For anyone who saw last week’s Israeli election as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future, and interpreted the results as a welcome end to it—his Likud party came in second to Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, though neither achieved a majority—watching President Reuven Rivlin hand him the mandate to form the next government this week was understandably demoralizing. Netanyahu, having already failed to form a government once before this year, after the election in April, will now have another chance to use the prestige of his office to rally public opinion, seduce political rivals, and foment regional tensions to make himself appear indispensable. The dread, however, may be exaggerated. Netanyahu’s getting the first crack at forming a government, while not ideal, may turn out to be better than the alternatives. In fact, many observers, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has reportedly been advising Gantz, think that it may be the only way.
Here’s the logic. Now that Netanyahu has the mandate, he has twenty-eight days to organize a coalition with a majority of the hundred and twenty members of the Knesset. If he fails, he cannot get the mandate again during this term. So far, he has secured the support of Likud and various ultra-Orthodox and national-Orthodox parties, which brings him to fifty-five—six votes short of a majority. It’s widely known that Netanyahu is wary of betraying the interests of the religious parties, because he is counting on them to support legislation that would restrict the powers of the Supreme Court. His goal is to gain immunity from prosecution for pending indictments against him. Only the religious parties, which are eager to diminish the Court in order to advance their own theocratic aims, have publicly endorsed such restrictions.
To get to sixty-one votes, then, Netanyahu needs the eight seats controlled by Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of a secular rightist party. But Lieberman knows that his base would repudiate him if he sat in a theocratically inclined government—and he has personal reasons for wanting Netanyahu shunted aside. Once close to the Prime Minister, Lieberman has accumulated grudges. Immediately after the polls closed last week, Lieberman called for a national-unity government composed equally of Blue and White and Likud, and excluding the religious parties.
But Gantz has pledged that Blue and White will not sit in a government led by a Prime Minister facing indictments. Rivlin, eager to realize a unity government and give Gantz a work-around for his pledge, has proposed that a law be passed strengthening the powers of an acting Prime Minister, which would allow Netanyahu, say, to face charges and, if he is tried and acquitted, to return to office. (As of now, a Prime Minister who is absent for more than a hundred days cannot return.) Rivlin has also called for “an equal government” between Likud and Blue and White. Gantz has endorsed the idea of a power-sharing “without spin or blocs.” But he’s insisted that, in any such arrangement, he should be the first to serve as the Prime Minister. Netanyahu cannot accede to this demand, in part because, if he were a mere minister in the government, he might have a lesser claim to immunity in the case of an indictment.
Gantz himself could form a secular majority government with the support of the eight votes from Lieberman’s party, along with those of the eleven members of a bloc of leftist parties, and ten of the thirteen Arab-Israeli members of the Knesset. Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Arab Joint List, has offered to recommend that Gantz get the mandate, and even to support a Gantz-led coalition. But Lieberman, whose attitude toward Israeli Arabs borders on bigotry, refuses to support any Gantz-led government that wins a confidence vote owing to Arab support.
Another thing. Netanyahu is just days away from the hearings that will determine whether the attorney general will proceed with indictments—something that most observers believe is inevitable. This could create another path to a unity government, if Netanyahu is indicted and forced to resign, and then, as he awaits trial, is pushed out as the leader of Likud by senior party members. But Netanyahu is still very popular with the Likud rank and file. He is demanding that the hearings be televised. Any Likud leader who aims to succeed him has to worry about being seen as the first to turn on him—the same conundrum that, in the United States, many Republican leaders see with respect to Donald Trump.
In other words: Netanyahu fears the judiciary and promotes the religious parties; Gantz, who has given up on the religious parties and needs both Lieberman and the Arab-Israeli leaders, embraces the judiciary and rejects Netanyahu; Lieberman embraces both Gantz and Netanyahu and rejects both the religious and the Arab parties. All of which leaves four possible scenarios:
Lieberman gives in and backs Netanyahu. This would result only if Netanyahu makes Lieberman an unprecedented, irresistible offer, consistent with the latter’s high ambitions. Netanyahu might, for example, agree to rotate him into the Prime Minister’s job, or to let him serve as acting Prime Minister, as envisioned by Rivlin, and legislated by the new Knesset—so that, if he does indeed stand trial, Lieberman would take over. Indeed, some speculate that Lieberman, in that role, might muster a Knesset majority to make Netanyahu President, once Rivlin’s seven-year term expires, in July of 2021. For the duration of his term as President, Netanyahu would be immune from prosecution. Lieberman has sat in a rightist-religious government led by Netanyahu before, most recently in 2016, when he was offered the coveted Defense Ministry. He would no doubt be seen as a hypocrite if he did so now, but he has always apparently enjoyed appearing ruthless. His real problem would be with leaders in Likud. Were Netanyahu to promote Lieberman’s ambitions over theirs, they would presumably feel less inhibited about publicly defying him.
Netanyahu fails, and Gantz is awarded the mandate. This seems to be Blue and White’s favored option, though it is based on a forlorn hope. Ayman Odeh revealed on Wednesday that Ofer Shelach, a Blue and White leader and campaign strategist, had encouraged him to “limit” the recommendation of Gantz to just ten of the Joint List’s thirteen members—though the three members from Balad, the most radical faction of the Joint List, might not have needed much prodding to abstain. As a consequence, Shelach knew, Netanyahu would have one more seat than Gantz, and Rivlin would have no choice but to nominate him first. Shelach’s logic seems to have been that Netanyahu would fail again, and would still be vulnerable to pending indictments, at which point—here is the forlorn hope—other Likud leaders would finally jettison him and find a replacement for him as leader. So far, of course, no such person has come forward.
A third Knesset member is awarded the mandate. Should Gantz fail to form a coalition after Netanyahu’s attempt, Rivlin would by law have the option of awarding the mandate to another Knesset member who might notionally form a unity government more easily. He might, for example, turn to the Speaker, Yuli Edelstein, a Likud leader who has no love for Netanyahu, and who is respected by many in Blue and White. In effect, Rivlin would be forcing Likud leaders to do collectively what none have had the courage to do individually. But he would be privileging the Likud leadership over Blue and White’s, even though the latter party commands more seats. So Edelstein would have to offer Gantz, or another Blue and White leader, a rotation into the premiership, and, in the process, he would likely lose Netanyahu loyalists in Likud, if not the whole party apparatus.
Another election. The smart money seems to be on this scenario, if only because the others seem more obviously bound to be frustrated. Its virtue is that, once Netanyahu fails twice, and, assuming the atmospherics around his leadership turn more negative—an economic downturn, Trump in impeachment trouble, corruption hearings yielding new embarrassments—the Likud rank and file may finally have had enough. Every election precipitates a leadership primary among more than a hundred thousand Likud members. This was a formality the last time around because Netanyahu had no challengers. But a primary now would be an invitation for someone to challenge him openly. A new Likud leader, the argument goes, might then emerge with the moral authority of having beaten Netanyahu. But to trigger a new election, a majority of the Knesset would have to vote to disperse. Blue and White and Lieberman could block that vote, and none of the other center-left opposition parties, or the Arab parties, would see a benefit to another election. The left parties have no clear leader; the Joint List is in danger of fragmenting, as it did before the April election, and the Arab vote, which increased considerably this time, would be correspondingly depressed.
So Shelach may be right. Perhaps the most logical thing to do for those who would like to see Netanyahu gone is also the only thing to do: give him the means to fail; wait for the attorney general to file indictments; and assume that Netanyahu’s popularity will wane, his rivals will mobilize, and his friends in Washington will seem less impressive—and hope for the best. The Netanyahu era may well be over. But patience, and a spreadsheet, are required.
