A country that has had the same prime minister for more than 12 years, the same president for seven, and the same head of the Mossad for the last five-and-a-half, suddenly woke up Thursday morning with a new president, new spy agency chief, and – barring any dramatic last-minute snafus – a new prime minister and government.
That’s a lot of change for one country at one time. Having new people making life-and-death decisions and speaking for and about the country will give Israel a new feel. Some might say it creates a different reality.
But, again borrowing from Shakespeare, “aye, there’s the rub.” The reality stays the same; what’s changed is the people in charge here able to impact it.
Iran still wants nuclear weapons; the American administration is still keen on reentering the nuclear deal; Hezbollah is still armed to the teeth; Hamas remains in control of Gaza; the International Criminal Court is still investigating Israel for war crimes; part of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is still becoming more and more anti-Israel and vocal about it; the economy still needs to recover from the coronavirus; and there are still deep, deep societal rifts.
None of that changes just because in one week David Barnea replaced Yossi Cohen as Mossad head, Isaac Herzog was elected to replace Reuven Rivlin as president, and Naftali Bennett stands poised – if the Knesset can muster 61 seats to approve the new government, something that is by no means a given – to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.
Iran’s designs are not altered because Barnea is in charge, Israel’s position in the world is not suddenly transformed because Herzog – who knows many of the world leaders – is moving to the President’s Residence, and the Palestinian issue won’t suddenly be resolved because Labor and Meretz are in a government with Bennett and Yair Lapid.
Nor will the intense debate over the country’s legal system – the powers of the courts and the state attorney – dissolve with Netanyahu out of power.
Although the inclusion of Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List (Ra’am) may begin to change the dynamics of Jewish-Arab relations in the country – a dynamic set back years by Arab rioting during Operation Guardian of the Walls in Gaza – the fraught ties between the haredim and the non-haredi public are unlikely to improve. This is especially true since the haredim are one large sector of the public not included in this “unity” government, while their political nemesis – anti-haredi Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman – is set to control the country’s finances.
NO, DESPITE all the leadership changes Israel ushered in this week, reality won’t change. But tone might.
First of all, there will be less of a preoccupation with Netanyahu’s legal woes. Granted, his trial three times a week in Jerusalem District Court on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust will continue for months and generate headlines, but there will no longer be the endless discussion and speculation about whether every action the government takes – including a large-scale military campaign in Gaza – is meant to help his legal situation.
Though Netanyahu will remain a highly divisive figure – with his core base worth some 28-30 Knesset seats sure to feel that he and they were badly wronged – the country will be able to move on and no longer obsess about Netanyahu and his family. (Unless, of course, he is acquitted, something that would trigger a societal earthquake.)
Likewise, nonstop jabs at the judicial system coming from the top will likely cease. Netanyahu will continue to sharply criticize the judiciary from his perch atop the opposition, but those shots will not have the same weight when not coming from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Secondly, with a new prime minister Israel will be able to hit reset in some key relations frozen with Netanyahu in office.
Some relationships will not need a reset but, rather, careful cultivation – such as ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi.
But other relationships may benefit from the new faces in the Israeli leadership circle – specifically, the relationship with progressives inside the Democratic Party whose support for anti-Israel policies has often been couched in anti-Netanyahu rhetoric (say hello, Bernie Sanders) and for whom it will now be possible to see whether their animus was “only” to Netanyahu, or really to Israel all along.
Israel’s policies under this new government are unlikely to change dramatically. There will not be a complete overhaul of the country’s policies toward Gaza or the West Bank, because of the realities there. Nor will there be changes in Israel’s opposition to Iran.
Bennett, Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz are no less opposed to the Iran nuclear deal than Netanyahu, though they may take a less confrontational approach toward America in dealing with it.
Netanyahu, in power for so long, had the stature to be able to stand up publicly to the US over this issue. A Bennett-Lapid-Gantz triumvirate will not. But while the tone of how Israel approaches America on Iran will change, the substance – the fierce opposition and continuation of Israeli covert policies to stop the Iranians – will not.
New Mossad chief Barnea made this clear at his induction ceremony this week, saying that the Iranian nuclear program will “continue to be met by the full power of the long arm of the Mossad.”
Barnea, who worked very closely with Cohen in various capacities inside the Mossad, including as his deputy, is unlikely to radically alter the Mossad’s modus operandi, though the managerial style at the top may change.
The replacement of Rivlin with Herzog is also not expected to usher in radical changes in the presidency. But Herzog’s deep understanding of the Diaspora Jewish communities born of his political experience dealing for years with the conversion issue, and then later in his role as chairman of the Jewish Agency, will make him a preferred channel of communication for Jews abroad who often feel their interests are not represented in Israel at the highest levels.
WHILE HERZOG’S and Barnea’s tenures – barring any scandal – are set now to last a number of years, the big imponderable at this time is how long a Bennett-Lapid government – a slim government, backed, if all goes well, by only 61 MKS – will last.
Skeptics give it only a very short shelf life, saying that it is an unnatural coalition of parties with vastly different ideologies: an Arab party in coalition with Liberman, Peace Now veterans with former heads of the Yesha Council, Islamists with gay rights advocates and religious Zionists. And the glue that brought them together was simply a deep dislike of Netanyahu.
But once this coalition achieves its primary aim and gets Netanyahu out of the Prime Minister’s Office, something that will happen the minute after it is sworn in, then – the skeptics continue – there will no longer be any cement holding the parties together, and the coalition will collapse.
Yet there will be cement: political survival. Loathing Netanyahu brought this diverse coalition into existence, but a fear of never making it back into the Knesset again should make parties key to the coalition – Yamina, New Hope and Ra’am – do what it takes to make it work.
The country does not want to go back to new elections, because it is tired of the divisions and governmental vacuum they create. Yamina, New Hope, Ra’am and possibly Meretz likely want to avoid elections for those same reasons, plus another huge one: Were this coalition to fall apart soon after being sworn in and new elections called, they would all struggle mightily to make it over the electoral threshold.
While hatred of Netanyahu is what brought this coalition together, instincts of political survival are what may keep it together... against all the odds.