Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rivals are being dragged into alignment with him by the outbreak of conflict with Palestinian militants, with a key opponent forced to abandon his best hope of ousting the Israeli prime minister on the very day the upstart leaders had hoped to take over the government.
“I am removing the change government from the agenda,” Yamina Party Chairman Naftali Bennett said Thursday, according to the Jerusalem Post. “A change government with the makeup planned cannot deal with the problems in mixed cities. These are things that cannot be done when relying on Mansour Abbas.”
Bennett and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid began the week reportedly hoping that quick negotiations with Abbas, the leader of the Israeli Arab bloc, would allow them to form the government on Thursday. Those talks died in the midst of the conflict, which has featured not only fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas but also riots in Israeli towns that are home to Jews and Arabs alike. In that context, Wednesday evening found Netanyahu spurning international calls for de-escalation, with the support of his opponent.
“There is an incentive built into the current Israeli political landscape that Netanyahu benefits by being strong,” a Senate Republican aide observed. “There’s incentive for Netanyahu to continue fighting back, not working down, because of where things are at.”
IDF PREPPING FOR GROUND OFFENSIVE AS VIOLENCE PERSISTS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND HAMAS
Those political cross-pressures make it easier for Netanyahu to heed only half of President Joe Biden’s message, which was delivered in a Wednesday phone call.
“The prime minister thanked President Biden for the American backing for Israel’s right to self-defense,” Netanyahu’s office said, leaving no doubt he had dismissed Biden’s other point about the need for de-escalation. “Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel would continue to take action to strike at the military capabilities of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip.”
Bennett, despite his desire to broker a deal with the Israeli Arab bloc, has encouraged Netanyahu to adopt that posture. “The government should not end the current round in the Gaza Strip until Hamas pays a heavy price,” he said. “Yamina will give full support to any step to restore security without regard to politics. This is the time to unite and win.”
His main prospective coalition partner struck a similar note. “Experience teaches us that terror groups only understand force, and they need to know that we will employ force without hesitation,” Lapid said, according to the Times of Israel.
Yet Bennett’s subsequent retreat from a deal with the change government could jam Lapid, who was given the mandate to attempt to form a coalition after Netanyahu failed to muster a governing majority.
“Bennett is wrong,” Lapid said Thursday in response, according to a Jerusalem Post translation. “Change is not made when it is comfortable. Change is made when you are correct. I don’t intend to concede. Twenty days of mandate is [an] eternity.”
The conflict that upended the coalition talks was sparked, in the eyes of many Democrats and international observers, by Israeli plans to evict several Palestinian families from a neighborhood in east Jerusalem.
“Hamas does not intend to enter a long military confrontation,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Al-Monitor. “But if the Israeli violations continue, al-Qassam Brigades will certainly not stop responding and avenging the blood of martyrs and the violations of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Netanyahu’s team rejects that account. “Cases such as the Sheikh Jarrah litigation occur in the Israeli court system on a regular basis, and yet only the past few days has this one suddenly led to violence? Come on,” Netanyahu adviser Aaron Klein wrote in Newsweek. “Hamas has for weeks been ginning up an Israeli threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a libel so overused it is surprising that anyone takes it seriously anymore.”
Palestinian leaders are locked in their own power struggle, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — not to be confused with Mansour Abbas, the Israeli Arab politician who has been negotiating with Bennett — recently postponed parliamentary elections expected to go in favor of his rivals. The Palestinian leader attributed that decision to Israel’s unwillingness to confirm that Palestinians in east Jerusalem would be permitted to vote in the elections.
Hamas vowed that Israel would “pay a price” for the cancellation. Islamic Jihad, the Iran-backed group fighting alongside Hamas, already had boycotted the elections, a political maneuver taken as part of a broader political drive to unite the Palestinian factions in opposition to the Oslo Accords — a deal signed by Mahmoud Abbas, then the Palestine Liberation Organization’s lead negotiator, in which “Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace,” as the State Department historian recalls.
“Islamic Jihad believes the Oslo Accords must be abolished because they only resulted in the Palestinian people making more concessions on their rights and losing land in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Al-Monitor reported after an interview with an unnamed Islamic Jihad official who argued that “Palestinian internal affairs need to be reviewed as part of a strategy based on countering Israel and its crimes.”
In the meantime, Bennett said he will try to form a government with current Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and right-wing Israeli lawmaker Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party. Yet, the real conclusion could arise from a reported side deal between Bennett, Netanyahu, and Mansour Abbas to approve a change to the political process that would allow Israelis to vote directly for the prime minister — a shift that Netanyahu has sought for weeks.
“As part of the deal, Bennett and his No. 2 Ayelet Shaked will get reserved spots on the electoral slate of Netanyahu’s Likud party and will be made defense and foreign ministers,” according to Israeli media.
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Mansour Abbas, the Israeli Arab leader, regards the conflict as evidence of the need for a coalition such as the one he and Bennett had envisioned. “I am not giving up on future cooperation,” he said earlier Thursday. “It could be that these incidents emphasize the need for true partnership with understanding, initiating together.”
