After limping along in the coalition talks with his right-wing allies, Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu has finally taken the time to cater to the needs of his fellow faction member by launching a series of one-on-one meetings with each of the Likud MKs – most of whom he has not met since the election. There are now two pressing matters that he has to take care of: making sure the next Knesset speaker is to his liking via a secret ballot and with an overwhelming majority (then the speakership gets officially voted on by the Knesset plenum); and defusing the disgruntled MKs through a divide-and-conquer approach that he has been so fond of. This method was not effective in the talks with the coalition partners – it only complicated things. But Netanyahu still believes he should pursue this path via his own colleagues in the party; he is convinced that it would be much easier to have only two disgruntled Likud MKs than four in a coalition of 64.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The question is which of those MKs Netanyahu wants to draw closer to and which he would seek to distance even further. The conventional wisdom is that he would prefer to make amends with Israel Katz and Dudi Amsalem at the expense of David Bitan and Nir Barkat. Things could change, but the emerging contours of the government would grant Likud 17 cabinet ministers - just over half of its size in Knesset, on top of the speaker, prime minister, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and the coalition chairperson. The number of deputy ministers could easily reach four or five, and some of the new MKs from Likud may get to chair some committees, and possibly be appointed to positions outside the Knesset.
In order to make sure his preferred candidate for speaker gets an easy vote and to make sure the Knesset passes a law that would allow Shas leader Aryeh Deri to serve as minister regardless of his criminal record, as well as a host of other measures that were incorporated in the agreements with the coalition partners, Netanyahu will not announce who gets what portfolio in his party, to preempt any efforts on the part of renegade Likud MKs to sabotage those efforts. He is of the view that at a time when his words carry so much weight, it's best to wait before he speaks so that he can reap the legislative benefits in the Knesset and within the faction.
Now that a new justice minister is set to be appointed, the many questions that people have asked Netanyahu and his people on various hot-button issues will finally get answers. Appointing someone like Yariv Levin, Amir Ohana or Amsalem could be seen as a signal that he wants to take on the entire judiciary. The judiciary will face a battle it has not had to deal with since the 1990s, when the so-called constitutional revolution led by then-Chief Justice Aharon Barak took shape (including through the cementing of the judicial review powers of the court by the nullification of a law in 1995),
One could safely assume that it will use all available means at its disposal, and it has many: academia, former justices, allies in the big mainstream media outlets, and of course – the MKs on the Left. This all-out campaign will make the recent brouhaha over the appointment of a right-wing lawmaker to a post in the Education Ministry pale in comparison. The judiciary will have all of them storm the barricades just so much-needed reforms get scuppered.
]But the coalition has its own arsenal: a Knesset majority and the public's backing. Despite the conventional wisdom, it is far from certain that the new reforms, if they pass, would automatically empower the Right. If the override clause passes, which would allow the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings, it doesn't mean there would always be 61 votes to use that mechanism. It will depend on the specific issue on the docket and will be a function of various political, personal, and partisan interests. The emerging coalition has already seen enough fighting for the past several weeks on practically every matter – and they have even had the chance to swear in a government.
Netanyahu could also opt to appoint a different kind of justice minister, one who would seek to cement the judiciary's current status and protect it from radical reforms. If Netanyahu pursues this path, he would essentially be signaling that he was once again open for a plea bargain in his ongoing trial and that he does not seek to wage war against the system. But this, in turn, could lead to another war breaking out: this time from his coalition partners, who have made it clear they want to effect real change in the judicial branch. Netanyahu will have to choose which hill wants to die on.
Declaration of intent
While the Biden administration has made it clear it is not going to boycott Israeli ministers but judge them based only on their actions once they take office, the White House and the State Department's preparations for the new Israeli government are in full swing. President Joe Biden remembers how then-Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer actively took on the Democrats when Barack Obama was in power as well as Netanyahu's speech before a joint meeting of Congress, which Biden made sure not to attend. The arrows are still in the quiver, but all sides are taking their positions.
The declaration of intent was issued even before the government could take power: from the decision to launch an FBI investigation against IDF soldiers surrounding the death of Shireen Abu Akleh from Al-Jazeera and Secretary of State Antony Blinken's address to J Street, which has been essentially boycotted by the Israeli government, to the ongoing concern voiced by Washington over the potential changes to the legal system in Judea and Samaria.
The US has a whole host of steps at its disposal against Israel, including on the world stage, in the UN, and in other places, as well as domestically, along with background briefings against the incoming prime minister.
Here too, just like on the judiciary, Netanyahu will have to make difficult choices as it tries to effect real change that would address the neglect of recent years while making sure not to antagonize the US. This includes hot-button issues such as the retroactive approval of communities in Judea and Samaria, the demolition of illegal structures built by Arabs in Area C, lifting the prohibition on entering the former settlements in northern Samaria that were evicted in 2005, and undoing the damage of the Oslo Accords, which have been an albatross on the neck of the settlers for decades.
Blame Netanyahu?
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did not wait for Netanyahu to take office and form a coalition that would put an end to the rotating premiership role he had carried since Prime Minister Yair Lapid took over. He decided he would get rid of that role of his own volition. That departure was not easy for him, to put it mildly. Nothing that he had planned materialized; in fact, the very premise that made him take the leap of faith (which some say was tantamount to deceiving voters) and create the unlikely unity government with Lapid, fell apart: He ultimately left politics without a base, without a constituency, and without support – apart from a handful of left-wingers who still appreciate his success in unseating Netanyahu.
Bennett erred right from the get-go, but his failure was because he was wedded to a false paradigm that every prime ministerial candidate in the past 20 years has been captive to: Popularity comes with the job. He was convinced that several months into his premiership, he would see his numbers spike and his image of being a boring leader get transformed and he would prove himself as someone who could handle the reins of government.
He based this on Ariel Sharon, who upon announcing his bid for Likud chairmanship was told by his party members that he was crazy only to lead the party into its best electoral feats as prime minister: 38 Knesset seats.
Ehud Olmert, who was only 32nd on the Likud candidate list before being elected to the Knesset, managed to secure the deputy prime minister portfolio and then in 2006 replaced Sharon and led his party to victory within several months of taking over.
Bennett was convinced that he would see a similar trajectory; that there would be people shouting and screaming while blaming him for conning his way into the Prime Minister's Office, but this would change after they saw how he performed. But with his popularity just stagnating and even dropping, he had an epiphany that something was not right: He has miscalculated.
Eventually, Bennett decided he would no longer be the victim and go on the offense. It was not easy, but he ultimately embraced this, according to people in his inner circle who said his then-aide Shimrit Meir convinced him that he must not let the attacks of the "poison machine" go unanswered (she denies this). As part of this shift, Bennett decided to target Benjamin Netanyahu, his predecessor, blaming him for the "poison machine", describing him as the "inciter-in-chief" and as the orchestrator of a whole host of boiler room operations that would make sure to make any discourse around then-prime minister inundated with toxic rhetoric. It was not easy for Bennett to make this transformation from victim to attacker.
Meir ultimately left Bennett's orbit after a big falling out with his people and even gave a scathing interview against her former boss. But recently the two have buried the hatchet and appear to be working on a book that could come out in several months, which means once again having many hours of working together and making Meir once again in the position of the strong woman in his inner circle. The assumption was that Israel will soon find itself in yet another election campaign, providing an opening for a potential Bennett comeback, but the clear-cut Netanyahu victory on Nov. 1 makes that unlikely, forcing the two to go back to the drawing board.
Some of the people who know Bennett have wondered whether his recent decision to file lawsuits against his attackers stems from the same motivation that had him start writing a book: to give meaning to his short-lived premiership and to cement his legacy as someone who countered the poison, the lies, the fake news that made muddied the waters of Israel's politics. He believes that Netanyahu's alleged boiler-room operation to have his character assassinated should not be countered with just criticism and anger but also be eradicated. As he put it recently in his Telegram channel: "I am not fighting for myself; I am fighting for all those who want to rehabilitate Israel's public discourse."
Bennett and Meir have not shared details about the forthcoming book, and they have kept most of their associates out of the loop on this matter. Meir has flatly denied any involvement in the recent legal lawsuits Bennett has filed and says that the writing of the book was planned all along.
The respondents Bennett has sued indeed crossed the line in their attacks, going beyond what is legitimate criticism against an elected official; they spread lies that he had pocketed tens of millions of shekels from the state that were billed as security or that his mother is not Jewish. This could very well be libelous, and they will have to work hard to win the ensuing trial.
What about personal responsibility?
His decision to wage a personal legal battle against people who are largely anonymous is not an easy feat. They could summon him and his family members, as well as former staffers, to testify. This could make the trial into a circus, but Bennett appears to be bent on moving forward despite this.
Bennett is not waiting for his book to come out, he is already engaged in battle in order to set the narrative that he was toppled by a "poison machine." In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, he wrote: "After a year of progress, my government collapsed amid nonstop pressure from public protests and on social networks. Arab parliamentarians who joined my coalition in order to improve the socioeconomic future of Israeli Arabs were called traitors in their hometowns, as were members of Yamina in their communities. Organized groups set up tents just meters from the homes of these members of Knesset, relentlessly harassing their families for months, calling them terrorist lovers. One of my party members reported that her husband's job was at risk and her children were being threatened at school. At the same time, Israel incurred a series of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv and other major cities, taking the lives of about 20 people. The opposition claimed that this was a result of the government's hands being tied by the Ra'am Arab party. This is false, given that we've seen terrorist attacks in the land for over 100 years and my government was actually tougher than usual on the terrorists."
He then went on to lament the effect this had on the proper functioning of his government.
"As a consequence, the Ra'am Arab party suspended its membership in the government. An Arab member of the Knesset from the Meretz party temporarily quit as well. A few members of my party, too, stopped supporting the coalition. My government did a poor job fending off the enormous amount of misinformation that was being spread across Israel and blind sectarianism. This campaign succeeded and brought my government to its end."
But what about his own failure: doesn't he share any of the blame for his extremely low popularity and the fact that his government's term in office was the shortest ever? There was no hint of taking responsibility for that in the article, but perhaps this will emerge in the book.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
