Leader of the Yamina (formerly the New Right) list Ayelet Shaked is certain that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scare campaign began earlier than usual this election. The prime minister managed to get Zehut head Moshe Feiglin to drop out of the race, and according to Shaked, could have done something about Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir or his voters to keep Otzma Yehudit out of the election, too.
"It's a re-run," Shaked says in an interview to the Israel Hayom weekend supplement.
"If Otzma Yehudit runs, there won't be a right-wing government," she says.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Elections became entertainment for the masses long ago, so it was no surprise when Channel 13 ran recordings this week of Netanyahu shouting at Communications Minister Ayoob Kara, during which Shaked's name came up. Although the recordings hinted that she and Netanyahu might not have the best relations, Shaked refuses to address the storm that followed their publication. However, she says, "I did work with Kara to save Channel 20; it's an important channel that presents different voices, and just like I made the justice system more heterogeneous, I want to bring different voices to the media."
Shaked is more worried about how people will vote, and especially about Otzma Yehudit, which appears to be an unsolvable problem. When the followers of far-right activist Baruch Marzel are told that Shaked's scenario about the small party preventing a right-wing government from forming is viable, they come back with a pat response: it's all the fault of Naftali Bennett, former education minister and co-founder (with Shaked) of the New Right. Bennett sees himself as the future leader of the country, as prime minister, and he doesn't need Ben-Gvir or his followers at any stage of his career. So Ben-Gvir continues to run alone. Netanyahu, on the other hand, thinks that Ben-Gvir could weaken Yamina, and if a Rosh Hashana miracle takes place, the right-wing bloc could gain four seats. We haven't even discussed the suicide run by the far-right religious party Noam, which could cost the Right several thousand votes.
"Otzma Yehudit running in recent elections is a chronic problem. They always claim they'll make it past the minimum electoral threshold, and they wind up burning 30,000-100,000 votes. Even Chabad has called not to vote for anyone who isn't 100% certain to make it past the minimum threshold," Shaked says.
'I'm a bridge between sectors'
Shaked projects confidence that Netanyahu will form the next government, and she clearly prefers a straight-up right-wing government to one comprised of the Likud, Labor and Blue and White. When Israel Hayom sat down with her earlier this week in her home in Ramat Hachayal, the reports about the incident at Avivim on the northern border were still fresh.
"It's very strange that they took responsibility for the strikes in Syria," she says.
Q: Aren't you afraid that we could get bogged down [in the North] the same way we are with Hamas in Gaza, retaliations and counter-retaliations?
"There's a difference, but they're both problems. After Operation Protective Edge, we allowed Hamas to arm itself. We didn't take any action to prevent it. In Lebanon, we took no action from 2006 until now. We allowed Hezbollah to acquire 130,000 missiles. In Judea and Samaria, on the other hand, we took action to keep the grass cut."
"The current operations in the North are good and correct and fit the 'lawn mower' strategy. We are handling almost every Iranian action or base in Syria. We aren't waiting for them to entrench themselves and become an enormous force in Syria. The same goes for precision-guided missiles."
Q: Do you see yourself serving as defense minister at any point?
"I'm not ruling anything out. If you ask what jobs interest me – there are areas where I think I have an advantage."
Q: But you aspire to be a leader, which could include time with defense and security.
"True. I'm not ruling it out."
Q: If the Right wins, would you like to return to the Justice Ministry?
"I'd like to stay on in the Justice Ministry. I started doing important work there, but I'm also not ruling out other portfolios. The Finance Ministry will be very important in the next few years. Anyone who heads that ministry will have a lot of work. I don't envy the minister who will have to clean up the mess left there. But I'm prepared for that job. In the past 10 years, the fat got fatter and the lean starved."
Q: What ministry is best suited for passing reforms? Not budget cuts, but actual structural reforms.
"It's all up to the Finance Ministry. It controls the health and agriculture ministries, and even defense to a certain extent."
When Shaked says she's not willing to claim a job before the final results of the election, she's referring to the huge disappointment of New Right in the April election when the party failed to make it past the minimum threshold.
"Netanyahu took too many votes from us. I saw how things were going. A few days before the election I talked to a few of his staff and I told them, 'Stop it, you won't have a coalition.' There were so many parties vying for the same votes."
Q: The impression is that to the right of the Likud, there is a jumble of religious parties, which is why Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman's message is hitting home.
"That's wrong. To the right of the Likud, there's only one party – Yamina – which is a party made up of religious and secular members, from the various streams of religious Zionism as well as the ideological secular Right. There are also two ultra-Orthodox parties that have existed since the state was founded."
Q: But the secular sector is becoming increasingly hysterical about the religious.
"That is solely because of the incitement from Lieberman and Yair Lapid. It's incitement for political purposes. There was also a campaign about religificaiton aimed against Bennett as education minister, and there was no religification in the school system. My kids are in public school, and the curriculum has a lot less Jewish and traditional content than it did when I was in school. They barely even marked Jerusalem Day, which is a national holiday. My attitude is the complete opposite of Lieberman and Lapid's. As someone who is not religious who is the leader of a bloc of religious parties, and has very good relations with the haredim, I'm a big believer in integrating the haredim into Israeli society. My approach is to talk to them and form connections, and not one of alienation and distance."
Q: Where do you fit into politics? Right-wing secularists or former left-wingers would like to see you in a central role. It seems strange to them that you're serving as head of the religious bloc.
"When I decided to join Habayit Hayehudi, I was a member of the Likud Central Committee. Likud members who are now government ministers told me, 'They'll never vote for you.' I told them they were wrong, because I had a real connection to religious Zionism. I was right. That connection is important, both to religious Zionism and to the secular public. I'm a sort of bridge between sectors."
Q: You noted in your speech accepting the leadership of Yamina that Golda Meir is one of your heroes.
"I chose a few females heroes who have led. No woman has ever served as head of a right-wing party. This is an important message to women that women can do anything. I think that if there were more female leaders in politics, more problems would be solved. Women have less ego."
Q: Have you encountered jealous women?
"Of course. I won't name names. But in the Knesset women support each other. They work together, regardless of parties."
Q: Who from the far-left have you worked well with?
"With Revital Swid [Zionist Union], Michal Rozin [Meretz]. I helped her pass laws having to do with victims of sexual assault."
Q: That subject has become a matter of consensus.
"Yes. As justice minister, I made it a goal to promote women. Including in the Arab sector – I appointed the first female qadi to the Sharia court. That was a major event for Arab society. I appointed the first female haredi judge, the first female Druze judge. We've also set up a women's campaign headquarters. Sometimes little girls come up to me and tell me that I'm a role model. It's inspiring. It's nice that young girls talk to me that way."
Sovereignty? We've been there before
Many expected that after the New Right's failure in April, Shaked would find her way to a top spot in the Likud, as a springboard to the biggest job of them all. In the end, that didn't happen, and she doesn't want to look back to think about "what if…"
"Right now I don't think there's any point in going into all that. I took on a role that I think is no less important, and even more important than being in a top spot in the Likud – to lead the ideological camp. We saw how when the Likud formed a government with the Left, it adopted left-wing policies. In 2009, Netanyahu formed a government with Ehud Barak, froze settlement construction in Judea and Samaria, and even freed over 1,000 terrorists from prison."
Q: But even people on the Right have said that looking back, the 2009-2013 government was one of the best Israel has ever had.
"I never heard that. I know what it did, and I see them as bad things. If we [the religious Right] had been in the government then, no one would have frozen the settlements. The same goes for the deal to free [captive IDF soldier] Gilad Schalit. I wasn't in politics then, but I wrote articles against the Schalit deal. It led to lives being lost. In the end, it's a question of how much you're willing to pay. Now there's a major issue on which we've influenced the prime minister – he announced that after he forms a new government, Israel will apply sovereignty to all the settlements."
"Netanyahu would never have said that if it hadn't been for us. When we entered politics in 2012, Bennett spoke about applying sovereignty to Area C and people looked at us like we were crazy. Today, everyone is talking about it. Even the prime minister has adopted the terminology of applying sovereignty."
Q: There's a difference between applying Israeli law to settlements and annexing and applying sovereignty to Area C.
"Correct. But applying sovereignty to settlements is the first step."
Q: Would Yamina join a government under Benny Gantz?
"That's a scenario that will simply never happen, for a few reasons. First, Netanyahu will be given the mandate to form the government. It's not just me saying that, the Likud is saying the same thing. The question is what kind of government it will be, and with whom he'll start. If we [Yamina] don't win a lot of seats, we won't be important, and we won't be able to implement our values or policies. We'll be given less important portfolios and he'll partner with Amir Peretz. His desire to bring Peretz and [Gesher leader] Orly Levy-Abekasis into his government is very obvious."
Q: But why not?
"When the government is homogeneous, more can be accomplished. Every coalition faction effectively has a veto. If, for example, Peretz is in the government, he holds a totally socialist outlook. He wants to raise the minimum wage dramatically. To raise taxes dramatically. That's the exact opposite of what we believe, and it's hard to function like that."
Q: But my sense is that if he raises economic difficulties, it will give some stability to a country that has become unstable.
"You're right. It gives a certain sense of calm. But we could be facing a difficult time in terms of security, and if Amir Peretz is in the government, I don't know if that will project calm. In the previous government, we couldn't make any changes because [Finance Minister] Moshe Kahlon and his people objected, and they had a veto when it came to passing basic laws. So it's clear that if Peretz and Levy-Abekasis are in the government, we won't be able to pass any legal or economic reforms."
A right-winger since age 12
In the time since the April 9 election, Shaked has met with Lieberman. There was plenty of speculation around that meeting.
"I met with Lieberman after I thought I was already a 'civilian,'" Shaked says.
"I already had a very well-paying job. My husband was pleased. Then they announced a do-over election. We sat here on the bench, we watched the Knesset vote to dissolve itself, and my husband took his head in his hands and said, 'Oh, no, I can't believe this is happening to me.' He understood what was going to happen. I needed to decide whether I'd go back, if I was ready to run again in two separate parties. So I sat down with Bennett. We met several times to see if we could run together and bring everyone together. It took time for us to reach an agreement. The moment we did, I started running. At the same time, I was contacted by the Likud, by mayors, by activists. I looked at the option of joining the Likud. That's correct."
Q: The impression was created that Bezalel Smotrich and Rafi Peretz were the face of the New Right. Do you think you've managed to obfuscate that impression?
"We agree on 80% and disagree about 20%. We decided that when it comes to the 20%, everyone will retain their own stances. It's the difference between the liberal Right and religious Zionism. There is a difference, and that's fine.
"I would like to believe that a party like Noam will be responsible and drop out. They could waste thousands of [right-wing] votes. If they did, most of the voters would vote for the haredi parties, mainly United Torah Judaism. I would like to say that the Likud has an important role, and we have an even more important one – to pull the Likud to the Right when it comes to applying sovereignty on every issue. Until I became justice minister, the prime minister would say things like, 'I'll protect the legal system' and 'I won't pass any law that will change the system.' And you see that after I started work, he changed his mind."
Q: Apropos legal matters, is there any scenario in which you'd say, 'I can't support the prime minister because of his legal problems'?
"The current assessment is that the attorney general will make a decision [about an indictment] toward the end of the year. Until he does, I'm not going to discuss that."
Q: So a hearing, plus discussions about whether or not to indict the prime minister will bring us to the end of 2019.
"Right, so until the end of the year we won't discuss it. First of all, I hope that the cases against the prime minister will be closed. If not, we'll sit down and decide. He will also have to decide what to do. According to the current immunity law, the interests of the public must be considered. There is no need to change the law."
Q: You, with no legal education, found yourself facing off on the most fundamental issues with legal giants like Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit or Chief Justice Esther Hayut. How did you do it?
"I think that for someone who studied electrical engineering and computer science, the law is much less complicated. It can be studied. I also knew what I didn't know. I had a huge debate with them about the nation-state law. Everyone knows my position: if the Supreme Court decides to intervene in basic laws, it will be an earthquake to governance. I said that on the record, as justice minister. I think that the Supreme Court has no authority to revoke basic laws. I published a memo about Basic Law: The Government, and it notes that the Supreme Court cannot intervene in basic laws.
Q: Were you ever on the Left, politically?
"When I was a kid, I saw a debate between Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres. I was eight or 12, and since then, I've been on the side of Shamir. My husband, for example, is a kibbutznik, but in recent years, since we've been together, he's sort of come to his senses."
Q: The Left battles the Right, while the Right is busy fighting itself. Why is that?
"We aren't fighting against each other. The prime minister is the one fighting us."
