Bibi's coalition is beset from within

1

Under Israel’s parliamentary system, governments aren’t usually toppled by the opposition; they self-destruct and crumble from within.

The best illustration of that came last year with the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid government — like a structure built on unstable foundations that imploded on its own, without help from an earthquake. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid plied their allies with jobs and money — but the government of extremes, united only by hatred of Binyamin Netanyahu, fell like a house of cards.

Bennett, now back home in Ra’anana after a lucrative speaking tour abroad, is enjoying a brief spell of vindication. This week, when I interviewed Amichai Eliyahu, a minister from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, he sang the praises of — get this — Naftali Bennett, for his response to the threat of missile fire from Gaza. “Bennett’s government responded to Hamas more forcefully than Netanyahu’s government,” said Eliyahu, echoing his party chair, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

This week it started to feel like there’s no covering the cracks in Netanyahu’s sixth coalition, just three months after its formation. For the first time in his almost 15 years as prime minister, Netanyahu finds himself leading a fully right-wing government — something he defined as a goal ahead of the last elections. The target has been hit — but it’s on the prime minister’s back.

In all the previous governments he’s led, Bibi always made sure to position himself squarely in the center. In ‘96 it was Sharansky, Avigdor Kahalani, and David Levy who formed his buffer from the left. When he returned to power in 2009 after a ten-year exile, Labor leader Ehud Barak, his former commander in Sayeret Matkal (and the man who’d ousted him from power in ‘99), became his right-hand man.

In 2013, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid formed the left flank of his government. In 2015 it was Moshe Kachlon who flanked Bibi, and in his unity government with Benny Gantz — whom he now trails in prime ministerial preference polls — the left flank held a veto on every government decision.

Bibi has managed to turn the term “left” into an insult in Israel’s political discourse, but one thing is clear: Whether from choice or necessity, Bibi has always straddled the center of his governments. And it’s only now, when Bibi is facing a boycott based on personal grounds, that he doesn’t have a left flank to lean on.

Three months after the formation of Netanyahu’s sixth and first  fully right-wing government, we can already echo Bennett ally Nir Orbach’s verdict on the Bennett-Lapid government: “The experiment has failed.”

2

IN one week, Netanyahu experienced an entire term’s worth of shocks. It started with Ben Gvir fuming over being excluded from deliberations over Israel’s response to Gaza rocket fire. Ben Gvir decided to strike the soft underbelly of the government by announcing that Otzma Yehudit would sit out Knesset votes.

Coalition allies can fight as bitterly as they want — it happens in the best families — but a stable governing relationship is tested in the plenum hall. As long as the disputes don’t impact the coalition’s voting majority, it remains functional. For the Bennett government, the rot set in when it lost control of the plenum, vote after vote.

Coalition chair MK Ofir Katz of the Likud said this week that during the coalition negotiations, it was agreed that internal disputes shouldn’t impact cooperation in the plenum. And now Ben Gvir, at the most critical juncture, with a two-year budget on the agenda, goes off the reservation and boycotts the plenum.

Gaza was only an excuse. The real reason — as an Otzma Yehudit source told me — lies in the Gaza Envelope. Ben Gvir — sinking fast in the polls, like the right-wing bloc as a whole — perceives Netanyahu as sabotaging his every step.

“Behind Itamar’s back,” said the Otzma Yehudit figure, “Bibi called the commissioner of the Israeli prison service and instructed her to disregard Ben Gvir’s order preventing security prisoners from using cellular phones. Afterwards, Bibi’s circle intimated to the press that Ben Gvir was leaking info from sensitive meetings, when in reality most of the leaks are coming from the other direction. This isn’t functional, so we announced our withdrawal from the plenum.”

Bibi didn’t take this sitting down. He used the clash with Ben Gvir to send a message to the US administration. In a harsh response, the Likud spokesperson clarified that only the prime minister chooses who participates in security discussions, and if Ben Gvir doesn’t like it, he’s welcome to quit. Ben Gvir responded immediately at a press conference in Sderot, essentially telling Bibi: Fire me, if you dare. After that, he ignored Bibi’s overtures for days in a gesture of protest. This is what a train looks like when it’s going off the rails, not right after it’s set on the tracks.

3

Ben Gvir is not alone. This same week Netanyahu found himself under attack for his request to chareidi MKs to delay passage of a draft law.

The chareidim see themselves as having been thoroughly ripped off. At the start of the term, they hoped to take advantage of the momentum from the victory to pass a draft law in the government’s first month, along with an override clause to allow them to bypass the expected High Court disqualification. But then Yariv Levin approached them in Netanyahu’s name and requested that they wait until the passing of the grand judicial reform.

“We knew a reform was brewing, but nobody told us that Levin was about to go all in at a press conference — which wasn’t coordinated with us — and would try to ram it through all at once, instead of spreading it out over the entire term,” welfare minister Yaakov Margi of Shas told me this week.

Against their will, the chareidim became the face of the reform. “It’s all a matter of expedience,” minister Meir Porush of Agudas Yisrael told me this week. “After all, they had over a year of a government without the chareidim, and they didn’t do a thing about the draft. Now we’re suffering because we went with Bibi. I’m not saying that was a bad decision, but Netanyahu can’t avoid fulfilling his promises to us, regarding both the draft and the Torah world’s budgets.”

After stating publicly that Netanyahu should step down if he doesn’t fulfill his promises, Porush was rushed to a meeting with the prime minister.

“He raged and fumed,” Porush told me, “but our demand stands.”

And to make clear that Porush is not alone, Yitzchak Goldknopf told Mishpacha in an interview this week that he would bring down the government if the draft isn’t settled.

Goldknopf’s and Porush’s guns are loaded with blanks. As usual, the chareidim will ultimately fold to Bibi’s request, and Ben Gvir will also find a way back to the government table in the plenum hall. But these kinds of jolts, normally seen at the end of a government, speak volumes.

The one bright spot for the coalition is its weakness in the polls and that fact that none of its parties have any motive to go to elections. One could say that the government’s very weakness is its greatest strength…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 960)