Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the greatest test yet to his reputation as Israel’s great political survivor.
This week, conservative, centrist, and center-left parties agreed to a grand coalition that would end Netanyahu’s 12-year premiership. For the first two years, that government would be led by Naftali Bennett.
Leader of the conservative Yamina Party, Bennett is hawkish on Iran and opposed to a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians. Yair Lapid would then take the reins from August 2023 to November 2025. The leader of the centrist Yesh Atid Party, Lapid promotes a two-state solution. He also seeks greater liberalization in Israeli society, such as allowing for gay marriages. Notable, also, is the coalition’s support from the Arab Ra’am Party. Leader Mansour Abbas has played a clever game here, making himself indispensable to any prospective coalition’s viability. Ra’am gets the coalition to the magic 61-seat majority it needs in the Knesset. It is a historic development for an Arab party to get this much power in Israel.
A Bennett-Lapid premiership will not really change Netanyahu’s strategy toward the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas’s lack of interest in serious peace negotiations and the political weakness of the Palestinian Authority means that any such peace effort would have little prospect of success anyway. Beyond this, Lapid would be likely to push for a more conciliatory stance on sensitive issues surrounding the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the construction of new settlements in the West Bank. However, Bennett will oppose such compromises unless they involve more valuable concessions from the Arab world, the broader international community, and/or the Biden administration.
As for Iran’s nuclear program, which is seen by the Israeli security establishment as a threat to the nation’s very existence and the looming means of a second Holocaust, both leaders can be expected to continue the current policy.
Bennett is a former squadron commander with two of Israel’s elite special operations units. During his military service, Bennett gained a reputation for aggressive leadership. To some, this is an encouraging sign that he will be ready to make tough decisions as Prime Minister. To others, it is a warning that Bennett is unpredictable and perhaps vulnerable to miscalculation.
Still, Bennett is unlikely to launch a unilateral air campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. While Israel’s escalated covert action against that program will almost certainly continue, Bennett faces the same challenge as Netanyahu — that an air campaign to destroy or seriously degrade Iran’s nuclear program is highly unlikely to succeed absent active U.S. military involvement. President Joe Biden’s present appeasement of Iran suggests he is unlikely to authorize such involvement.
Netanyahu is not dead yet, however. Bennett’s coalition would give him only a one-seat majority government in the Knesset. If even one coalition parliamentarian decides to jump ship (and at least one has voiced qualms), this replacement government will likely collapse. It is unlikely that this government will ever be truly stable.
Indeed, I would venture that even if this coalition forms a new government this month, that government will not last more than a year.
