Last week, after Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced the decision to call early elections, I asked former President Reuven Rivlin if, during last year's traditional swearing-in ceremony for the new government, he had imagined that it would only last for a year. Rivlin smiled and replied, "The truth is, I never believed it would make it even that long."
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Since bidding farewell to the President's Residence in Jerusalem last July, which had been his home for seven years, Israel's 10th president has remained silent. He agreed to grant me a special interview ahead of the publication of my new book, which deals with the inner workings of parliament from the perspective of a journalist who has been wandering the Knesset halls for the past 31 years.
Following last week's political drama, I asked Rivlin if, in his opinion, Bennett and Lapid's decision to dissolve the Knesset was inevitable.
"They had no choice," Rivlin, 83, said. "You can't lead a government without a majority. They both wanted to bring this chapter to an end in an honorable way, without being extorted by a few individual lawmakers."
The last year, during which the survival of the coalition was dependent on the votes of a handful of MKs, put lawmakers who under different circumstances would have probably remained anonymous, in the spotlight. But with Idit Silman, Amichai Chikli, Nir Orbach, and others making headlines, I asked Rivlin whether he believes the law should be changed so that MKs who buck against coalition or party discipline and go rogue should be required to return their mandate.
"No," he said. "I oppose legislation that would allow the expulsion of an MK who hasn't voted with their faction as that would curtail the freedom of action of elected officials."
Q: What about the "defendant law" currently being put forward by Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar that seeks to bar a person under criminal indictment from becoming prime minister?
"This is indeed legislation that is moral and important and should be passed but not at present when the Knesset is about to disperse. The current legal situation results from mistakes that occurred with the annulment of the law for the direct election of a prime minister when Ariel Sharon formed his government. We were not aware that we should have amended the law which contains a clause that stipulates that the Deri-Pinchasi ruling (in other words that a minister in the government must resign if he has been indicted) does not apply to a prime minister."
Q: Are you worried about the deterioration in the rhetoric we've heard in the Knesset over the past year?
"The discourse in the Knesset was always political but the problem is that today, unlike in the past, those who should lead by example are not fulfilling their duties. They don't know which direction to take and instead want to ask the opinion of the public that elected them. They do not lead, they are led."
"As soon as a leader says that he wants to be re-elected and therefore he wants to hear from the public what his voters want, it is like the tail wagging the dog, and that is how our leaders look today."
Q: Are you suggesting our politicians are dogs?
"In Tossfot [a medieval commentary on the Talmud] it says 'the face of the generation is like the face of the dog'. Anyone who has a dog knows that when they go for a walk, the dog will always walk before its master, as long as it knows where his master wants to go, but when they reach a crossroads, sometimes the master will go right, sometimes he will go left or straight on, and sometimes he will turn back. The dog doesn't know where its master wants to go, so it will bow his head and try to see what its master plans to do. In other words, the master is the one who must lead and decide where he's headed."
Q: How is it, in your opinion, that some elected officials dare to speak so vulgarly, to swear and slander their rivals?
"The deterioration in rhetoric results from the need for political power. In the past, political leaders would not take seriously the words of those with extreme views. When Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the Kach movement, was elected to the Knesset, [Menachem] Begin said that if he would have to receive Kahane's support to be prime minister then he would rather not be prime minister. In other words, principles triumphed over political needs. The leaders in those years, [David] Ben-Gurion and Begin, even though they argued and insulted each other, wanted the good of the state. Today, our leaders do not think about the state, but rather how they can be re-elected.
"In the past, we elected to the Knesset people who could contribute to society. Today, leaders treat their rivals with contempt and address them with vitriol because they believe the public will value them only if they express themselves harshly and point to their rivals as traitors. Unfortunately, our leaders instead of pointing to the achievements they failed to achieve, point instead to the failures of their rivals. As a result, the people have lost their faith in the Knesset because it is incapable of taking decisions. This deterioration is deepening to the point where it has become a danger to democracy."
Q: Is this the reason that young, talented people are hesitant to enter politics?
"In the past, the public wanted to elect people who had proven their capabilities. Today they are no longer required to prove capabilities but merely the degree of their loyalty to the leader of their party. Now we have people in the Knesset who were anonymous before they were in the Knesset and will remain anonymous after they are no longer MKs. We have reached a situation where the silent majority doesn't even turn up at the ballot box on election day to vote and believes the Knesset is not worthy. "
Q: Isn't it a distortion that a politician like Naftali Bennett, who headed a party with just seven seats, served as prime minister for a year?
"In the past, there were two political blocs – Mapai headed by Ben-Gurion and Herut headed by Begin. They were followed by Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres. In 1992, when the direct election law [for the position of prime minister] was legislated, I believed that it would bring political stability, but instead, it damaged the political system. It created sectorial politics in which the state is less important and gave way to personal politics, where what's important is the sector the head of the party belongs to. The only issue they [politicians] look at is how the system will take care of them.
"Take the Arab community for example. It never managed to unite into one slate before the Knesset raised the electoral threshold. Today, we have in this country sectors or tribes that say that have a state, when the tribes should be part of the country. Instead of the two blocs we used to have, there is only one bloc, which is treading water, and that is the Likud which commands around 30 seats, while the second bloc has completely collapsed. Once we used to say 'every bastard is a king'; today, everyone elected to the Knesset sees themselves as a candidate for prime minister."
Q: In your view, is Israel in 2022 suffering from a crisis of leadership?
"Of course. Many in the public say that if the state doesn't interest its leaders, why should those leaders interest me? The cooling-off law that requires senior officers from the rank of major general and above to wait for three years before they can go into politics after retiring from the army annoys me greatly. If there were a cooling-off period of just a year then more senior officers, for example, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, could go into politics and contribute from their experience and capabilities just as former chiefs of staff like Moshe Ya'alon, Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz did."
Q: Do you not feel that the so-called Norwegian Law has been misused? There are over 20 MKs in the current Knesset thanks to this law. Isn't that a waste of millions of shekels?
"In my opinion, the Norwegian Law is illegitimate for the simple reason that such a sweeping law results in lawmakers entering the Knesset via this law lose their independence. The independence of elected officials is a sine qua non for the existence of a proper democracy.
"A situation could arise wherein an MK who has entered the Knesset through the Norwegian law announces that he is not willing to support a particular law and then his party responds by saying that if that MK doesn't vote in line with the resolution of his faction he will be dismissed from the Knesset and the minister who resigned [to allow him into the Knesset under the Norwegian Law] will return to the Knesset."
Q: Given your parliamentary experience, do you think the Knesset has the tools to supervise the government efficiently?
"The Agranat Commission, established in the wake of the Yom Kippur War fiasco, castigated the Knesset because it hadn't asked the prime minister the question, 'Why didn't you mobilize thousands of reserve troops on the eve of the war?' In other words, the commission set a precedent that it is the duty of the Knesset to supervise the government.
"A government over which the Knesset does not watch will not behave democratically. A Knesset that renounces its right and authority to ask questions, examine, and investigate is not fulfilling its duties."
Q: Do you think Israel will ever have a constitution?
"David Ben-Gurion understood that we must pay lip service on the issue of a constitution, but that we will never actually have a constitution. All the prime ministers who served after him also understood this and they too pay lip service to the idea of legislating a constitution.
"The reason we will never have a constitution is that the Arabs will not agree to it, as they claim that Israel should be a state of all its citizens and not just a Jewish and democratic state. Moreover, the ultra-orthodox demand clarifications on the question of who is a Jew, which is also a topic of controversy. The considerations that for all these years prevented the legislation of a constitution were political. Today everything is political."
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In February 2016, the media reported that Rivlin had decided to cancel his state visit to Australia in order to fly to Moscow to meet urgently with President Vladimir Putin. Sources at the president's office claimed at the time that Rivlin made the decision after meeting with then-PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who clarified to him that the meeting with Putin was more important.
Q: Why was it so important to Netanyahu for you to meet with Putin at the Kremlin? What was the subject of the meeting?
"My visit to Moscow was made at the request of the defense establishment or to be more precise at the request of the Israeli Air Force commander at the time, Maj. Gen Amir Eshel. I told Putin at the meeting that I had come to speak to him in the name of the IAF chief on a topic of great importance for both countries. I noted before him that during IAF flights over Syria, in contravention of agreements between us, fire was directed at Israeli planes by Russian soldiers posted in Syria.
"I told Putin that our pilots are used to completing their mission and when surface-to-air missiles are fired at them, they respond against the source of fire. It is clear to us that we were fired on by Russian soldiers because we know that the air defense systems in Syria are controlled by Russia.
"I said to him. 'I don't know why Russian soldiers fired at our planes – is it possible that they didn't follow your orders?' Putin didn't respond directly, but he understood what I said. He said something that today, in view of the war between Russia and Ukraine, takes on added significance: 'I know that you are very friendly with American leaders; they must know and if they don't know then you must make it clear to them that I, too, have red lines and I will not agree in any way for them to take over the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea and if they cause problems for me I will be forced to respond.' I replied that Israel's foreign policy is determined by three principles: The first is our relationship with the United States. The second principle is also our relationship with the United States. And the third principle is our relationship with the United States."
Q: Over the years you have held several meetings with Putin. What is your impression of him?
"The conversations between us were held in Russian. A Russian translator who speaks very good Hebrew translated Putin, while our ambassador in Russia translated what I said. Of the five meetings that we held, three were at the president's residence in Jerusalem, and two were at the Kremlin. We had good chemistry. Putin has a sense of humor and he really is as tough as he seems. My impression was that he doesn't like to hear anything boring."
Q: What conclusions should Israel draw from the fact that not a single country in the world sent its soldiers to Ukraine to help in the war with Russia?
"Israel can only rely on itself. Our alliance with the United States enables us to maintain our strength and independence out of the understanding that we constitute a strategic asset. States do not want to intervene in the wars of other states."
