Israel’s Political Makeover Is Finally Here, but Netanyahu Is Not Letting Go Yet

This combination of pictures created on June 2, 2021 shows (Top (L to R) Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid, Israeli former Defence Minister Naftali Bennett, Israeli former Interior Minister Gidon Saar, Israeli ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, (bottom L to R) Israeli politician Nitzan Horowitz, alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, head of Israel’s conservative Islamic Raam party Mansour Abbas, and leader of the Jewish state’s Labour Party (HaAvoda) Merav Michaeli.

Yossi Verter writes in Haaretz, 11 June 2021, “In Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land,” the former U.S. president quotes something White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told him. “Trust me, the presidency is like a new car. It starts depreciating the minute you drive it off the lot.” A lot can be said about Naftali Bennett’s impending premiership, just not that it’s like a new car. It looks closer to a near total loss – scratched, with flat tires, a worn-out chassis and an oil leak.

Bennett is not taking the usual route to the Prime Minister’s Office. Between his six Knesset seats, playing both sides and mostly zigzagging, the only thing going for him is that there’d be no government without him. Israel would have been dragged into a fifth election and Benjamin Netanyahu would have kept his job, continuing to go wild, fanning the fires, inciting and weakening the system around him.

Yair Lapid understood this and informed Bennett with barely any misgivings (he initially had a few) that he was prime minister as far as Lapid was concerned. The other players, from left to right, were responsible enough to also recognize the urgency of the reality, and pitched in. Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Sa’ar are far from admirers of Bennett. They think they are both much more suited, but it is what it is. Merav Michaeli and Nitzan Horowitz never imagined such a scenario in their wildest dreams. Benny Gantz, who looked like he swallowed three cicadas, doesn’t even bother hiding his feelings.

This unique situation requires much modesty from the designated prime minister. He mustn’t patronize them. He should consult with them, include them. The more they feel in the know, the more their dedication to this rare venture will solidify. It’s worth it for him to talk with Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. They’d love to help.

He can expect no proper handoff from Netanyahu, as the outgoing prime minister benefited from, twice: in 1996 from Shimon Peres (who continued to serve as his mentor in secret meetings at the Prime Minister’s Residence) and in 2009 from Olmert. On the day Netanyahu was tasked with forming the next government, Olmert ordered all intelligence organizations and the chief of staff to provide his successor with free access to all material. Bennett hasn’t even gotten so much as a phone call. Instead, the person leaving the job he considers his registered property keeps publicly delegitimizing his government, Donald Trump style.

Bennett’s entry into the job will be rough. Three mines await him in the coming week, some laid for him intentionally: transferring the Qatari money to Gaza, the decision to evacuate the illegal outpost of Evyatar and the Flag March. Regarding Evyatar, Bennett’s associates wonder, to say the least, why Defense Minister Gantz (who’s responsible for the evacuation) didn’t send the army to that hill a week or two ago.

Head of the Yamin party Naftali Bennett and head of the Yash Atid party Yair Lapid

For the roles of director general and government secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, Bennett ought to appoint experienced people who know the system for the inside. It’s a great idea to make Eyal Gabay director general. He did the job admirably from 2009 to 2011 before fleeing like his successors. (According to close associates, he left mainly because of his nightmarish interactions with the Lady.) Gil Beringer as government secretary would be a mistake, not because he is considered Ayelet Shaked’s alter ego but rather because he radically opposes the judicial system and is hated in the Justice Ministry. Bennett doesn’t need to create a superfluous front. They’ll pop up anyway.

But it’s not all bad. U.S. President Joe Biden will probably invite him for a visit by July. (A diplomatic source said Lapid, the alternate prime minister, will be invited two months later.) The Americans will go out of their way to demonstrate support for the new government. It’s the new leaf the Democratic administration spent years hoping for. Bennett will receive the full treatment. We can assume he’ll also be welcomed in Berlin, London and Paris.

We know these leaders’ opinion of Bibi. His disturbed and dangerous behavior in recent weeks, identical to that of Trump after the November election, has reverberated throughout the world. It proved to whomever was still inclined to believe that Netanyahu is a democrat that the man is an uninhibited “democratator” – a democratically elected dictator. One of the last assets Netanyahu can still sell is his prestige and international standing. However, the Trumpism that took control of him the more he sank politically and legally hurt him in the coverage he’s been getting in the foreign press, and it’s reasonable to surmise that such is the case in the intelligence reports and briefings given to Western leaders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony honors medical workers and hospitals for their fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, in Jerusalem, on June 6, 2021. 

Where is Bibi?

Three days have passed since we last saw Netanyahu. He attended a Likud faction meeting on Monday. He gave an interview that evening, probably the last as prime minister, on his private TV propaganda station. The interview, the meeting and the speech at the beach revealed the emotional meltdown he is experiencing to everyone. Since then, silence. Over 72 hours without tempting offers, sophisticated spin, incitement.

He is going through Kubler Ross and Kessler’s five stages of grief, an acquaintance of his told me: He finished with denial, anger and bargaining. Now he is in the depression stage. Perhaps acceptance is coming.The mood at the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street, claim people familiar with the situation, is bad. Netanyahu understands better than anyone how serious his situation is. The moment the new government is sworn in, he will lose control over his personal-legal, political and public fate. The trial will be held to the very end. Even if he tarries, the ruling will be given. And there won’t be any excuses.

Next month, a permanent state prosecutor is to be appointed. A new attorney general will replace Avichai Mendelblit by February 1. Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar will appoint the search committees. The fantasies that floated around Balfour – to establish a fully right-wing government, to oust the attorney general and appoint a successor who would postpone legal procedures and effectively dissolve the trial – drowned in the sea off Caesarea. He plotted to turn Israel into a “democratatorship” like his friends from Hungary and Poland. The plot failed.

The area around him is emptying out. Failure has a sour, rotten smell. Few yearn to smell it. The masses didn’t flood the streets. Tens of thousands of settlers didn’t descend from the rocky West Bank hills to lay down on the roads for him. They understand he is passe, history. They have many allies in the new government: Sa’ar, Bennett, Shaked, Zeev Elkin. What’s the point of mourning the one departing, if you can be building a constructive relationship with the successors?

Lapid dropped by Bennett’s home on Wednesday evening to tie up loose ends. Their long conversation was disturbed intermittently by amplified shouts. When Lapid left, he was surprised to discover that there were no demonstrators, only one large PA system that someone had attached to a radio. The burning ground simply extinguished itself; it doesn’t matter how much Netanyahu tried to pour fire on it.

The ultra-Orthodox, who showed us a Diapsora-like “oy gevalt” campaign this week, as if the Cossacks were coming to perpetrate a pogrom in the shtiebel, will very quickly calm down and go back to doing business from the back of the plenary. The two-year budget has to pass by November 10 at the latest. The government will be immune from dissolution by a no-confidence vote until December 2022. From the moment the state budget will be passed, the reality in Likud will be turned on its head, if nothing happens beforehand.

Netanyahu doesn’t intend to let go. Even if he won’t return to the prime minister’s seat any time soon, the opposition leader is still a symbol of power. Namely, the party remains rich in resources for him to use in his personal battles. He wants to call early primaries, as is his holy ritual. One has to convene the central committee for that. The potential successors, like Nir Barkat and Yisrael Katz, and the sole decision-maker on the above matter, central committee Chairman Haim Katz, won’t automatically bend to his will as in past, when they said amen to his every demand. They will bargain.

Senior officials will take distance. The show of flattery will be conducted more reservedly, by fewer people. The historic displays of shouting by the racist David Amsalem will pass on mostly to the backbenchers. Netanyahu will remain with the wallflowers, for whom Bibism is their raison d’être – people like Galit Distal Atbaryan, who bought a guaranteed 10th spot through pitiable flattery of Netanyahu and his son, Yair. “I’m crazy about your metabolism, sexy man, son of Caesar,” she drooled on the radio, shortly before she was secured the spot. Then they promised us a Bibist on a different level. Still, she is an intellectual and a writer. However, since then she hasn’t spared efforts to lower herself to the level of May Golan, Shlomo Karhi, Amsalem and Miri Regev. It’s not a hard task, but she is doing it well.

Ayelet is trying

It seems that from the moment Bennett stopped stammering and became determined to break out and swear in a government, the stars around him have aligned, while Netanyahu’s night has turned particularly dark. All the tricks, threats, pressure, temptations – nothing really shook the foundations of the coalition-in-formation. Bennett’s partners worked at it the entire time. Avigdor Lieberman, for example, was set on the idea of convening the party heads for a celebratory photo last Sunday. If they will see us together, he told Lapid, they’ll understand it’s a done deal. He was right.

Meanwhile, final opposition melted. It was like that with Ayelet Shaked, who has already proved that if she finally decides to go with a partner, she’s all in. That’s how it was in the transition from a secular, right-wing association to a religious party, and from a religious party to an independent political venture, and that’s how it is now: After the conscientious objector stopped making a sour face and trying to obstruct, and realized that there is no other way (or way back), she put in her share to make the government come into being. Over the past week, for example, she held two long meetings with MK Moshe Arbel of Shas, the party’s most moderate and rational legislator, and tried to convince him to do something.

Elkin was another story. Members of the so-called change coalition say he is the only one capable of fooling himself in chess. He piled obstacle upon obstacle regarding legalizing illegal outposts, Palestinian construction in Area C and other issues. He calmed down midweek, after meeting with commanders Bennett, Lapid and Sa’ar. He left with the Knesset-cabinet liaison portfolio on top of the Housing and Construction Ministry.

If you want a concrete example of the power of the change about to strike our faces, it could be found in the torpedoing of the bill to limit the right of standing before the High Court of Justice, which Likud proposed on Wednesday. Sa’ar was the one who led the charge to squash the bill, which was brought up to embarrass the future government, in the plenary. It is a subject dear to Sa’ar’s heart, the kind that he (and Shaked and others) would support on any given day. Shaked suggested that they vote for it. No, Elkin told her – at Sa’ar’s insistence, of course. We have to vote against, to knock them down, to teach them a lesson.

And that’s what happened. Netanyahu, by the way, was absent from the vote. He left his Likud comrades to suffer the humiliation. It’s not that there isn’t a place for debating the lenient right of standing we have, just not during injury time and not as a cure for Miki Zohar’s convulsive attack.The future opposition will be busy with public trolling and legislative harassing. They will suddenly discover everything that was stored inside their right-wing, Jewish soul, and will submit a host of bills to embarrass the Bennett-Lapid coalition. Bennett and his rightist comrades are prepared for Wednesdays, when they will be challenged with votes on piles of bills from Likud and Religious Zionism. They will vote “against” without blinking. They have a prepared answer for every one of those bills: Where were you for 12 years?

The lie-filled and ugly “fire sale” campaign against the United Arab List will also die. The new reality is seeping in. There is a coalition partner representing the Arab community, and the sky didn’t fall. Anyway, it’s a good time for Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser to do some soul-searching. The former remains a minister thanks to an Arab party, and the latter returns the Knesset thanks to the same party (via the Norwegian Law). It’s a personal accomplishment for Sa’ar, who tamed them. It’s a great failure of Gantz, who could have saved us a year of Netanyahu’s tricks.

The analog threat

Besides Netanyahu’s departure from the Prime Minister’s Office and Bennett’s entrance, the change the change government promises will be felt in several ministries: Omer Bar-Lev (Labor) will replace Amir Ohana, La Familia’s angel of destruction in Balfour at the Public Security Ministry. Fun fact: the late father of the new minister, former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, served as police minister in the mid-1980s. He was the first Ashkenazi at the job, by the way. The ministry conference room is named after him.

No two people in politics could be more different from each other. The incoming minister is a security expert, a reserve colonel, former Sayeret Matkal commander, a paragon of integrity, judgment and values. The outgoing minister, well, is the total opposite. Ohana leaves behind a smashed system (not only because of him, but he did his best to deepen the internal cracks in the police during 30 months of political chaos).

He leaves after the Mount Meron disaster, for which he is responsible. Ohana is to the law enforcement system what Yaakov Bardugo is to the media: an active troll, wreaking environmental damage, a serial poisoner.

Yifat Shasha-Biton (New Hope) is replacing the education commissar Yoav Galant. His crowning glory was denying the Israel Prize to Prof. Oded Goldreich because of leftist statements. While Galant was suitable for the Education Ministry like the boxer Mike Tyson would have been for the Moscow Ballet, Shasha-Biton is no doubt one of the most appropriate appointments in the ministry’s history. She’s an education doctorate and a former vice president of Ohalo College.

Sa’ar will enter the Justice Ministry, a job he has aimed for in his political past. This ministry was also a victim of Ohana. He was sent there to take revenge on the system that put his patron on trial, to sow destruction and ruin, to further delegitimize it from the inside, to pit its senior officials against one another. He was a champion of failed appointments and of decisions that were overridden by the High Court of Justice because of blatant unconstitutionality (including one this week, too).

Another ministry in need of urgent rehabilitation is the treasury. Avigdor Lieberman will find it in ruins – suspicion and lack of faith, demoralization and unfilled positions. There is no permanent head of the budget division, nor has there been a director general since the thunderous departures of Shaul Meridor (last August) and Keren Turner (in October). Yaakov Blitstein, a close associate of the minister who serves mainly as his assistant, is the acting director general. The ministry isn’t really managed. Other jobs are empty, and most of those remaining continue to view Minister “Herod” as a harmful, arrogant man who doesn’t trust them and doesn’t give them backing, and, accordingly, they don’t trust or back him.

The incoming government’s size is problematic. 28 ministers, six deputy ministers, an expanded Norwegian law. Yair Lapid, who carried the banner of an 18—minister cabinet, apologized. Superfluous ministries will remain in place: Diaspora, Intelligence Affairs, Regional Cooperation. Others, fictitious, wasteful and ridiculous, were eliminated. The Community Development Ministry, the stinking fee given to the princess of opportunism, Orli Levi-Abekasis; the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry of political ghost Rafi Peretz; as well as David Amsalem’s position as Cyber and National Digital Matters Minister.

Let us hope that we all don’t return to the dark analog era, now that the violent, inciting haggler, who is wallowing in the liquid of his hatred for Ashkenazim and leftists, is no longer entrusted with computerized progress.

Black Sabbath

Next week, the original Israeli drama “Exile from Balfour” is expected to be shown on TV. It is an action-packed creation. Funny and gripping. Totally crazy. Alongside searching for the delights of the new ministers adjusting to their roles, we will all follow with interest the process of disengagement of the Netanyahu family from the heritage of its forefathers, from the rock of its existence.

The record of Bibi and Sara regarding vacating the official residence doesn’t bode well. In 1999, their departure from the official residence that had been their home for three years, gave birth to the gifts affair (Season 1). They were suspected of stealing around 150 gifts that had been given to the prime minister in his official capacity, among them pictures he received from Arnon Milchan (yes, the same Arnon from Case 1000), and brought them to their private home on Gaza Street. The police recommended indicting them. The compassionate Attorney General Elyakim Rubenstein closed the case.

Now, they must leave the home they lived in for 12 years, four times as long as the first time, with dangerous potential of four times as many gifts finding their way into packing cartons. They didn’t learn their lesson. The passing years didn’t mellow their piggish greed, certainly not their hunger for free gifts. They worsened 1,000 times, as written in the indictment, as other character weaknesses also became 1,000 times worse, both in her and in him.

It seems there’s no pressure. The prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem will not be inhabited immediately by Naftali and Gilat Bennett. The couple, with their four children, intend to remain in Ra’anana due to a reticence (it goes without saying) to take their children out of school, away from their friends and out of their afternoon activities. They are designating the residence on Balfour mainly for events and hosting of foreign leaders or other dignitaries.

It’s personal but it’s also very expensive. Reuven Rivlin was elected president seven years ago. He and Nehama informed the Shin Bet security service that they wanted to remain in their home. We will respect his excellency’s will, the security official told him, but know that the matter requires expensive adjustments: replacing every window in the building with bulletproof glass, building a defensive wall, technological defensive means, closing off the road with sophisticated barriers. The neighbors’ lives would also change drastically. The estimated cost was 700,000 shekels ($215,000).

What will Bennett do when the Shin Bet head tells him that adapting his Ra’anana villa will cost taxpayers, say, a million shekels? It’s a public question worth debating. One way or the other, the costs the Netanyahus imposed on the public – certainly if grandiose plans for building a prime minister’s residence in the style of an Erdogan-like palace were realized – are dozens of times higher.

Back to 1999. Packing took six weeks. The missus insisted on wrapping every cup, every small bowl and every plate individually in bubble wrap. Ehud and Nava patiently waited with their suitcases packed. There is a tradition in Britain: The day before the elections, a truck parks outside 10 Downing Street. If the incumbent prime minister loses, he and his family leave the official residence the next day, returning to their electoral district.

This weekend won’t be “the last Shabbat on Balfour,” as Paris Square demonstrators rejoice. However, it will be a black sabbath for its residents. Bibi can forget biscuit cake. Until recent years, no one save Jerusalem residents knew the name of the street on which the prime minister lived. Sara and Yair especially turned Balfour into a repulsive symbol of corruption, immorality and profound moral rot. His nauseating tweets, her violent abuse of marginalized workers, the strange videos, the frequent reports of her eruptions and flipping her lid.

The Netanyahus’ spiritual connection to the building (described famously by Sara as a crumbling ruin, so damp and moldy that it posed a health hazard), is a matter for psychiatrists. It’s hard to imagine them leaving willingly, quickly and humbly, unless the air force gives them a “knock on the roof” like it does in Gaza.

During recent weeks, too, when Netanyahu offered anyone in the vicinity to be first in the rotation, his basic condition was: We stay in Balfour. Personally, it was less important for him, but the missus must retain command over a platoon of cleaners, to run them, literally, as they have attested, from room to room; to humiliate them, to run them into the dirt. Otherwise, there is no point to her life. Because she won’t pay out of her own pocket for an extensive staff in Caesarea, it is clear that she will miss this employment experience of the “Tower of London.” However, the sigh of relief of the residence’s workers, in contrast, will be heard in the courtyards of Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighborhood and lift the human heart of all of Jerusalem. This article is printed in its entirety.