Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's many years in power have made the entire political system undergo a process of "Netanyahu-zation." The political debates, battles for civilization, Right and Left, deep-seated ideologies and philosophies of life that had been part of Israeli public life in the country's first few decades were pushed aside and replaced by a single question – yes or no to Netanyahu?
Dozens and even hundreds of university seminars, final assignments, and doctoral theses have tried to analyze the Israeli public's "tribes" and opinions, points of tension between religion and science, liberalism vs. conservatism, Jewish vs. Israeli identity, but it would appear that in the past few years almost none of that is relevant. The line separating the groups goes where Netanyahu does. The scale ranges from passive support to devotion on one side, and from repulsion to loathing on the other. Nearly the only litmus test is Netanyahu.
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The two elections of 2019 further polarized the two camps. The people in the center, the ones who have reservations about Netanyahu but don't hate him, and the ones who like but do not worship him, are becoming fewer. These were bizarre elections that forced almost everyone to choose a side and intensified either their hatred or love of him.
The situation has gotten so intense that almost no one needs to explain where he or she stands. Support for Netanyahu has turned into support for everything a traditional, right-wing, conservative person believes in – even in cases in which the prime minister doesn't deliver the goods. And the other side's desire to topple him has long since dropped any rational considerations and has turned into knee-jerk support for everything seen as hurting him, and opposition to anything perceived as helping him.
Thus, the criminal cases in which the prime minister is a suspect have turned into the center of gravity for the anti-Netanyahu camp. Even more than that, during the last election campaign, Netanyahu's opponents voiced almost no reason to vote him out other than the criminal investigations. Blue and White, the Democratic Union, and to a degree the Labor party put all their eggs in the attorney general's basket, and nearly 100% of their arguments against the Likud government had to do with issues of corruption, immunity, courts, the status of law enforcement, etc.
We can assume that if the inconceivable happens and two months from now the attorney general decides to close the cases against Netanyahu without an indictment, the opposition leaders will be left with nothing.
It wasn't always this way. When Netanyahu was voted into power in 2009, his main opposition was Tzipi Livni. She had many reasons for ousting him, dressed in an ideology of hope vs. darkness, peace vs. international isolation, which hid the ego battles and bitterness that were the opposition leader's true motivations.
In 2013, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid opposed Netanyahu (before joining him after the election over his giving in to the ultra-Orthodox and what he saw as Netanyahu's misallocation of resources. In 2015 it was the Zionist Union under Livni and Isaac Herzog who brought the old wars between Left and Right back to the forefront. Here and there, various nonprofit groups, with aggressive help from the media, brought issues like welfare, the economy, and civil issues onto the public agenda.
With Netanyahu being the main topic of dispute, and the only current opposition to Netanyahu being based on the suspicions and investigations against him, the world has been divided into people who think that Netanyahu is utterly corrupt and those who believe that there's nothing to any of it.
If Blue and White and the other left-wing parties were to ask each other how on earth there could be 55 MKs who are unwilling to leave Netanyahu, and there isn't even a hint of a putsch in the Likud, the answer lies with themselves. The ones who tore the people in two and determined that opposing Netanyahu means believing he's a criminal caused the other side to do exactly the opposite and cling to him.
The 55 MKs from the right-wing and haredi parties have an obligation to their constituencies, who expected them to support Netanyahu. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is holding them tight to keep them from running off to a government under Benny Gantz, and they are holding on to him so he won't sign a unity deal that leaves them out. That embrace could drive all sides over the precipice and into a third election. They will hold on tight until we have either a new government or an election.
Because legal proceedings could bring an end to Netanyahu's time in office, the pre-indictment hearing has become the main political event, eclipsing canceled negotiation meetings and even the swearing-in of the 22nd Knesset.
Blue and White's plan for the results of the hearing (an indictment for Netanyahu) would take place before coalition negotiations could be completed, didn't work out. Netanyahu is close to handing back the mandate to form a government, and shortening the entire timeline for a new government. The attorney general is expected to make a decision in December, moments before State Attorney Shai Nitzan resigns. If Netanyahu's lawyers manage to bring the investigations to an end, which means a delay of a few months, the prime minister can stay calm and hold onto his mandate for a while longer.
But if no delay is secured, Netanyahu will hand back the mandate and it will fall to Gantz. This means that the end of the third chance to form a government, a 21-day period in which any MK can take on the role of prime minister if 61 MKs sign off on it, will end sometime in November.
In other words – an indictment, if there is one – will catch Netanyahu either as prime minister, whether he secures a rotation with Gantz or any other solution, or as a transitional prime minister as the country heads into a third election. In yet other words: a serving prime minister will be on trial, if there is one. While that scenario is legal, it is completely without precedent.
Netanyahu's wavering position pushed Naftali Bennett to a watershed moment. Everyone is aware of the personal rivalry between them. Bennett could have exploited Netanyahu's political situation and started his next election campaign at his expense, but he chose differently.
Bennett became one of the main engines in the effort to establish a unity government. He and Netanyahu are coordinated, holding meetings and making frequent phone calls. Bennett is reaching out to officials in Blue and White and trying to push them toward a unity government, despite the obstacles. For now, Bennett isn't asking for a place at the government table, and Netanyahu isn't offering one. But if the relations between the two continue to thaw, it's possible the issue might come up.
During a meeting of leaders of right-wing parties last week, Likud representatives suggested signing an agreement not to sign any proposal to have an MK other than Netanyahu form a 61-member coalition, thereby making him or her prime minister. This came after they signed a deal not to hold coalition negotiations with Gantz should he receive the mandate. But the party leaders refused, arguing that agreeing to a third round of negotiations at this point would render all current efforts to form a government pointless.
But at the same meeting, the parties present made an even more important decision, that Likud ministers Yariv Levin and Zeev Elkin would negotiate with Gantz – assuming he receives the mandate – on behalf of all the right-wing parties. If Gantz wants to sit with Aryeh Deri, the latter – according to the deal – would have to refer him to Elkin and Levin. Will that promise be kept? It's tough to know. But it was made.
Blue and White is uneasy, as well. The internal conflicts that came out ahead of the election have not only calmed down, they appear to have gotten fiercer. Just before Rosh Hashanah, Netanyahu called Gantz and asked him for a meeting – a personal one that would carry no obligations, to see how they could move forward. Gantz agreed and it was scheduled. When the holiday was over, the meeting was canceled. No matter how justified the explanations for the cancellation were, one thing was clear – Gantz might be chairman of the party, but he is not the one who sets the tone. It was Lapid who canceled the meeting.
Last Wednesday, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman announced that if the sides didn't arrive at a solution for a unity government, he would stop in. The political troll strikes again. Other than joining a government that includes right-wing and haredi parties, Lieberman has nothing to gain from unity talks. As long as Blue and White isn't interested, he can't save the situation. If anything, Lieberman is only a nuisance. His harsh remarks about the haredi parties only make it harder for the Blue and White leaders to decide whether or not to join the rotation government Netanyahu is offering. Such a government would include the haredi parties in any case.
That same day was the first day of Netanyahu's pre-indictment hearing. The case under discussion was Case 4,000, in which Netanyahu is suspected of offering Bezeq telecom controlling shareholder Shaul Elovitch major regulatory benefits in exchange for positive coverage for himself and his family on the Bezeq-owned Walla news site.
While the police and the prosecutorial authorities' claim that this comprised bribery, it was apparently the worst bribery deal in history. A bewildering amount of evidence point to how poor the deal was and how it made Netanyahu a sucker.
The material revealed in the investigation and its leaks indicate that Netanyahu spokesman Nir Hefetz was forced to "handle" items that appeared on Walla, ensuring they were positive and that any negative articles or unflattering pictures were removed. The leaked material shows a series of instances in which Hefetz, Sara Netanyahu, and sometimes even the prime minister himself were forced to scold the owners of Walla and its editors to secure what they saw as appropriate coverage.
This leads us to a simple question: Is that what Netanyahu allegedly paid Elovitch a billion shekels for? For that kind of money, couldn't Elovitch have been expected to make sure that a media site he owned would work for Netanyahu automatically, without need for shouting and outrage? The evidence supposedly bolsters the prosecution's claim that the owner and editors of the site shackled Walla to the needs of the Netanyahu family, but what can we do – they prove exactly the opposite.
