Gantz fears something more than coronavirus or Netanyahu: Palestinians
Benny Gantz
Jonathan Cook writes in Middle East Eye:
Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party, abandoned the central plank of his platform at the weekend – that he would never sit in a coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel continuously for the past 11 years. A former military general, Gantz justified his dramatic change of course under cover of claims that Israel needed an “emergency” unity government to deal with the coronavirus epidemic.
Israel’s government has been paralysed by three elections in which neither Netanyahu’s bloc of ultra-nationalist and religious parties, nor Gantz’s anti-Netanyahu bloc of secular, largely right-wing parties, could muster a parliamentary majority. Gantz argued it was time to set aside differences, ignore Netanyahu’s impending criminal trial for corruption and rally against the virus. The about-face means that Netanyahu will remain prime minister for at least the next 18 months – and possibly longer if he makes good on his well-earned reputation for subterfuge and double-dealing.
Gantz has said he is “at peace” with his decision. “There was no other alternative route, and had there been, we would have taken it,” he told supporters stunned by his decision. The reality is rather different.
Gantz actually enjoyed a narrow majority of legislators in parliament after the 2 March election. As a result, President Reuven Rivlin had tasked him last week with forming a government. His majority bloc was resolutely opposed to Netanyahu as prime minister, accusing him of increasingly authoritarian rule and pointing to his indictment for corruption.
The bloc also opposed Netanyahu’s cultivation of a new, more religious kind of politics, in which extremist rabbis and settler leaders have moved ever closer to centre-stage.