Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to the cusp of power, but the rivalries that have thrown Israel into a protracted political crisis could still thwart his reclamation of the prime minister’s office.
“As always, it’s the squabbles between the various parties and the cantankerous dynamic in Israeli politics that could still scuttle his designs on a new coalition,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Vice President Jonathan Schanzer said. “Bibi could appear to have a majority with right-leaning coalition partners, but he may not be able to secure a coalition because of personality conflicts. … That’s a real possibility for him.
Israeli voters returned to the polls on Tuesday for the fifth election since 2019, following the collapse of a government formed by an unlikely group of Israeli power brokers who put aside their differences to form a coalition that could oust Netanyahu. The early returns suggest that right-wing parties will secure the 61 seats needed to establish a parliamentary majority — although at least one Israeli Arab party may yet cross the threshold for votes needed to gain a seat in the Knesset and thus drop the right-wing bloc to 60 seats.
“That’s where we are: razor-thin margins, again, with coalition negotiations starting soon,” said Schanzer. “Bibi will have first crack at it. Certainly not a given. But he has the advantage.”
Netanyahu’s position could be fortified by Israeli anxiety about global affairs. “Security and the economy, those are his bread-and-butter issues,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Victoria Coates, a former White House National Security Council official who coordinated Middle East policy under Donald Trump, told the Washington Examiner. “Obviously, he’s polarizing, but I think he’s a known quantity.”
All eyes right now on Balad, a small Arab nationalist party.
They’re just under the threshold right now to win seats. But if they get over the line it could scramble the initial exit polls. And could push Netanyahu back under a majority.
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) November 1, 2022
In any case, Israeli President Isaac Herzog is likely to give Netanyahu the procedural mandate required to attempt to form a government. And yet, the election has demonstrated once again the personal animosity that ended Netanyahu’s previous tenure as prime minister.
“Bibi, that liar, is incapable of saying a single true word,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity party, said Monday.
That outburst came in the context of dueling interviews with the same radio station, in which Netanyahu accused Gantz of “endangering the lives of Golani soldiers in order not to hurt Palestinians” during his tenure as Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff. That allegation reportedly referred to a 2014 military operation in which Gantz took certain precautions to avoid civilian casualties.
“We were in northern Gaza, and we had to take down a hospital [from which enemy forces were operating] and make sure [first] that there were no patients and other people who had to be evacuated,” he said on Army Radio while emphasizing then-Prime Minister Netanyahu’s involvement in the operation. “We completed all the procedures while waiting with [our forces] undercover, and then I destroyed the hospital. “
More than last-minute politicking, the vituperative controversy calls attention to Netanyahu’s besetting weakness. The undisputed leader of Likud, Netanyahu nevertheless has struggled in recent years to turn his commanding position into a durable government because of his acrimonious relationships with the other right-wing leaders who could deliver a stable majority
“It’s been one of his greatest self-inflicted wounds — he’s basically, systematically, removed or alienated severely any likely successor,” Coates told the Washington Examiner. “And for a while, that was a successful strategy.”
Some of the alliances that would seem “natural” have been undone by the distrust and grievances that accumulated over Netanyahu’s previous 12 years as prime minister — a tenure that featured high-stakes clashes between Netanyahu and Barack Obama, the signing of the Abraham Accords (a historic normalization of ties between Israel and two Gulf Arab states) and corruption allegations that haunted the final years of his premiership.
“The rap on him is that he will exclude senior government coalition partners from major decision — keep them in the dark as it relates to the Abraham Accords, [other] major initiatives with the United States,” Schanzer said. “He’s running out of friends.”
Even Netanyahu’s putative partners distrust him. The final days of this election cycle featured the airing of a leaked audio in which the far-right Religious Zionism leader Betzalel Smotrich can be heard saying Netanyahu lies when he claims not to have been willing to partner with the Israeli Arabs last year.
“He’s a lying son of a liar,” said Smotrich, who aspires to join Netanyahu’s party in a coalition government this year. “He was desperate to! I was the only one who stood in his way.”
Smotrich is the co-leader of a party formed through a merger orchestrated by Netanyahu last year. His partner atop that new party is a far-right politician named Itamar Ben-Gvir, long a pariah in Israel due to his support for Meir Kahane, whose Jewish Defense League was identified as “one of the most active terrorist groups in the United States” by the U.S. government during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
“When I said 20 years ago that I wanted to expel all the Arabs, I don’t think that anymore,” Ben Gvir told AFP last week. “But I will not apologize.”
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) reportedly warned Netanyahu against forming a government with Ben-Gvir, but the Likud chief adopted a defiant tone in the final days of the election.
“We are a democracy, and we will decide who will be in the next government,” Netanyahu said. “I said to Menendez, ‘Are you talking to me about [Ben-Gvir] who believes in the State of Israel and supports IDF soldiers? I haven’t heard a word about Gantz and Lapid partnering with Mansour Abbas and the Muslim Brotherhood, who deny Israel as a Jewish state and go to the mourning tents of murderers of Jews.’”
Netanyahu has shifted his posture from last year when he declared that Ben-Gvir “is not fit” to be a Cabinet minister — but he might deem it a small price to pay for a third tenure as prime minister.
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“This is a man who is not ready to let go,” Schanzer said.
