One of the most worn-out sayings in Israel – which derives from a saying by the Roman philosopher Cicero – is the aphorism “When the guns roar, the muses are silent.” It’s mostly untrue, though, because when the guns are roaring, Israeli creativity flourishes. Out of pain and wars, the most beautiful works of Israeli culture were created.
Similar to this saying, there is a popular opinion that during war, politics stop. And that is even less true than the statement about the muses and war. Nothing excites politics in Israel more than war. In general, a military situation emphasizes who is the “real patriot” in the story.
However, the first two weeks of the war were marked by a certain statesmanship, which was probably due to the major shock that hit everyone in Israel, especially the politicians. But this changed very quickly.
As with almost everything that has happened in Israeli politics in the last 15 years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the opening signal here, too, as he began to recover from the trauma and deliver short messages – sound bites – which are his great art.
In the last two weeks he has been in full campaign mode when he repeated the sentence “There will be no Hamastan in Gaza and there will be no Fatahstan,” sentences that allude to what Netanyahu said after the Disengagement: that Gaza would become Hamastan.
Now he is trying to dress up the same nickname for the possibility that the Palestinian Authority will rule in one way or another in the Gaza Strip.
It’s easy to say what won’t happen. But what about what will happen? What will happen “the day after the war in Gaza”?
This topic requires thinking, long-term strategic planning, and telling complex and difficult truths to the public. All of these are not suitable for a postwar campaign.
Being honest about Netanyahu
But we have to be honest. Netanyahu is not the only politician who does what a politician knows how to do best, which is politics. Because although Netanyahu fired the opening shot for the 2024 election campaign, there were many who jumped on the bandwagon. And if the question “What will happen the day after Hamas in Gaza?” is preoccupying the politicians, the question of who will be the prime minister here after the war is just as burning.
The very question starts the race, first of all, in the ruling party, the Likud.
The one who completely removed the mask of statesmanship is Economy Minister Nir Barkat, who in recent weeks has been in an intensive campaign to return himself to the Israeli consciousness and brand himself as a true right-wing leader.
He usually gives pre-written speeches at the beginning of government meetings, while directly criticizing the conduct of the decision-makers in the government – headed by the prime minister, without mentioning his name, of course, for fear of being swallowed up – and the conduct of the army.
Here is what he said at the beginning of the week: “With one hand the State of Israel is fighting Hamas, and with the other hand it’s sending hundreds of [aid] trucks every day, which prolongs the life of Hamas and allows it to continue fighting our soldiers. This is absurd. There has never been a case in history of a country fighting an enemy country and supplying it with fuel and goods. This must stop today!” Barkat exclaimed in a confident voice, as if he were a newspaper publicist and not a minister in the same government.
A week before, he leveled even harsher criticism, accusing, no less, the government and the IDF of abandoning soldiers.
“I am worried. Unfortunately, we are too nice and considerate. It is unthinkable that we would endanger our soldiers and send them, exposed, into all kinds of buildings without having bombed them first,” he said before the convening of a government meeting at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Barkat is targeting a right-wing segment of the population that has grown up and sees the current government with Netanyahu and Benny Gantz as weak against Hamas. It is not certain that Barkat himself believes what he is saying.
After all, he knows that the IDF operates according to international law and, in any case, does not endanger its forces in the field unless there is no other choice, but he does so because it sounds good and because it can mark him as the real rightist who cares about the soldiers. Unlike the case of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been riding this agenda for a year, with Barkat it doesn’t seem credible.
Another figure who returned to our lives under the auspices of the war and the political race is a former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen.
Cohen, more than once, was thought of as Netanyahu’s successor in the Likud. By the way, he is not the only one. Cohen comes to the television and radio studios as an expert on Qatar affairs and Israel’s covert operations, but each interview quickly turns to the political aspirations of Cohen, who possesses the qualities of a politician and knows how to speak to the heart of the public.
In an interview with Maariv a month ago, he said “I have not yet decided that I am joining politics.” In another interview with Israeli television, he said that he is forming a group of experts around him who, “the day after” the war, will deal with Israeli society – a code name for a platform that can quickly become a party.
Cohen must have seen the polls that predict that a party led by him would have 12 seats in the Knesset, a number that doesn’t mean much at this stage but definitely whets the appetite.
And if we’re talking about success in the polls, then an old and familiar duo is also heating up, former prime minister Naftali Bennett and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked. Only a year has passed since the government of change, led by Bennett and then Yair Lapid, ended its historic path after a total of one and a half years in power.
But the former prime minister quickly jumped into the fray when the war broke out. As one of the people who knows what happened in the IDF and in general before October 7, in the first days of the war he was seen mainly at the gathering points of the reserve and regular soldiers.
A series of his videos swept the social networks, and he returned to his starting point in Israeli politics, the promising officer from an IDF top unit who earned his keep like Netanyahu and who will eventually succeed him.
One video saw Bennett encouraging the soldiers in the first days of pain and shock and during which he told them that they were part of a “nation of lions.” This video gained him momentum and was seen by many Israelis. Bennett also enjoys double-digit numbers in the polls that even approach 20 seats. Bennett also does a good job for Israel in the foreign media, which does a good job for him, because what’s better than a video where you argue with an unfriendly presenter?
But Bennett’s trouble is the delivery, the difficulty of realizing the potential in the polls. It happened to him in the 2019 elections, where he was kicked out of the Knesset, and it also happened to him in the election process at the end of which he was appointed prime minister but entered the Knesset with only seven seats.
In any case, Bennett recognizes the potential to position himself as someone who can say “it didn’t happen on my watch,” so you should listen to him. The criticism of him will come when a date is set for the elections. Then he will be reminded that he was prime minister while Hamas started working on the October 7 plan.
The reason we focus on the Right is that it is directly connected to Netanyahu. If, indeed, he is dramatically weakened and cut in half, as the polls suggest, from 32 seats to 18, then the question of his replacement will become relevant, and here it is worth introducing another name that has not been mentioned so far – chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee Yuli Edelstein, who has been hinting that from the day after the war, he won’t let things continue in the same way. Meaning, whoever was there, won’t be anymore.
In conclusion, we should mention the person who, according to the polls, has the highest chances of becoming the next prime minister – the chairman of the National Unity camp, Gantz, who serves as a minister in the war cabinet alongside Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Gantz receives fantastic numbers in the polls, 38 seats on average in most polls, seemingly the indisputable candidate. But he is in a situation where he cannot realize the potential, because while the entry into Netanyahu’s emergency government gave him great credit even among right-wing voters, especially in view of the fact that he demonstrated responsibility, he will lose that credit or at least a big part of it once he decides to leave the government.
In other words, Gantz receives a lot of votes when he is in Netanyahu’s government, but as soon as he wants to leave the government and face him, he may lose a significant portion of those who saw his entry into the government as the right thing to do.
So as soon as the elections are announced, he will break away from Netanyahu’s government and as a result lose, according to estimates, about a third of his supporters in the polls.
One option is to stay in the government until the elections and try to take advantage of the momentum of the polls. But then Lapid’s party will say that he is collaborating with the father of failure, Netanyahu.
The date of the elections in Israel has not yet been determined, but the political players are already lining up, calculating moves. Despite the feeling that Israel has no strategy for “the day after,” the politicians are very busy with the day after the war, the day after their own war.
The writer is Army Radio’s (Galei Zahal’s) political and diplomatic correspondent.