Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of resigning, neither now nor after Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit announces whether he plans to indict him.
In private conversations, after the early election was announced this week, Netanyahu said he did not believe Mendelblit would dare file an indictment in the middle of an election campaign. Sources close to Netanyahu say such a move would be too blatant and too vulgar and would unfairly influence the outcome of the election. After all, if an indictment pursuant to a hearing is announced during an election campaign and then the hearing is held after the election, it would be a terrible injustice; an obvious bias.
Netanyahu has made it clear to his interlocutors that he is not going anywhere, regardless of whether an indictment is filed against him. If there is a trial, it will be held with Netanyahu in office, assuming he wins the election, of course.
Basic Law: The Government explicitly states that a prime minister must only resign if he is or she is convicted of a crime. Furthermore, unlike a minister who is required to resign following a conviction in a civil or district court, a prime minister can remain in office as long as he hasn't exhausted the appeals process.
Although the Supreme Court has determined that the public norm requires a minister to resign as soon as an indictment is filed, the same does not apply to a prime minister. The difference is that a minister can resign, and then, if acquitted, reassume office. But if a prime minister resigns, the entire government dissolves, so they can't just pick up where they left off in case of an acquittal.
But beyond the legal feasibility of Netanyahu remaining in office, will it be politically feasible for him to continue in this role while he is potentially on trial? According to senior Likud party officials, the unequivocal answer is yes.
Assuming the Likud wins the election, as polls predict, the next coalition will be established on the basis of who will go along with Netanyahu continuing to serve as prime minister despite an indictment. The ultra-Orthodox parties and Habayit Hayehudi will not object, nor will Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Lieberman; if the haredi draft law is a done deal, an indictment will be the last thing on their minds.
Everything else will depend on how the election plays out. Political novice and former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, who recently announced his new Israel Resilience party, Orly Levy-Abekasis of the newly revived Gesher party, Kulanu party chief Moshe Kahlon, Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid and even Labor leader Avi Gabbay are all potential partners in a future coalition. Before bringing them into the coalition, however, Netanyahu will first make sure that none of them would act to take him down if he is indicted. But of course, none of this is guaranteed. Everything depends on how many seats the Likud wins and how few seats the other parties rack up.
There are those who see things a little differently. Netanyahu does not want to end up like former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who resigned from the government and went on to face bribery charges as a regular citizen. Netanyahu understands that should he be charged with bribery, he would be better off trying to strike a plea deal from office. That way, he can quietly resign and avoid a trial.
Netanyahu has faith in Mendelblit's ability to reach a well thought out conclusion, independent of external considerations, despite the intense pressure on the attorney general from not only the police and the media but also the State Attorney's Office.
If Mendelblit decides to file an indictment during the election campaign, he will become the target of unforgiving attacks by senior Likud officials. There will be no sugar-coating or attempts to preserve Mendelblit's honor. The entire Likud election campaign will be focused on attacking him. With all due respect to security, diplomacy and the economy, senior Likud party officials plan to do everything they can to make sure that the issue that dominates the agenda ahead of the election is how the legal system is unfairly persecuting Netanyahu.
One senior party official recalled last week how Shas shot up in the polls after an indictment was filed against party member Aryeh Deri during the 1999 election campaign. The party, he noted, went on to make unprecedented gains and ended up winning 17 seats. With Likud, he said, expect to see more voters come out in support for Netanyahu than anyone could possibly imagine.
Much to his chagrin, Mendelblit will probably be the star of the 2019 election campaign. Opposition parties, with the help of much of the media, will attack him if he dawdles and fails to reach a decision on an indictment before the election. The Likud, of course, will attack him if he does. The attorney general, meanwhile, will be wondering how he can make it through the election in one piece.
Stronger together
An Israel Hayom poll conducted by the Maagar Mochot research group found that if the election were held today, Netanyahu could rest easy. He is poised to head Israel's next government though a few changes to the coalition are expected here and there.
If anyone should be worried, it is the Zionist Union, which, according to the survey, would win only 7 seats. Compare that to the 13 seats the Labor party won in the 2009 election under the leadership of Ehud Barak.
The survey, taken earlier this week, was based on a sample of 507 adult respondents. It has a margin of error of 4.3%.
According to the poll, the Likud is safely in the lead with 31 seats. Coming in second is Gantz's newly announced Israel Resilience party, which would earn 15 seats according to the poll. The Joint Arab List is projected to win 12 seats, while Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi would each garner 11. Like Zionist Union, United Torah Judaism is projected to win 7 seats. Kulanu and Meretz would each earn 5 seats, and Shas and Yisrael Beytenu would each garner 4. Moshe Ya'alon's new party, which he announced this week, is not projected to pass the electoral threshold, according to the poll.
Should this be the outcome of the election, Netanyahu could form a coalition based on its predecessor that includes Yisrael Beytenu and relies on 62 lawmakers. But he would also have the option of adding Gantz to the mix for a 77-member coalition or climb to 83 seats by further including Orly Levy's Gesher party.
But the political system is preparing for a plethora of mergers and connections that could have an impact on how this all plays out. Although Gantz appears unlikely to join forces with the Labor party, the poll found that if the Zionist Union were to partner with Gantz, together they would receive 16 seats, while the Likud would rise to 32 and Yesh Atid to 14 seats. All the other parties would largely be unaffected by the move.
Should Gantz join up with Lapid, their party would be the first to present a challenge the Likud and would garner 25 seats, compared to Likud's 30. The Zionist Union would not do much better than previously predicted in such a scenario and would be expected to net a total 8 seats.
The poll also examined which candidates the public believes are the most suitable for the role of prime minister. Netanyahu is the clear winner in this regard, earning the support of 35% of respondents, followed by Gantz with 14% and Lapid with 10%. Trailing behind Netanyahu are Bennett with 5% and Gabbay with 6%. Around 24% of respondents provided other names or declined to answer the question altogether.
Respondents were also asked which candidate they thought was best-suited for the role of defense minister. Here, Gantz was the clear winner with 38% saying he was suitable for the role. Gantz was followed by Bennett with 15%. Netanyahu came in third place in the poll with 9%. Just 5% of respondents said Lieberman, who recently resigned as defense minister.
This last survey question does the most to reveal where Gantz is headed. He is interested in returning to the Kirya, the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, only this time as defense minister. Assuming he doesn't slip up, it looks like that could be exactly where he ends up.
Although Gantz is very popular among members of the center-left camp, he fails to win even one seat from right-wing voters.
Should he conduct himself responsibly during the campaign and maintain his popularity, the prime minister could very likely give him the defense portfolio. Initially, Netanyahu may have felt the need to actively associate Gantz's candidacy with the Left in order to minimize the threat of Gantz siphoning votes from the Right, but it seems that the hard work was done for him. Gantz is already strongly identified with the Left, before he ever opened his mouth or indicated what his positions are.
This could be due to a 2015 speech in which Gantz offered lukewarm support for the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, which he oversaw as then-IDF chief of staff. Or possibly, it could be the attack from the Likud party and in particular Culture Minister Miri Regev, who slammed Gantz's speech and blamed him for the tragic death of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, who was killed when a mortar shell struck his home near Israel's border with Gaza Strip during the war. It may also be the result of his being courted by Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak – both strongly associated with the leftist camp.
Keeping his distance
Netanyahu has stopped publicly attacking former minister Gideon Sa'ar, who intends to run for the Likud's Knesset list, but his plans for the former minister remain intact. Likud officials had accused Sa'ar of attempting to keep Netanyahu from forming a new government and had drafted legislation to keep that from happening. With the Knesset nearing dissolution, Netanyahu is unable to pass the so-called "Gideon Sa'ar bill," but he still has the means to keep Sa'ar at bay and his influence to a minimum.
Netanyahu's working assumption is that Sa'ar will try to have his representatives on the Likud party list, but he can only do that by having them vie for spots allocated by district. All of the sitting Likud lawmakers and ministers are running on the national list, including Israel's outgoing U.N. envoy Danny Danon and former Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. While there is no room for additional candidates on the national list, the district-based Likud lists could be Sa'ar's for the taking. All of the candidates running on the district lists are relatively anonymous. Netanyahu intends to extend the national list so district representatives will only be able to run for the 21st spot in the party and below. If that was not enough, the Likud is also mulling the incorporation of national candidates to elections for the 21st position downward, in a cross-sectional fashion that would push many district candidates into unrealistic spots on the list.
There are also plans to change how elections are held in the Likud party, so that instead of Likud Central Committee members voting for 10 candidates, one per district, voting will be limited to five candidates. Should this plan be implemented, Sa'ar will be hard-pressed to put forward a full list of candidates he endorses.
The Likud party does not know whether Netanyahu plans to make Sa'ar a minister in the future government or keep him as a lawmaker in the Knesset. Even if Sa'ar is made a minister in the end, the assessment is he will be forced to suffice with a minor portfolio.
Labor losing faith
Gabbay looked pleased this week. The dissolution of the Knesset was the moment he had been waiting for. Unlike his eulogizers, Gabbay believes he can still save the day and that those who don't believe he will win the Labor primaries will be forced to eat their hat in the race for the Prime Minister's Office.
Despite Gabbay's cool confidence, his fellow party members remain unconvinced. At least seven of them met this week with the aim of breaking up the Labor party and heading in a different political direction; three of them informed Meretz party Chairwoman Tamar Zandberg they would soon be joining her. The others will likely find other parties to join or flee the political system entirely. While this process is still in full force, party members are ultimately unlikely to make good on their word unless the party continues to nosedive in the polls.
As Gabbay sees it, Livni went too far when she said this week that egos must be put aside and called for various parties to join up into one center-left bloc. Ties between the two leaders have been on extremely tense this week, as Livni, recognizing the impending disaster, tries to salvage her political career while Gabbay sees her proposal to create a political bloc as a thinly veiled call for his removal as Labor party leader.
Gabbay would of course not be the first. Livni called for Barak's deposition while serving as defense minister in his government. When Barak declined her offer, Livni had no qualms about continuing to sit at the table. When Shaul Mofaz was chosen to head Kadima, Livni once again took the opportunity to stick a knife in the back of her party's leader, and along with a number of her fellow lawmakers, abandoned Kadima and left the party millions of dollars in debt. While serving as justice minister under Netanyahu's government, she tried to unseat him. Netanyahu responded by removing her from office. Now it appears it's Gabbay's turn to be double-crossed. It was only a few months ago that, seemingly oblivious to her past, he appointed her opposition leader, at her request.
But the Likud is not worried about the left-wing parties forming a unified bloc. But it is precisely Likud's huge lead in the polls that could lead to complacency and a loss of votes. If things get tense, Likud members believe, Netanyahu can always bring the voters home.
According to Science and Technology Minister Ophir Akunis, "It is in the Likud's interest that Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni join forces. For the biggest failure of a prime minister, who served the shortest term, to join forces with the biggest zigzagger in Israeli politics, who changed parties four times in 10 years, and is now trying to break her own record with another political transition – that would only do us good. Not only would such a union not harm our party; it would help it. It would be a pathetic attempt to put together a party of opportunistic political failures who are only looking for a seat [in the Knesset], and the only thing that unifies them is their hatred of Netanyahu."
If there is one thing about the election campaign keeping Netanyahu up at night it is not the attacks from the Left, but from the Right. Netanyahu very much wanted to launch his election campaign with a meeting with Judea and Samaria regional council heads, but that is not how things played out. Instead, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, Binyamin Regional Council head Yisrael Gantz, and Kiryat Arba Local Council head Eliyahu Liebman announced they would boycott the weekly meeting with the prime minister, citing "empty promises" and deriding the meeting as a photo-op. After that, all hell broke loose.
Instead of focusing on the Likud's support for Judea and Samaria, the newspaper headlines focused on the rift between Netanyahu and the settlement leaders. If Bennett decides to lend his voice to the criticism, Netanyahu will have one more reason to worry.
