It's not Israel's Watergate, but Bibi has a new problem

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Amos Hochstein, Biden’s special envoy to the Middle East, spent the final week before polls closed in the United States in a series of meetings across the region, in a last-ditch attempt to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon.

While reaching a deal in Gaza seems as difficult to achieve as splitting the Red Sea, in light of the complex reality of 101 hostages, alive and dead, held by Hamas and other factions in the strip, in southern Lebanon, an arrangement hinges on the crossing of the Litani River.

The aim of the war in Lebanon was to return evacuated residents of Israel’s north to their homes. The IDF leadership now believes that goal has been met, and that prolonging the operation will only bog Israel down in the Land of the Cedars, after two scarring wars that scorched Lebanon and left a deep mark on Israel’s collective consciousness.

The clearing of Hezbollah from southern Lebanon to a depth of two kilometers along the border illustrates the magnitude of the miracle that the “convergence of arenas” sought by Sinwar didn’t materialize. A good friend of mine who’s an officer in the reserves and has been in Lebanon for two months after being redeployed from Gaza told me about the contrast between the pastoral landscape above ground, in what was once described as the Switzerland of the Middle East, and what was found underground.

“I saw the tunnels of Gaza up close, and there’s no comparison,” he said. “In southern Lebanon, we’re dealing not with semi-improvised excavations in sandy soil near the sea, but with fortified bunkers carved well into the mountains, with help from North Korea. None of the intelligence and advance warnings we received could have prepared us for the reality.”

Now that the border has been cleared, the cabinet (with the exception of Ben-Gvir) believes that if an acceptable diplomatic arrangement can be made, the war’s goals can be seen as met. The issue is the partner for the talks. Hezbollah has suffered significant damage, but the Lebanese government is still not an independent entity capable of signing a ceasefire as a genuine sovereign power.

Hochstein’s proposal is for indirect agreements between the Israelis and the Americans, and the Americans and Lebanon, to enforce UN Resolution 1701 and push Hezbollah beyond the Litani.

I asked one cabinet member what the point of contention is. He answered in his own way: “The question is whether we remain in the mindset of October 6, 2023, or the mindset of October 8. Israel is demanding a clause that explicitly allows it to attack arms shipments and Hezbollah targets if it sees that Hezbollah is violating the agreement. If this is secured, under whichever administration, we can see it as a done deal.”

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It’s not exactly Israel’s Watergate, though that is how the Israeli media is treating it. All that’s been cleared for publication by the military censor is that an aide who joined Netanyahu’s office at the start of the war is suspected of leaking a classified document to Germany’s Bild with the aim of thwarting a hostage deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu, ever wary of violating Shabbos for fear of his chareidi allies, issued a hurried statement late Friday afternoon: “Contrary to the false reports being peddled by the press, no one in the Prime Minister’s Office has been investigated or arrested.”

Whoever was responsible for the Friday afternoon statement had to eat their hat when the arrest was cleared for publication on Motzaei Shabbos. While the individual arrested may not have been an official member of the prime minister’s team, he had been employed by the Prime Minister’s Office this past year, and had joined Netanyahu’s entourage on tours of IDF bases and other military sites.

In about one month, barring a delay due to security developments, Netanyahu will take the witness stand at the Jerusalem District Court to testify in his criminal trials. One more case is unlikely to shift opinions among either his devoted followers or his equally committed detractors.

But the incident, currently under investigation by the Shin Bet, is revealing not only with respect to Netanyahu’s relations with the media, which pounced on the allegations, but with respect to the relationship between Netanyahu and the defense establishment, from the IDF to the Shin Bet, whose leaders Netanyahu detests. The only exception is the Mossad, with whose chief, Dadi Barnea, Netanyahu has a cordial relationship.

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We’ve covered Netanyahu’s relationship with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi at length in these pages. Netanyahu sees Gallant and the leadership of the IDF as representing the “conceptzia” and would be grateful for their resignations, while they remain determined to cling to office for as long as Netanyahu does.

On the political level, too, Netanyahu sees Gallant as a troublemaker who’s creating divisions within the coalition and thwarting a solution to the draft issue. This is the Netanyahu government’s second budget, and the draft law was supposed to be passed before the first budget per the coalition agreement. We all know what happened next. The legislation was initially delayed by the judicial reform protests, out of concern that a draft law would be too much in an already febrile atmosphere.

After the outbreak of the war, it’s even less realistic. If even from overseas Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel ordered the planned protests to be canceled last week lest they be interpreted as criticism of Israel in wartime, what could the politicians in Israel say?

Well, they said a lot, especially UTJ chair and housing minister MK Yitzchak Goldknopf, who threatened to vote against the budget if it wasn’t passed alongside a draft law. Several days of threats ended with a magnificent capitulation, after Netanyahu and right-wing ministers clarified to chareidi colleagues that in a time when the chilling phrase “the IDF has approved for publication” that soldiers have fallen in action appears in the news daily, it’s impossible to pass a law exempting yeshivah students from service. In this case, as in others, the defense minister is primarily responsible for the gridlock.

The achievements in Gaza and Lebanon temporarily overshadowed the tension between Netanyahu and the defense establishment, but dirt shoved under the rug only accumulates.

However, it’s not just the defense minister and chief of staff that Bibi can’t get along with, but also Shin Bet head Ronen Bar. Bar sees the Prime Minister’s Office as a hostile actor that’s briefing against him on a regular basis, with the focal point being Netanyahu’s criticism of Bar’s weakness in the negotiations with Hamas.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s office sees Bar as someone who collaborated with the protest movement against the government in the year leading up to the war, and as politically biased in favor of the left.

In this situation, there’s no downplaying the ripe fruit that fell into the Shin Bet’s hands in the interrogation room. It’s safe to assume that the Netanyahu aide’s arrest didn’t cause the Shin Bet head much distress.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1035)