Trump’s upcoming visit to the region may be the last chance for a ceasefire.

1.Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister currently riding high in public opinion polls, has a problem. It’s Bennett’s first time running apart from the right-wing bloc. And in past elections, he’s dramatically underperformed the polls, typically delivering votes about a third of his peak numbers. His core base consisted of about four seats — right around the electoral threshold.

But that was before he deserted the right-wing bloc. This time, Bennett doesn’t have much of a base at all.

The three key questions asked in election surveys are: Whom have you voted for in the past? Whom do you intend to vote for this time? And how sure are you of your vote? Netanyahu’s Likud has 20 seats’ worth of voters who won’t change their mind, no matter what happens. The same holds true of  parties such as Shas and UTJ, whose support is largely fixed.

Bennett’s support, while broad, is also shallow. On a good day, he soars to well over 20 seats, overtaking Netanyahu. But when you filter out those who aren’t confident in their vote, you’re left with a small core of voters who might not get him over the electoral threshold.

Most of Bennett’s support comes from center-left voters who view him as the savior who can finally oust Netanyahu. Over the past decade, wandering voters of the “rak lo Bibi (anyone but Bibi)” camp, formerly known as the left, have lent their ballots in turn to whichever party seemed best poised to defeat Netanyahu: Labor’s Isaac Herzog in 2015, Benny Gantz in the elections of 2019 and 2020, and Yair Lapid in the last election.

Today, Bennett is seen as likely to bring about two seats’ worth of voters from his old religious Zionist base from the right to the left, and is therefore seen as the candidate with the best chance of breaking the tie between the two blocs.

Bennett is well aware that keeping mercurial centrist voters in the fold will be a difficult, if not impossible, task. At any moment, some shiny new figure could pop up, such as former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, stealing his thunder and sending him plummeting below the electoral threshold. To stay relevant, he has to keep his momentum alive and remain on the public’s radar.

Bennett announced the founding of his new party earlier than expected to make sure he’s included in public opinion polls from now on. But that won’t be enough. He’s already working on interviewing attractive candidates for his list, replacing the uncharismatic soldiers who ran with him in 2021. Then, Bennett chose political unknowns who wouldn’t overshadow him, only to end up with defectors who made a mockery of his leadership and brought down his “change” government from within.

This time, Bennett intends to fill his list with familiar faces, and one of them told me that the chareidi issue was at the center of their conversation. Drawing most of his support from the center left, Bennett would be ill advised to try to outflank Netanyahu from the right. The chareidi issue is his only safe talking point. The man who promised the chareidim the world in exchange for abstaining from the vote that brought down his government is becoming the most militantly anti-chareidi politician in the country, overtaking even opposition leader Yair Lapid.

J2.erusalem is reacting with increasing dismay to the strange new tone from the White House, where the isolationist wing of the administration seems to be ascendant of late.

But for now, Netanyahu is falling in line with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, declaring “absolute victory” as the highest goal in the war and calling up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, the final push to crush Hamas.

In light of the complex situation, at home and abroad, the chareidim haven’t taken kindly to this development. Beyond the fact that the chareidi worldview, expressed by gedolei haTorah, sees the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim as the highest value, there’s no ignoring the dramatic effect these developments will have on the draft law.

While the chareidim are wary of getting involved in war decisions, if they had their way now, the government would be following the advice of the opposition rather than the militant right, pursuing a ceasefire rather than an escalation.

We’ve mentioned Shas chair Aryeh Deri’s view of the feasibility of passing a draft law during a large-scale operation. In a situation where the morning TV broadcasts start with the chilling phrase “The IDF has approved the announcement of…” followed by a list of the latest fatalities, there’s zero chance of passing a bill that categorically exempts yeshivah students from military service.

The waiting period leading up to the latest operation, when new fatalities were rare, might have been the best opportunity for a legislative blitz to pass the draft law. The only conditions more favorable would be in the event of a ceasefire that would end the war in exchange for all the remaining hostages being released, but there seems little chance of that.

Ironically, chareidi MKs are now pinning their hopes on the isolationists in Trump’s circle, who are pushing for a deal to end the fighting for good. Trump’s upcoming visit to the region may be the last chance for a ceasefire.

3.

Incoming chief of staff Eyal Zamir has replaced Herzi Halevi in more than one sense. Like his predecessor, Zamir has assumed the role of the right-wing government’s foil and punching bag.

Leading a fully right-wing government, Netanyahu can no longer blame the left for his failures, so it’s the bureaucratic officialdom in every department that has taken on the role of scapegoat. From the justice department, to the treasury, to the defense and internal security ministries. One day it’s the attorney general who’s shooting down every proposal, and the next it’s the governor of the Bank of Israel, who won’t allow the phasing out of 200-shekel bills. Somehow, there always seems to be some official who’s swindling the government out of its prize.

Members of the security establishment have become a particularly easy target, from the head of the Shin Bet to the chief of staff. Eyal Zamir, whom Netanyahu described as an attacking chief of staff, has already come under fire during cabinet meetings, even being threatened with dismissal. And the disagreements aren’t just about the Gaza front. Last week, it was Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Yuli Edelstein whom Netanyahu’s circle marked as responsible for the delay of the draft law, purportedly due to his ambition to be elected president in the future.

This week, it was the chief of staff’s turn, after he ordered tens of thousands of draft orders to be sent out to yeshivah bochurim, without coordination with the political echelon. Furious, Netanyahu and Katz quickly communicated to the chareidim that the instruction wasn’t given on their orders.

A yeshivah student might wonder: How is it possible that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz, who selected Zamir out of a wide array of candidates, didn’t sit down with him to discuss the chareidi draft, or what the process of sending draft orders would look like, before and after the issue is regulated by legislation?

If Netanyahu tries to evade responsibility for the matter once again, the only reasonable conclusion will be that as far as the draft issue is concerned, Bibi is effectively no longer the prime minister. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1061)