A week and a half have passed since the Knesset's dissolution, but the election campaign has yet to take any kind of shape. At this stage, no one knows exactly what the campaign will look like, what the agenda will be, and what exactly we will be talking about from the moment it kicks off to the opening of the voting stations come Election Day. The political parties have yet to establish teams or consolidate the strategies they will adopt in the coming months, so what we have for the most part now is the indiscriminate firing of shots in all directions. It was just two weeks ago that the opposition launched a major anti-corruption campaign with a large rally in Tel Aviv. But two days later, they had already moved on to concerns the state would be governed by Jewish law. The Likud party doesn't have much to brag about either. Alongside the formidable political victories it marked this week, the ruling party has once again been dragged into conforming to the agendas of others.
In the first week following the dissolution of the Knesset, there were two moments from which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to glean satisfaction, each of which he will be able to use as a springboard down the road. The first achievement concerned the successful appointment of Netanyahu's pick for state comptroller, Matanyahu Englman, in an anonymous vote that saw him easily defeat the opposition's choice for the role, Giora Rom. The second and more dramatic achievement was Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit's announcement that despite the Knesset's dissolution, Netanyahu could appoint any lawmakers and ministers he liked to the government positions of his choosing, without restrictions and without requiring the Knesset's approval.
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The Blue and White party suffered a stinging and humiliating defeat in the vote for state comptroller. For an entire day, the ground was prepared in both the media and the political system for the possibility that Netanyahu was about to lose. The prime minister was depicted as a flip-flopper – someone who, for the first time, members of the Right also wanted out of office. One more minuscule effort and the Likud would surely show him the door and appoint a different candidate in his place. The secret vote for state comptroller, they explained, could prove useful to Netanyahu's enemies – both in public and in particular in private – as a way to settle the score with the prime minister behind the scenes.
Their calculation was simple: Netanyahu, of course, doesn't have much of a coalition, which is why we are once again headed to a general election in the first place. In the vote for state comptroller, there are at most 60 lawmakers with whom Netanyahu had conducted successful coalition talks, plus another five from Yisrael Beytenu's Avigdor Lieberman, who, while he may have announced his support for Englman, could vote as he saw fit in the secret vote, seeing as he longer feels beholden to the prime minister. Had they put in a little more effort, or any effort for that matter, a victory for the opposition could have been reached. At the very least, they could have prevented what they were to learn had transpired with the publication of the results of the vote: At least two of their members had voted in line with the coalition.
In an arena where they had promised to "make Netanyahu's life miserable," the four officials in Blue and White's cockpit – Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Moshe Ya'alon and Gabi Ashkenazi – proved they had zero execution capabilities. Given the assessment that members of Blue and White voted for the coalition's candidate for state comptroller, they failed to maintain the integrity of their camp and apparently even their party.
In the 24 hours leading up to the secret vote in the Knesset, there were those who took care to make sure that everyone heard that it was Englman's belief that criticism of the state should not be issued in real time, but retroactively. The comptroller is not a partner in management, but rather the author of criticism who passes his findings on to the Knesset for handling. The Knesset, of course, is the authority that tasked him with the responsibility and he is employed by. This was the reality from before the establishment of the state and up until the last decade and a half, during which we have witnessed the spread of the concept of activism from the court houses to the state attorneys, to internal auditors and the rest of the senior officials in the state.
The person who led the coalition's battle over who would be comptroller was Environmental Protection Minister Zeev Elkin. As it was already clear to him from the start that some members of the coalition would vote with the opposition in an effort to embarrass Netanyahu, Elkin's working assumption was that he was starting off with minority support for Englman's candidacy. He didn't know what the extent of this revolt would be, but he decided to play it safe and try to bring at least eight votes over from the other side.
At a time when Blue and White should have been focusing on the fight over the vote for state comptroller, its senior officials were instead investing most of their efforts in putting out fires at home. The distrust among party heads is on the rise, making it less and less likely they will be able to hide it from the public in the long term. Among party members, there is concern the growing hostility between leadership elements will ultimately become intolerable and could cause enormous damage to their election campaign.
On the issue of religion and state
Netanyahu's problems didn't begin with the attacks from the opposition and Lieberman on the issues of religion and state and the haredim, but rather the remarks by United Right member and National Union leader Bezalel Smotrich. It should be noted that Smotrich did not say he wanted the country to be governed according to Jewish law. In his remarks, Smotrich spoke of the need to give Jewish law a far more prominent role in Israel's justice system. There is no more legitimate demand. His remarks do not represent a new idea or a threat to the State of Israel's existence, but rather the ideology at the core of religious Zionism since its founding over 100 years ago.
To be honest, Lieberman's and Lapid's campaign, which focuses on the issue of religion and state, threw Netanyahu off balance. It's an uncomfortable position for Netanyahu to be in, especially at election time. In the confrontation between the anti-haredim and the haredim, a party like the Likud doesn't have much to contribute. While the haredim are loyal members of the coalition, when it comes to religion, the Likud is a liberal movement.
Netanyahu's began to respond to the campaign following the attorney general's announcement the prime minister could in fact appoint any minister he liked to the position of his choosing without requiring the Knesset's approval. This was a dramatic announcement that Netanyahu will take advantage of in order to establish a new order within the government and the coalition and divvy up portfolios in such a way that will ensure stability in the Likud and among party leaders. His first move as part of this effort was to make Likud MK Amir Ohana, Israel's first openly gay cabinet member, justice minister, thus enabling Netanyahu to kill two birds with one stone: The move not only sends a clear message to senior Likud officials that loyalty pays off, but also lets Likud voters know that despite the brouhaha over Smotrich's calls for Jewish law to have greater influence over Israel's justice system, the ruling party remains as liberal as ever.
A time for unity
New Right party leader Naftali Bennett was right to decide not to negotiate with the United Right, Zehut party leader Moshe Feiglin or any other elements prior to July 15, some two weeks before the deadline for submitting party lists to the Central Election Committee.
It is clear to everyone on the Right that they will need to be much more united than they were the last time around, when a few of the right-wing parties were either left out of the Knesset or at risk of not meeting the electoral threshold. But beyond quarreling over every possible thing, they haven't succeeded in doing anything of substance just yet. Should this continue to be the case, it appears that Netanyahu will once again need to step in and exert his influence.
It has been said that Netanyahu fired Bennett and his fellow New Right party leader Ayelet Shaked due to a personal vendetta or at the request of his wife, Sara Netanyahu, so as to remove them from the coalition government and the cabinet. Netanyahu paid for letting Bennett and Shaked go among members of the Right, who did not approve of their firing and believe that, following the conflict with Lieberman, it was a political mistake to continue to fight with members on the Right with whom the prime minister will need to form a coalition the day after the election.
And so now we learn that Bennett and Shaked's firing had nothing do with either Sara Netanyahu or a personal vendetta but an unequivocal demand from the United Right. Once the attorney general clarified that new ministers could be appointed, senior members of United Right from the Habayit Hayehudi party demanded Netanyahu fire those who led to their party's and the right-wing camp's demise. And while the demand was not issued in writing, per Netanyahu's request, it was nonetheless made. Once the ministerial appointments are completed, Smotrich and Habayit Hayehudi party leader Rafi Peretz will be at a clear advantage when the time comes to engage in negotiations to unite the Right. And Netanyahu certainly has an interest in helping them do so.
Meanwhile, over at Labor, reports that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak is considering running in the party primaries were believed to have been aimed at allowing former leaders to do a media tour and remain in the public conscience. When Labor leaders convened on Tuesday, this was still believed to be the case. But that all changed the next day, when it was decided that only senior party members would be allowed to take part in the party's elections, and not all Labor party members as has been decided just one day earlier. Barak's fingerprints were all over the move. That was the moment when they came to understand that this was the moment it was actually going to happen: Absent some last-minute change, Barak was back.
The power dynamics among Labor's senior officials ensure a particularly close and dramatic fight between Barak and former Labor leader Amir Peretz. A winner could be crowned by sealing a majority of a few dozens of votes, maybe even less. For Peretz, who wants to be Israel's president, and Barak, who is interested in making a comeback, it will be the fight of their lives. But no less than that, it will be a fight for Labor's life.
