A bloc of Israeli politicians is negotiating a power-sharing deal to drive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his position following a war in Gaza that may have wounded Netanyahu’s political prospects.
“For four elections, we’ve watched our beloved country tear itself apart, weaken itself, [and] lose its capacity to function,” Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, a right-wing rival of Netanyahu, announced Sunday. “2,000 years ago, we lost a Jewish state here because of internal hatreds; that won’t happen again, not on my watch.”
Bennett’s announcement breathes life into center-left opposition leader Yair Lapid’s bid to form a coalition before Wednesday, when his mandate, as the procedural tool giving him the prerogative to hold power-sharing talks, is scheduled to expire. It’s an existential crisis for the career of Netanyahu, who has been counting the hours until Wednesday after fending off an 11-day barrage of rockets from Hamas that blew up Lapid’s previous plan to oust Netanyahu by partnering with Bennett and an Israeli Arab bloc. Lapid is reportedly planning to yield the prime minister’s office to Bennett, even though he leads the larger party in the coalition, in a gambit to ensure Netanyahu’s defeat, according to multiple outlets.
‘A BIG TEST:’ IRAN AND TURKEY LURK BEHIND ISRAEL CRISIS AS POWER PLAYERS BENEFIT
The reversal left Netanyahu fuming that Bennett is betraying right-wing voters by partnering with politicians regarded as weak on security.
“No one would have voted for you if they knew what you would do,” Netanyahu said. “What will this do to Israeli deterrence? How will we look in the eyes of our enemies? What will they do in Iran or Gaza? What will they say in the corridors of the administration in Washington? This government will stand against Iran? This government supports the dangerous nuclear deal.”
Security issues have been a double-edged sword in the latest political process, by turns seeming to protect Netanyahu while exposing him to additional embarrassment. Bennett seemed nervous about such criticisms at the height of the recent conflict, when he scuttled the negotiations with Lapid and the Israeli Arab bloc known as the United Arab List, on the grounds that sectarian violence between Jewish and Arab Israelis had made such a partnership untenable.
“Had the war lasted a few days longer, it might have been more difficult for politics to return,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Vice President Jonathan Schanzer, an expert in Israeli political and security issues, told the Washington Examiner. “When the war ended, there were eight or nine days left in the Lapid mandate. … Had the war lasted a week longer, then I think Lapid’s mandate would have expired, and that would have complicated things for this unity government.”
That is not to say that Netanyahu orchestrated the conflict for political reasons, Schanzer emphasized, noting the inconclusive end to the conflict also exposed Netanyahu to criticism from the Right after Israeli officials acknowledged that the fighting had not delivered a lasting defeat to Hamas.
“If anything, I see the war as having undermined [Netanyahu] to some extent,” Schanzer said. “He has promised, now, on three occasions to eradicate the Hamas threat, and all three times, he has failed. And I think this was a common theme in the media. And so, in that sense, the war was decidedly inconvenient for him.”
The dissatisfaction with the Gaza conflict is just the latest blow to Netanyahu, who has led Israel as prime minister for 12 years but has found himself unable to form a stable governing majority since 2019. Israeli voters have cast their ballots four times in less than two years, each time leaving Netanyahu, haunted by corruption allegations, as the single-strongest politician in the country, despite his inability to consolidate the win.
“This is a political crisis that is unprecedented worldwide. We can go to fifth elections, sixth,10th. We can take down the country’s walls, sheet by sheet, until the house falls on our heads,” Bennett said, per the Times of Israel. “Or we can halt this insanity and take responsibility.”
Bennett and Lapid are poised to partner with another former Netanyahu ally named Gideon Sa’ar, who split from Netanyahu’s dominant Likud party to establish his own New Hope bloc as an alternative to Netanyahu that could appeal to right-wing, security-minded voters.
Netanyahu tried to forestall this scenario by offering to form a coalition with Sa’ar and Bennett. That proposal, according to the Jerusalem Post, would have given Sa’ar the title of prime minister for the first 15 months, followed in order by Netanyahu and Bennett.
Sa’ar refused. “Our position and our obligation remains to replace Netanyahu’s rule,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will continue to act in accordance with that. Warm recommendation for the next few days: Ignore the political spin.”
Bennett and Lapid could still fail, in part because rank-and-file members of Bennett’s party are under pressure from right-wing voters not to vote for the unity government. With no chance of forming more than a “razor-thin” majority, as Schanzer put it, they can ill afford any defections.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Yet Netanyahu’s offer to Sa’ar may also cost him goodwill within his own party if anonymous complaints from other Likud leaders are any guide.
“What’s astounding is that he’s prepared to give the prime ministership to Gantz, to Bennett, or to Sa’ar, that’s he’s prepared to go into the opposition — just so long as there is not a different candidate [for prime minister] from the Likud,” a pair of unnamed Likud ministers complained, according to Israeli media reports.
