Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have rejected Habayit Hayehudi party head Naftali Bennett's demand that he be appointed defense minister. In an interview with Channel 13's Rina Matsliah on Saturday, Bennett said this was not about the elections.
"There is no government, and there is no Right. This is not a right-wing government," he said.
Normally, it would not be a problem to hold elections in late March. This is more or less the time frame Netanyahu foresaw over two years ago. But following Avigdor Lieberman's resignation as defense minister, elections could put the country in a state of chaos at a time when the prime minister has committed to investing his efforts on a regional strategy that focuses on Iran. Hamas has had no achievements to speak of in the past six months, but by placing Israel's political system on shaky ground, it has marked its first unexpected victory. The military echelon, which for moral reasons was not interested in solving the problem of incendiary balloons, has fallen silent this week, having found it hard to look residents of the western Negev in the eye.
Netanyahu is faced with three difficult tasks: One, he must continue to focus on the mandatory central effort in the north and the continuation of the policy he is implementing in the region. Second, he must stabilize a political system now spinning out of control because without a stable government, Netanyahu has no policy and no real control. Third, he must jolt the Israel Defense Forces out of its slumber so that it is able to fulfill its stated mission.
Ideally, elections would be held on their due date in November next year. It is not as optimal to hold them in March 2019. At one time, Lieberman believed the government would fall in March this year and we would move toward elections then. The way things look now, he was off by a year.
If this runaway election train can still be stopped, doing so would be in our national interest. The Likud party's assessment was that, on the issue of early elections, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon would not dare to act against Netanyahu's interests.
But there it is. Kahlon, Bennett and Lieberman are all acting to this end, threatening Netanyahu's political future and undermining the diplomatic-strategic line he has formulated on Iran with the cooperation of the Arab states.
When it comes to the Palestinian issue, the Right and the Left are united. If Netanyahu holds onto the defense portfolio for the next six months, he will be able to continue to balance Israel's response in Gaza with his objectives in the north while avoiding embarking on a broad military operation that will ignite a regional war.
But he won't be able to fix the IDF.
The State of Israel requires a full-time defense minister, and yes, Bennett could serve in that role.
The IDF needs to undergo an ethical and organizational revolution. All the potential candidates the media has contemplated for the job do not meet one important demand: They do not fit the bill. Netanyahu needs to invest a lot of thought and put his personal issues aside to appoint someone who can instill a new spirit into the IDF. A figure along the lines of former GOC Northern Command Amiram Levine comes to mind as someone who acknowledges the existence of a professional and operational crisis in the military, as reflected in a report by IDF Ombudsman Yitzhak Brik. All the other candidates suffer from an absence of criticism of the IDF and would merely use the position as a means to score political points.
In the meantime, someone needs to be sent home. If there was one successful senior commander during 2014's Operation Protective Edge, it was Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter. Who can force Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gazi Eizenkot to appoint him commander of the IDF's Gaza Division? The existential threat facing Israel is growing more and more tangible, and the IDF must undergo a revolution, such as the Mossad underwent 15 years ago, as soon as possible.
