Up until two weeks ago, the morning of October 7, when Hamas carried out a bloody pogrom, very few people thought they’d ever see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting side by side at a cabinet meeting again with National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz. And yet here they were, proclaiming together that they would form an emergency war government.
The last time these two joined forces was back in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, when they formed the shortlived Netanyahu-led power-sharing government that ended in bitter disappointment. Gantz has sworn repeatedly since then that he would never again agree to collaborate with Netanyahu. However, the tragic and ruthless massacre that took place in the Gaza border communities on that fateful Shabbat morning changed the equation. “The Israel from after 6:30 this morning looks nothing like it used to,”
Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, told members of his party in the evening of October 7, after leaving a tense security briefing with the prime minister, after which he announced that he intended to join an emergency government that would remain active until the end of the war. “Israel is a different country now. Everything has changed.”
On the first day of the war, Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, also proposed forming an emergency government, but conditioned his participation in it on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich being removed from their leadership positions. In contrast, Gantz immediately agreed to Netanyahu’s opening conditions.
Modeling the government after a similar crisis
The emergency government would be based on the model from the Six Day War, when Levi Eshkol’s government was joined by Menachem Begin; it would work within the existing coalition structure without adding extra portfolios, and would only be valid for the duration of the war. In contrast to Lapid, Gantz immediately agreed to Netanyahu’s opening condition – an emergency government based on the model from the Six Day War, when Levi Eshkol’s government was joined by Menachem Begin, which doesn’t change the existing coalition structure and will dissolve immediately after the war.
Lapid’s precondition would have rattled Netanyahu’s coalition. Gantz and his colleagues, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot and Gideon Sa’ar, know their client well, and assumed that is an unrealistic scenario that would lead them nowhere. The only precondition they set was to constitute a small war cabinet, overruling the regular security cabinet, and to be part of the high-level decision-making on the proceedings of the war.
Gantz agreed to Netanyahu’s terms already on Saturday night, and presented him with a proposal that was even better than he could have imagined: It would bolster his inexperienced and ideologically extreme cabinet by bringing decades of experience and knowledge about security and provide his failing government with public legitimacy without exacting any political price, just before it was about to implode. Nevertheless, it still took the prime minister four full days to summon Gantz for a meeting.
In the meantime, more deaths were reported every hour on the war front, and the exacerbating hostage crisis was tearing Israeli society apart. During those four days, Netanyahu and his inner circle were preoccupied, not surprisingly, with political, personal, and family issues that delayed the decision process. At first, they pointed at Ben-Gvir, claiming that he was giving them a hard time about agreeing to the deal.
Next, they alleged that Gantz was demanding veto power, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Finally, it became clear that the primary opposition to the emergency government deal was actually coming from within Netanyahu’s own household. Apparently, all along, while Gantz was waiting by the phone, Sara Netanyahu had been busy texting all the senior ministers, pressuring them to reject the deal.
“Gantz will take all the credit for himself for everything that happens in the war from this moment on,” she grumbled to one of them.
According to reliable sources, Netanyahu only agreed to Gantz’s deal after a poll he had commissioned showed overwhelming public support for an emergency government. Thus, even before the emergency government was convened, Gantz was given another taste of what it’s like to work in a partnership with Netanyahu.
The previous partnership had deteriorated rapidly due to the same challenging political circumstances. Gantz knows exactly who his partner here is, and is well aware of the political maneuverings that could exact a heavy political price from him, as it did the first time around. Nevertheless, he persisted, and even fought to join Netanyahu again so that they could save our ailing country, just like he did during the COVID epidemic.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this partnership could turn out to be a nightmare, in which Gantz will find it impossible to sit at the table beside Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, Netanyahu will blame Gantz for any failures, and Gantz will once again lose any headway he’d made as a potential candidate for prime minister. “I have no doubt that their motives are pure, but this is an error in judgment,” Lapid said last week, explaining why he was refusing to join Gantz in the emergency government. The previous time that Netanyahu and Gantz had collaborated, Lapid emerged as the biggest winner after the fallout, and yet this time, the situation is different. In a poll Maariv conducted last week, support of Gantz rose to 41 seats, which was more than double the number of seats that Netanyahu would garner. Nothing even closely resembling these numbers has been seen until now.
The risks of joining Netanyahu
Joining Netanyahu carries both risks and opportunities, but that is not of any concern to Gantz, since he isn’t doing any of this for his own political advancement. In fact, many of his political advisers opposed this move. Gantz, along with Eisenkot, are first and foremost soldiers and generals who cannot stand by idly as their fellow soldiers are out in the battlefield fighting for their homeland. “Benny believes the current situation will be remembered as the Yom Kippur War of our generation, if not as an even more severe version,” observed someone within Gantz’s close circle; “not in the sense of how much destruction has taken place, but in how Israel’s strategic circumstances are hanging in the balance. At the moment, our enemies see us as being weaker than we have ever been, and that is why Gantz feels that he cannot refrain from joining the battle.”
IN ALL seriousness, there are millions of Israelis who are currently fighting or volunteering, embracing and supporting each other all over the country. This is genuine patriotism. While thousands of Israelis are burying their loved ones who were slaughtered, as hundreds of families anxiously await news of their loved ones who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages, and the entire country is living in existential fear like we’ve never known, seeing Netanyahu and Gantz sit together, shoulder to shoulder, is of immense significance – for our enemies, as well as for us here at home. Even those who oppose Gantz’s joining the emergency government, and are angry that he has thrown a life preserver to Netanyahu, feel safer knowing that Gantz and Eisenkot are sitting in the command center bunker at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Even those who fear that Netanyahu will once again betray Gantz, treat him abominably, and unleash his smear machine against him, now will have more faith that the government is capable of making the tough, critical decisions that will need to be taken in the coming days. Gantz won’t be able to save Netanyahu starting the day after the war ends, but until then, as we face the difficult days ahead, he will provide a significant portion of the Israeli public with the feeling that there are responsible, balanced, and experienced hands on the steering wheel, and not only those of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich.
The presence of the National Unity camp ministers in the cabinet strengthens the representatives of the IDF, Israel’s security establishment, and the attorney-general, as they face the onslaught of tongue-lashing from the likes of Ben-Gvir and Miri Regev. They will serve as overseers and monitor the decisions made by the government, at a time when public trust in it is at an all-time low, and we have a vital need to surmount this difficult situation so that we can fight for the survival of our nation.
In the very first press conference in which the three leaders presented the formation of the emergency government, Netanyahu and Gallant both elaborated on the horrors of the massacre, to shock the international community, and praised the bravery of our soldiers. Gantz was the only one who mentioned the bravery of the civilians, the residents of the Gaza border communities and the festivalgoers, who fought back against and survived Hamas’s forces of evil.
Moreover, at that first press conference, Gantz was the only who appealed to the families of the kidnapped, promising them that he would do everything in his power to bring them home. If only for the sake of the citizens and soldiers who are being held hostage in Gaza and their worried families, so that they will receive the attention they need and deserve from a senior member of the government, the inclusion of Gantz and Eisenkot will make a huge difference. This second partnership with Netanyahu might, however, turn out to be even more difficult than the first one, since this coalition includes individuals like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Galit Distel Atbaryan and Tally Gotliv, and it might take some time before the war is over.
The provocateur national security minister, who is going to great efforts to stir up violence in mixed Jewish/Arab cities by making up false claims, will most likely not change his ways just because a couple of partners have temporarily joined the government. In fact, the opposite is true.
Now that he has been excluded from the high-level decision-making, Ben-Gvir might decide to intensify his actions and push even farther to the Right. Ben-Gvir, however, is just one of the minor problems that Gantz et al. will have to deal with. This week, senior Likud and coalition members went to great lengths to bring Avigdor Liberman to the table in an effort to expand their public support base. Yariv Levin even managed to arrange a quasi-historical reconciliation call between Liberman and Arye Deri, after four years of estrangement between the two, who in the past had once been close allies. But then, while the conversation was still taking place, the Likud released a unilateral statement that Liberman would be joining the government with two ministers, as well as being offered a spot in the security cabinet.
As a result, Liberman, who is demanding to be part of the intimate decision-making circle, flew off the handle and clarified that he would only agree to join the emergency government if he is included in the war cabinet with Netanyahu, Gallant, Ron Dermer, Gantz, and Eisenkot. Since then, the negotiations have stalled, and sources in the Likud mentioned that Sara Netanyahu was one of the main reasons behind the opposition to Liberman. Gantz’s bigger problem is most decidedly Benjamin Netanyahu, who even in the midst of the fiercest war Israel has experienced in decades is primarily focused on his own personal and family concerns. The moment Gantz will no longer serve his interests, all of the talk of unity will shatter into a million pieces.