Defense Minister Benny Gantz forms a committee to investigate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the sensitive “Submarine Affair.”
He tells his Blue and White Party’s ministers: “This will be a tough week. Get ready to be attacked. We will use all means at our disposal. The submarine probe is only the first step.”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu takes the unusual step of responding to a poll in the Maariv newspaper that made it look like his Likud Party’s lead over Naftali Bennett’s Yamina Party is only three seats. The Likud reveals its own internal poll that shows its lead over Yamina is actually 30 seats to 19, not 27 to 24, and Netanyahu retweets the Likud’s message on Twitter to make sure it gets seen.
Sounds like two leaders ready to immediately enter another election?
Maybe.
Warring armies have learned the hard way through history that merely deploying troops was seen as an act of belligerency that led to unwanted war.
But not definitely.
Gantz’s committee has much less teeth than the commission he was pressured to form. Netanyahu just found the poll objectionable and wanted to correct what he thought was an incorrect impression.
A month before the December 23 deadline to pass the 2021 state budget, which would extend the government’s tenure until the end of March, both Netanyahu and Gantz have plenty of reasons to keep the current government going.
Netanyahu needs the government to last until he is sure that Israelis will have full access to enough coronavirus vaccines before he goes to the polls. He needs the economy to continue to recover. He needs to start either getting along with the new administration in Washington or fighting it, whichever he prefers to help himself out politically. All those things take time.
And there is always the possibility that Gantz will back down and cancel the rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office and let Netanyahu stay in power for four years. That possibility makes it worth keeping the current coalition together.
Gantz needs the government to last, because every day it lasts brings him closer to the rotation that would make him prime minister. Perhaps when Netanyahu’s trial starts soon, the prime minister will realize he is in over his head and needs the break from the premiership that the coalition agreement prescribes.
There are even those who believe that Gantz will give up on the rotation, let rebels in his party led by Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn depart to the opposition, and remain in the government as defense minister – the way Ehud Barak did when he broke off from Labor and formed the Independence Party in January 2011.
Even if both sides do not want an election now, which is what they both say, that does not mean an election will not be initiated soon.
Leaders who look like they are panicking have led their people to take steps they did not mean to take.
Even leaders who intended to pacify the other side have, in the past, unintentionally projected the exact opposite message.
Netanyahu and Gantz will have to be careful, because panicking can lead to going to the polls – and then there will be no going back.