Ordinarily, Benjamin Netanyahu would take his time, and use all the 28 days he has been allocated to form a government. If necessary, he would ask for the 14-day extension he is allowed by law. Not only because time heals – a rule that always holds true, especially in politics – but because there are things that can only be arranged at the last minute. It's not always true that time passes without anything happening. Internal processes have to be completed and the groundwork laid for public opinion, not to mention the things that go on behind the scenes.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Netanyahu realized his new situation a few hours after the election. A day or two later, he had already understood that things would be different and that the power he has fought so carefully to protect, could slip away. Netanyahu is a gifted politician – even his rivals admit it. He grasps things in hours that could take mere mortals days, even weeks, to figure out. So speeding up the process and the expectation that Blue and White leader Benny Gantz will rush to sign off on a unity government could turn out to be a mistake. As could Netanyahu's apparent intention of handing back the mandate to form a government within days or weeks if it doesn't seem to be going his way, rather than using the full time he is allowed by law.
But this is not an ordinary situation. The rumor that Blue and White wanted to drag out negotiations until the attorney general could decide whether or not to indict Netanyahu after the Oct. 2 hearing in his criminal cases was enough to force Netanyahu to do the opposite – hit the gas and schedule things so that a government would be in place or a new election called before the attorney general announces his decision.
When the political timeline is inseparable from the legal timeline, the citizens are the ones who lose out. When leaders dance to the piping of the prosecutors and hand them the reins to make the most fateful decisions for the country, something has gone seriously wrong.
We can only look longingly at developments in the US to see how a healthy system works, in which only politicians set the political timeline, and the president is judged by the people, not a bunch of functionaries working under a cloak of fake objectivity.
