Weary of Netanyahu, Benny Gantz delivers last ultimatum
Netanyahu and Gantz are scheduled to trade places automatically in November 2021 in accordance with the unprecedented format of a two-headed government (led by one incumbent premier and one alternate). However, nothing good has happened in the 35th government since it was sworn in May 17. The two sides have been battling each other from day one. Netanyahu’s people admit he has no intention of switching with Gantz when the time comes, while Gantz’s people repeatedly fold in the face of the Likud steamroller. Blue and White is having to make do with its control of the Justice Ministry and achievements, for now, in blocking further attempts by Netanyahu and his allies to dismantle the rule of law and crush the state’s law enforcement authorities.
Gantz’s decision to go with Netanyahu after vowing through three election campaigns to defeat and replace him was an electoral disaster, alienating half his voters. Amazingly, however, his disaffected voters did not drift to the centrist opposition Yesh Atid party led by Knesset members Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon, with whom Gantz ran in the three previous elections before he joined the government. Instead, they are flowing in the other direction toward the biggest winner of this political stalemate, an ideologically motivated, religious right-winger, Yamina leader Naftali Bennett.
From the six Knesset seats it garnered in the March 2 elections this year, Bennett’s Yamina party is now polling in the 20s. Instead of Gantz or Lapid threatening the prime minister’s eroding standing, the person doing so is positioned to his political right. This has never happened before in Israeli politics. Netanyahu himself has been the unchallenged leader of Israel’s political right for over a decade. He always made sure to have a smaller political party on his right, in order to appeal to center-leaning voters, but he never planned for that party to threaten his hold on power. The latest Channel 12 News poll aired Oct. 7 gave his Likud 26 seats — and placed Bennett’s Yamina almost within touching distance with 23.
Benny Gantz was the most gentlemanly commander the IDF has ever had, an easygoing man with a pleasant demeanor who sometimes seems to have stumbled into this political mess by mistake. He was not the first choice for the chief of 1staff’s post but rather a default choice due to the 2010 Harpaz affair, a scandal involving the top military and defense brass. Gantz does not knife people in the back, does not violate agreements and does not undermine rivals. In other words, a person perhaps least suited to storm the bastions of Israeli politics in general, and those around Netanyahu in particular, did just that.
Gantz got off to a promising start. Blue and White successfully withheld from Netanyahu the majority he needed to form a government. This has never happened to Netanyahu before and he was determined to try again, and again. However, after the third time, the March 2 elections, Gantz gave in, deciding he would be better off with a bird in hand (the promised job-switch with Netanyahu down the line) than two on the tree. He now realizes his colossal error in judgment, and is trying to fix it.
Does Gantz have what it takes to go head-to-head with Netanyahu? To employ Netanyahu’s tactics against Netanyahu? Probably not. On the other hand, Gantz has no choice. He has become the village idiot of Israeli politics, a sad joke. Use of force is the only tool he has left to try to rehabilitate his standing. People can make fun of him as much as they want, but the fact is that in accordance with the deal with Netanyahu, the Knesset has already sworn him in as Israel’s next prime minister beginning in November 2021, a year from now. All he has to do for that to happen is to educate and tame Netanyahu. Not an easy undertaking, but given the prime minister’s predicament as he faces trial on three charges of corruption, a raging pandemic and a tanking economy, this might be feasible.