The art of politics is the attempt to please all people all the time, or at least enough people for enough time to stay in power.
But it is even more impressive when a politician finds a way to upset pretty much everyone.
That is what happened on Sunday, when Defense Minister Benny Gantz became the first senior minister to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas since then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2010.
Netanyahu met the Palestinian leader in Washington – far from Ramallah, where Gantz ventured – and then he blocked his ministers, including Gantz, from meeting him.
First of all, Gantz harmed Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who tweeted four years ago against making Abbas relevant until he stops funding terrorists. The timing of the meeting could not have been worse for Bennett, just ahead of the death of IDF soldier Barel Shmueli, who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Bennett tried to downplay the meeting, saying it was only about security issues under the authority of the defense minister. But Gantz didn’t cooperate with the playdown, saying it was about much more than that.
After politicians on the Right started blasting Bennett for authorizing the meeting, the prime minister was forced to have his staff release a statement saying that there is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be.
That upset Bennett’s coalition partners on the Left, who want there to be a peace process and who were jealous of Gantz for obtaining the meeting with Abbas that they wanted for themselves. Bennett’s associates were not surprised by that anger and privately expressed frustration with Gantz for harming those ties and jeopardizing the government, perhaps in an effort to bring it down.
While Bennett was told about the meeting in advance, other right-wing ministers were not told and privately expressed disappointment with Bennett for approving it. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who has not met with Abbas, looked particularly redundant.
Gantz’s critics in the government said that even if Bennett approved the meeting in advance, Gantz did not keep his promise not to make a big deal about it. Gantz’s associates responded that they released no picture from the meeting and did not play it up.
In what was seen as revenge against Gantz for the meeting, his request to speak at the Knesset about Iran on Tuesday was rejected by Bennett’s associates. Gantz’s proposal for hefty pensions for senior IDF officers may also be stalled.
The justification of the meeting that Gantz presented to Bennett was that it was necessary to meet in order to find a mechanism to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman told reporters at a press conference that Gantz’s explanation satisfied him.
“Palestinian stability is an Israeli interest,” Liberman said. “We will do everything to maintain that stability.”
That was the only positive statement about the meeting on Monday from any Israeli politician, except Gantz himself.
So Gantz did not end up upsetting everyone in the government, but unlike the goal of every politician, he also did not make any friends.