Likud and Blue and White: The end of an unhappy marriage?
The only motive Netanyahu seems to have to refuse to bring a budget for 2021 is the fact that he wants to leave the option of new elections being held within the next few months.
By SUSAN HATTIS ROLEFAlternate Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Benny Gantz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a vote at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on August 24, 2020.(photo credit: OREN BEN HAKOON/FLASH90)
The trust between the Likud and Blue and White seems to have reached an all-time low in the past week. The marriage between the parties was never based on love. It was not even a marriage of convenience, but, rather, one of “no alternative.”Netanyahu was solely responsible for three elections in a row between April 2019 and March 2020, in which his goal was to get at least 61 Knesset seats for another purely right-religious coalition. Despite all sorts of manipulations to try to prevent loss of right-wing votes to parties unlikely to pass the 3.25% qualifying threshold, he failed.After all three rounds of elections Netanyahu kept saying that he had received a majority, and many senior Likudniks continue to say so to the present day. The fact is that Netanyahu was supported by a majority of the Jewish voters, but not by a majority of the Israeli population, including Israel’s Arab citizens, who constitute 20% of the population.Before the formation of the national emergency government in mid-May 2020, Netanyahu’s two options were a fourth round of elections or the formation of a government based on his “natural bloc” plus either several individual deserters from center-left parties, or Blue and White as a whole.He finally opted for the latter option, even though less than half of Blue and White joined, in addition to three deserters from the Labor-Meretz-Gesher list and two from Blue and White, while among the right-wing parties not only Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu stayed out, but also Naftali Bennett’s Yamina.The price Netanyahu had to pay for this government was an acceptance of parity, despite the clear numerical superiority of what remains of the right-religious bloc, as well as a very tortuous mechanism to ensure rotation in the premiership with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, while ensuring that even after such a rotation takes place, he (Netanyahu) would be immune from removal from the government, since in the government only the prime minister can continue to serve after being indicted.Since Blue and White had no interest in a fourth round of elections, and did not have a real option to form a government of any sort, the only choice it had was to join a government led by Netanyahu, with the hope of rotation in the premiership within a year and a half.From the very beginning, many members of Blue and White didn’t really feel comfortable with the government that was formed, even though at least on paper what remained of Blue and White got the better deal.Most Likudniks continued to reject or to ignore the partitive basis of the government and the reality that it is not just another government in which Netanyahu calls all the shots, but one in which Blue and White can block him when it believes he has overstepped his authority, as it has done on several occasions over issues directly or indirectly connected to his trial.Thus, with regard to the budget, Blue and White keeps insisting that the government pass a budget that will cater for what remains of the financial year 2020, but also for the financial year 2021, and under the coalition agreement can prevent any other sort of budget from being approved.
Likud spokesmen accuse Blue and White of being driven exclusively by narrow political considerations. However, in reality, Israel urgently requires a comprehensive economic policy to get its economy, and many of its citizens, out of the catastrophic straits they are in due to the manner in which Netanyahu’s transition government after the March 2020 elections chose to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and such a policy cannot be planned and implemented without a proper budget to back it up.The only motive Netanyahu seems to have to refuse to bring a budget for 2021 is the fact that he wants to leave the option of new elections being held within the next few months, without his having to hand over the premiership to Gantz before such elections take place. If the 2021 budget isn’t passed by March 31, 2021, that is exactly what he will achieve. The best way to ensure this scenario is simply not to submit a budget in the first place.Likud spokesmen also accuse Blue and White of blocking various moves promoted by Netanyahu to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and this time it is Blue and White that replies that these accusations are based on narrow political considerations.What Blue and White is saying is that most of the experts agree that what Israel needs at the moment are full lockdowns in areas of widespread morbidity – red areas, and much lighter limitations in green areas. They say that the only reason Netanyahu supports a full lockdown everywhere is that he wants to stop the demonstrations against him, with the unverified excuse that the demonstrators are anarchists seeking to spread disease, and does not want to single out the ultra-Orthodox cities and neighborhoods for harsher measures, even though they are currently responsible for over 40% of the persons found to have been infected every day, because they are all that remains of his “natural bloc.”Another indication that many Likudniks refuse to accept the basic premises on which the government is based is the frequency with which even senior members of the Likud express their opposition to Netanyahu going through with the rotation.In fact, there is reason to believe that Netanyahu himself never considered honoring his agreement to the rotation. True, Netanyahu has been very careful not to say anything explicit to this effect. However, it is equally true that he has never scolded his colleagues who scornfully state that Gantz is not qualified to serve as prime minister, due to lack of experience and his temperament, and that only after he has spent sufficient time with “the master” and learned the secrets of the craft from him, he might qualify, though it is not clear what they want Gantz to learn from Netanyahu beyond political trickery, deceptiveness and ways to weaken the agents of law and justice.AT THE moment Blue and White seems to be in a mood of standing up to Netanyahu even if this leads to elections, which will decimate its own strength, since it has stopped even pretending that it trusts him.Netanyahu appears to be weighing the pros and cons of holding new elections soon. Among the reasons for Netanyahu’s caution are the fact that Bennett is gaining power in the polls; the ultra-Orthodox parties are starting to have doubts about the wisdom of placing all their eggs in the Likud’s basket; his special friend President Donald Trump might fail to be reelected in three weeks’ time; and his own chaotic management of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the one hand, and of the measures necessary to minimize the ruin this has caused the economy at large and the livelihood of hundreds of thousands (or more) Israelis, is generally acknowledged.Nevertheless, I believe that new elections are more than likely at this juncture, since the current situation simply cannot go on.
