem once and explained to her that this was politics, that gambles sometimes turn out to be mistakes – and left it at that.

Shaked, however, was in agony about the situation. She met with Mualem for hours. The head of the right-wing party, who was called upon to lead a quick, intensive campaign, devoted exceptional energy to an attempt at “saving Shuli” (echoing the title of a recent Israeli film). Party headquarters had mixed feelings about the effort. There was esteem for Shaked, for the loyalty she showed to her friend, but also criticism because she was being distracted; some viewed the whole story as a farce.

According to Yakhin Zik, the former adviser, she agonizes over things excessively. “Ayelet is good at doing, not at making decisions,” he says. “Her intentions were good, but when it was necessary to make courageous decisions she had trouble. Certainly if the implication was that she was opposing Bennett. Ayelet will never gamble on taking action that might result either in glory or in a debacle; she will always go for the easy solution, in which others decide for her. Bennett enters the government? She enters with him. Bennett leaves Habayit Hayehudi? She leaves with him.

In Likud, too, people see her that way, and they too have doubts. A case in point is the clumsy dance she conducted with Netanyahu throughout the last election campaign – giving the impression that she was ready to turn over a new leaf, but at the last minute turning down the invitation to the Balfour Street residence. Signaling that it would be enough for her if Netanyahu didn’t block her way in the primary, then changing her mind and asking for a guaranteed place on Likud’s slate.

On the other hand, Shaked’s supporters say that conservatism for her is not just a political philosophy, it’s a way of life. She has always followed a strategy of minimizing risks and will likely avoid taking a wild gamble on her political future.

Over the years, Shaked has cultivated close relations with key figures in Likud, including Yuval Steinitz, Gilad Erdan and Yariv Levin. However, Steinitz’s political clout is limited, Erdan is busy at the United Nations and Levin has evinced burning resentment for her since she allowed the present government to be formed. Shaked, again in total contrast to her image of being insensitive, apparently feels deeply offended every time Levin passes her in the Knesset without nodding in greeting.

However, Shaked still has a few moves up her sleeve. Her appearance at the recent Mimouna celebrations held at Israel Aerospace Industries – a display of political strength by the chairman of Likud’s Central Committee, Haim Katz – was a clear wink at the Likud base. MK David Bitan, who has recently spoken frequently in favor of her joining Likud and asserts that Netanyahu himself agrees with the idea as well, is an ally in the party. Another confidant is former MK Michael Kleiner, now president of Likud’s internal tribunal. Kleiner, too, is working, both publicly and behind the scenes, to have Shaked join the party.

The three undoubtedly drew encouragement from the handshake between Shaked and the Netanyahus at the recent event marking the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II – a handshake that many viewed as a kind of burying the hatchet. At the same time, Shaked had been making intense (and unsuccessful) public efforts to dissuade MK Nir Orbach (Yamina) from leaving the coalition.

The day has now come when she must decide whether to remain in Yamina or whether to embark on something new, on her own.

Shaked’s response

In regard to right-wing figures who had criticized her but were given appointments on Interior Ministry committees: “Members of the committees are chosen in accordance with their experience and according to the standard methods of selection. The same applies to the cases described. And yes, Interior Minister Shaked prefers to appoint people with a national approach.”

In regard to creating neighborhoods in locales with a dominant right-wing presence: “The allegation is utterly unfounded. Minister Shaked has no control over the sites mentioned, because under the law only governmental authorities can promote these plans. Accordingly, all the plans that were mentioned were promoted by state bodies based on professional considerations.”

In regard to separating Sha’arei Tikva from the Shomron Regional Council so as to benefit the council head: “The council was established on the basis of a substantive need that arose from the grass roots. Sha’arei Tikva and Etz Ephraim [which is also part of the new council] complained of problems with receiving municipal services from the regional council, both because of their size and because of the geographical distance. The separation was carried out with the support of the defense minister and the finance minister.”

In regard to giving Bennett the cold shoulder during his attempt to be appointed defense minister under Netanyahu: “During Minister Shaked’s tenure as justice minister, she did in fact work to have Lieberman join the government as defense minister, in order to strengthen the government and avert an election.”

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