Bibi’s desperately rolling the dice for his political survival

Photos: Flash 90

The best way to understand Israeli politics nowadays is to think of the Knesset like the northern border with Hezbollah. One moment there’s a tense quiet as the two sides probe each other’s weak points, on guard against attack. Suddenly there’s a provocation, reports that hostilities are imminent, and the media swoop. Just as suddenly, it blows over. Calm resumes and the headlines move on.

Political border raiding is more or less how Israel began the week. The two-headed Hydra government of Netanyahu and Gantz - a coalition that has never coalesced - threatened to tear itself apart and take the country to the voting booths again.

The immediate flashpoint was a tussle between the co-prime ministers about whether to pass a one- or two-year budget – and if there’s no approved budget, there’s no government (the budget is often the easiest way to topple an incumbent government). Building for weeks, the crisis came to a head on Sunday with a tense standoff at the weekly cabinet meeting. “From day one, you didn’t intend to honor the coalition agreement and pass a biannual budget,” Gantz reportedly shouted at Bibi, to which Netanyahu responded: “Can someone turn up the volume? We don’t hear you.”

With the Knesset on war footing, and the media full of reports of politicians considering new alliances, Israelis – in the depth of an economic and health crisis -- wearily looked on as the country teetered on the edge of fourth elections.

And then the crisis seemed to blow over. A bill proposed by Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel moving the August 25^th budget deadline a few months down the line drew Netanyahu’s support on Monday, and the coalition looked like it might survive to fight another day.

But this may only be a reprieve, a temporary ceasefire. “He’s only agreed to support the bill in its initial reading and there’s no guarantee that it will pass,” said Degel HaTorah chairman MK Yitzchok Pindrus. “Even if it does, that only gives another hundred days to decide on a budget, and then what?”

The current impasse was memorably summed up by Likud chairman Miki Zohar. “There is a chasm between us and Blue and White on many issues and we are not really able to function as a good coalition,” he said. “It’s like a couple who want a divorce, and feel that anytime now they’re going to the rabbinate and signing a get.”

In this brinksmanship lies the strange duality of Netanyahu’s twelfth consecutive year in power. With a legal system relentlessly closing its steel jaws around him, and hampered by the awkward political shidduch forced on him by three inconclusive elections, Bibi looks simultaneously weak and strong.

His Likud colleagues are too cowed to challenge him; the chareidi parties have no alternative even if he threatens fourth elections; and he’s betting that even Naftali Bennett wouldn’t support a left-wing government.

And so, after being accused for years by the left of running the country for his own benefit, Bibi risks staining his legacy at the eleventh hour by pulling the country to more elections for what looks suspiciously like his own personal needs.

“Shimshon the Nebach,” is what Levi Eshkol, a previous occupant of the prime ministerial office, named his country for its combination of strength and fragility.

Hanging on to power despite three rounds of elections, and exuding a similar blend of invincibility and political mortality, Eshkol could have been referring to Bibi himself.