Anshel Pfeffer
An Update on the Israeli Political Situation
Anshel Pfeffer | An Update on the Israeli Political Situation | 06.06.21
- Welcome back everybody for an update on the Israeli political situation. A very warm welcome to Anshel Pfeffer. Anshel has covered Israeli and international affairs for the past 24 years, writing for Haaretz, The Economist, the Times, and the Jewish Chronicle, amongst others. Over the years, he has covered a wide range of beats, including politics, security, education, religion, and international affairs. In addition, he has reported from 30 countries around the world. His latest book is “Bibi: "The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.” Thank you very, very much, Anshel for joining us today, and we look forward to hearing from you. I’m going to hand over to Carly, who’s going to be in conversation with you. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Wendy. Well, Anshel, I can’t promise, I’m a little intimidated by the fact that you were with Fareed Zakaria before me, but we’re going to give it a go. So we’ve only got an hour, so let’s see how much of the turbulent times in Israeli politics over the last few weeks we can get through. So I thought, first of all, we could start with just a few minutes of a high level introduction of what the proposed coalition looks like.
So I’m sure a lot of people here who are listening right now are quite up to date, so I’ll try and somehow add something to those who are more up to date, and try and bring everyone else up to speed. There’s been a lot of talk in the last few days of the end of the Netanyahu era, and about Naftali Bennett coming in and being Israel’s already Prime Minister-Elect. Let’s just be clear, it’s not yet the end. We’re still at the point where I say the chances of Netanyahu’s long rule coming to an end are pretty good, far from finished. Just to be very accurate, we are at a point where Yair Lapid, who’s leader of the opposition, has notified the president, he did so on Thursday night, that he has a majority to form a new government.
That new government will not be sworn in until it can pass an initial vote of confidence in the Knesset. And we don’t yet know exactly when that vote will take place. The current speaker of the Knesset, the acting speaker, is Yariv Levin, who is a loyalist of Netanyahu. He’s trying to play for time. He can somehow delay it until next Monday, so another eight days. The reason that they want to delay it is that they hope perhaps to pick off one or two wavering members of this new coalition. It’s a very small coalition, we’ll talk about it in a minute. So we’re in that in-between period where it looks like there may be a new government in a few days, but it’s not yet a done deal, it’s not yet for certain.
The coalition is made up of eight different parties, and that’s not that rare for Israel. Israel usually has multi-party coalition… Always multiparty coalitions. Eight is a slightly high number, but it’s not unprecedented. What is unprecedented is the diversity of this coalition. It has staunch right wing nationalist parties in Naftali Bennett’s Yamina, which means “Rightward,” Gideon Sa'ar’s New Hope, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, “Israel Our Home,” they’re on the right. In the centre ground, we have Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, the largest party in the opposition; Benny Gantz’s Blue and White. On the left, we have Labour and Meretz, the old school Zionist left. And we have a new addition, never before in an Israeli coalition, an Arab party, Ra'am, “United Arab List,” which is a small, very interesting, conservative Islamist party. First Arab party, independent Arab party, ever to join an Israeli Knesset.
These are eight parties, and these are all rather small parties. Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid, the largest is only 17 seats. So every single party here is necessary to make up the majority. And every single member of those parties… One of Yamina’s members has already defected, and so he is going to vote against the coalition because they promised not to join a coalition with the left, and with the Arabs, and so on. If one more of the members of any of the parties jump ship, they’ll be in deep trouble. It’ll be much more difficult for them to replace it. And yeah, not impossible, but it’s becoming more and more difficult.
So we’re really down to the wire with the bare minimum of a majority. They have to keep it all together for at least three or four days, probably as many as eight days, until the confidence vote is held. The confidence vote will be a roll call, every single Knesset member will have to say… Their names will be called. Most votes they cast are electronic votes. The MKs just press a button and that’s it. This will be at a very high drama event. You’ll have rumours of Knesset members disappearing into the toilets, or “Where is so and so? "Why haven’t they arrived?” And so on. And until that happens, until that vote is won, Netanyahu is still caretaker Prime Minister. And if that vote is lost, Israel may well be swept into yet another election campaign; The fifth election campaign in two and a half years. But as things stand now, we’re the closest we’ve been in 12 years to Netanyahu being replaced. So that’s more or less the state of play right now.
So before we drill down a little further on, on the coalition members, over the next week or 10 days, there’s a number of situations that could take place. One of which we’ve seen in the news in the last 24 hours is the proposed Flag March through Jerusalem and the concerned statements by the head of the Israeli Security Services about an increased nature of incitement and increased concerns around security situation. Can you explain a little bit more about the sensitivities of the Flag March and is it unusual for the Israeli Security Services to make such a comment?
So let’s start with the second thing about what the security service… The head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal Security Service, last night, on Saturday night, put out a public statement warning about the level of discourse. He stressed, especially social media. And he warned this could actually lead to acts of murder. And this is an extremely, extremely rare thing. The head of Shin Bet barely ever talks, he never gives interviews. Perhaps once a year, there’ll be some kind of a lecture at the National Security Conference, but really that’s it. They keep very, very private, the heads of Shin Bet. And this kind of a statement is very rare.
I’d say also that it’s interesting because the boss, the direct boss, of the head of Shin Bet is the prime minister, and I’m pretty sure Netanyahu was not happy by this statement of the man who works directly beneath him. And yes, it is a sign of how worried the Shin Bet is of some act of violence being committed right now around this very toxic discourse around this government. Now, it’s almost bizarre because it’s not a left wing government. It’s quite a right wing government. You’ve got Naftali Bennett as Prime Minister, and three right wing governments in it. But still the right wing, which has remained loyal to Netanyahu, and the religious and the ultra-orthodox parties are being worked…
Their supporters are being worked up to a frenzy, not just by Netanyahu but by some of the remaining party leaders who are still loyal to him, rabbis who support him. And you’ve got to ask yourself, why are they so worried about what is just a normal… What should be a normal thing in a democratic system, just change of government. Netanyahu himself was, in the past year, in the opposition, and he came into power, and he lost power. This should be a normal transition. No points will be awarded to anybody who’ll immediately think of something similar that happened a few months ago in the United States.
Similar kind of toxic atmosphere around what should have been just a normal transfer of power. This is what we’re having here. Netanyahu is playing from the Trump playbook. And Netanyahu actually has, in many ways, more ammunition than Trump had, in the sense that we all know that Trump’s arguments about voter fraud were total inventions. What Netanyahu is saying, what his supporters are saying is, “Hold on, Naftali Bennett said "just two and a half months ago, "on the eve of the elections, "that he would not sit with the left "in a coalition, "and he would not make Yair Lapid the prime minister,”
Part of the coalition deal is in two years from now, Bennett will move aside and Lapid will replace him as prime minister, “And that he would certainly not sit "in the government with,” what he called then, “supporters of terror,” the Ra'am Party. So Netanyahu is calling this the biggest… This morning, he gave a statement saying, “This is the biggest election fraud "in Israel’s history, "and in the history of all democracies.” He said, “I have researchers looking "for similar cases in other countries "and they’ve failed to found them.”
So this is an extremely, extremely toxic atmosphere. And Netanyahu supporters are, as we speak, gathering outside the homes of various right-wing Knesset members of the new coalition, calling them not to be left-wing traitors, calling them to listen to the rabbis, listen to the nation, and not vote for this government. There’ve been stories today about one Knesset member whose car was followed by other cars, and they started beeping at her, and she almost felt that her life was in danger on the motorway. Her husband was called up and on the line was Netanyahu himself, and he started urging him to tell his wife to vote against the government. Stories about him being offered jobs, very lucrative jobs, if he would do so.
Other members having both threats and adverse inducements. And it’s not just these direct communications from the Netanyahu and other people working on his behalf to some of these Knesset members, it’s the protests, it’s the really, really nasty smear campaigns on social media. And I think, quite understandably, the head of Shin Bet is worried that… Of something like we saw back in ‘95 with the Rabin murder. So that’s what’s behind Nadav Argaman, the Shin Bet chief, speaking out last night. Some of the government ministers have been very dismissive of what he said in there.
Netanyahu didn’t actually mention it but he said, “They were silent "when I’m being threatened. "And me and my wife are being threatened all the time, "no one says anything else.” So there’s a lot of that Trump-style, whiny, “Oh, everyone hates me "and the establishment’s out to get me.” The other part you brought up, which was… Remind me, sorry.
The Flag March that’s due to happen.
Yeah, the flag… I’m sorry, . News here is like… The Flag March was three weeks ago, why coming back? Flag March is something hugely happens on Jerusalem Day, which is a date on the Hebrew calendar which commemorates the Six Day War, and the day on the Sixth Day War when Israeli troops entered the old city of Jerusalem and occupied, liberated, whatever you want to call it, the Western Wall and other parts of East Jerusalem on that day. And for many years, this was a mainstream day of commemoration. I think in the last 20 or so years, it’s become very much a thing of the right wing, of the religious communities. And one of the ways that they celebrate this day is what’s called the Flag March.
The Flag March actually used to be something less controversial. But once again, over the last 10 years or so, the route has gone through Damascus Gate, and the more Palestinian or Muslim part of East Jerusalem. It’s being seen more and more as an act of provoking the local Palestinian people. And the route, the way that they… The things they chant on the way and so on. This year, it also coincided with a period of very high tension. On and around Jerusalem Day, it was the month of Ramadan. Ramadan, as some of you probably know, Islam uses a lunar-based calendar, therefore Ramadan wanders across the regular cal… The calendar that other… Jews use a mix of lunar and solar calendar.
So Jerusalem Day is always in the middle of the spring, Ramadan can be in any time of the year across a span of about 20 years. But this time it literally coincided with the end of Ramadan, and Ramadan was a very, very tense time this year in East Jerusalem. There was a very heavy handed policing, and some mistakes, I think, by the heads of the Jerusalem… The chiefs of Jerusalem police, which led to this tension. A lot of violent clashes leading up to it. And for various re… I’m not going to go into Palestinian politics right now, but this was an opportunity for Hamas to make its own point and launch rockets towards Israel, in this case towards Jerusalem, on that very day.
And I was on the previous Flag March three weeks ago in Jerusalem, and as the march was planning to… Was almost reaching the old city, the police had decided to change the route, not go through Damascus Gate and go through Jaffa Gate, where there would’ve bit less tension. Even so, we were… I’m sure a lot of people know that corner next to the end of Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, where you got that big corner of the walls of the old city, and that was where the… The head of the march was there already. And suddenly, we heard the sirens. Everybody was astonished that there were rocket sirens in Jerusalem. Usually, Hamas don’t fire rockets towards Jerusalem. They fire them towards the southern towns or towards Tel-Aviv area. And that was what began the 12 day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and everybody knows how that happened and what ended there. But that was the march that was disturbed in the middle.
And all of a sudden on Friday, various far right groups announced, “Well, now we’re going to have our march, "the march that we couldn’t have three weeks ago. "We’re going to have it this Thursday.” And why do it all of a sudden now? It does seem to many people that this is an attempt to disrupt the new government’s formation by having another round of violence in Jerusalem, by trying to create discord between the right and the left wing elements of the new government, between the right wing and the Islamist element of the new government. It looks like a very transparent ploy. And even putting politics aside, it looks like something which could lead to a lot of violence between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem at what is still a very tense period.
The ceasefire is by now over two weeks old, but it’s still a fragile ceasefire where anything could plunge us back into another round of violence. Right now, it’s not clear that the march will will happen. The police have not yet given them the licence that they need to march. They haven’t yet agreed to the route. At the same time, the government isn’t quite clear what it’s saying. We’ve got a government, which is already an outgoing government, they’re already getting ready… They’re already packing up their offices. There’s a new government which hasn’t yet put their feet beneath their desk, so it’s all still up in the air. It won’t just march as if… Just because the right wing wants it to happen. The police will have to decide and agree on a route. There’s a potential here for violence. But we still don’t know yet if it’s even going to happen because police could say, “Hold on, we need time to get prepared for this, "wait another couple of weeks” or something like that. It’s one of a number of issues that we still aren’t clear on as we speak.
Thank you, so let’s turn to the potential coalition members. And first of all, let’s look a little deeper on Mansour Abbas of Ra'am, who simplistically is referred to as the Islamist party. Now, for those of us in the West, we don’t tend to have Islamist parties inside our political establishment, so can you explain a little bit more about his party, their views, and how they’ve come to sign up to this coalition?
So first of all, I think one thing that’s very important to remember about Mansour Abbas is that three months ago, 90% of Israelis did not know who he was. Now, even within the Arab community, he wasn’t one of the better known politicians. Certainly, Israeli Jews, very few even knew who he was. He’s actually a newcomer to politics, he arrived in 2019. A bit about the party. I assume everybody here knows about the Joint List. Now, there’s… Some people think that the Joint List is a party. The Joint List never was a party. It’s a merger of four parties, not into one party but into one list of candidates.
Now, in the Knesset, you don’t vote for a party, you vote for a list of candidates. Most lists of candidates are parties, but some of the lists can be a number of parties joining together and putting their candidates on the list, and this is what is the case with the J… The Joint List is… Was, more accurately, a group of four different parties. The Communist Party, which is officially an Arab and Jewish party but I think 90% of its members and voters are Arabs, Balad, which is an Arab nationalist party with sort of a post-Nasserist ideology.
Then there’s… There is Ahmad Tibi’s Ta'al List, which I’d say… You could say they’re not really ideological, they’re more like Arab bourgeoisie. And then there’s R'aam, which is the Islamist party. When I say Islamist, yes, they’re not hardcore jihadist by any sense of the word. They’re very, very moderate strand of, what in Egypt, is the Muslim Brotherhood, which basically said, “We see Islam as being the answer "to all of society’s "and all of politics’ challenges.” But as I say, it’s version in Israel is a very, very moderate type of Islamism, but it is Islamism the sense that Islam is the… As the Muslim Brotherhood slogan goes, it’s “Islam is the answer.”
Now, since 2015, the Joint List has ran together in , except in one of the 2019 elections. But three out of the four past elections, they ran together. Mansour Abbas was elected leader of Ra'am in 2019, only then he became a Knesset member for the first time. And he, over the last year or so, has had a very different policy to what most of the Joint Lists representatives have, in which he said, basically, “None of the Arab parties have been "in an Israeli coalition. "We have made a big issue "of our Palestinian identity, "an we’ve basically emphasised our differences "with the Israeli main… "With the Jewish mainstream of Israel "and kept out of Israeli mainstream, "and we think that was a mistake "because if you’re not represented within government, "you don’t really have a good chance "of getting what you need "in sense of resources, planning, funding, "anything that you need… "That a community needs, "especially a minority community "which is facing the issues of inequality. "The way to deal with that is representation. "We need to be within government.” Now, it’s not that the other parties were necessarily against that idea on principle. It’s what Mansour Abbas added to that. He said, “We have to be prepared to negotiate "not just with the centre left parties "who are more sympathetic to us, "but also with the right wing Israelis, "also with Netanyahu.” And Abbas said it quite clearly, “I am prepared to negotiate, "after the next election, "even with the Netanyahu.”
And that was anathema to the other three parties of the Joint List, and that was something which led to the split, just four months ago, in the Joint List. And in the March 23rd election, Ra'am, under Abbas, ran independently, surprised a lot of people by crossing the electoral threshold, winning four seats in the Knesset, and making Mansour Abbas a kingmaker effectively. For the first time, an Arab-Israeli party could give a majority to one of the sides. And now we see it, he’s now a member of the government. They need his four seats.
A few hours ago, there was the first public meeting… Well, I mean, “public” in the sense that they actually had a photographer inside, of the leaders of the eight parties. Mansour Abbas sitting among them as an equal partner in this government. First time we’ve seen that kind of thing happen in Israel. Some people will say he’s selling out, some people will say it’s easier for him to do that because he’s an Islamist, and sometimes religion makes you be very rigid. But in some cases, actually, religion is more flexible and more pragmatic than other types of ideology.
I think in this case, his type of Islamism is more pragmatic than, say, Ayman Odeh, than leader of Hadash’s communist ideology, which probably wouldn’t allow him to join a government with the right wing. I mean, that’s a historic breakthrough. Will it lead to new, wonderful things in Israeli society? One can only hope. But it’s certainly… It’s certainly a milestone.
Yes, that photo looked like one of those fantasy dinner party guest moments. So now let’s turn to the potential new prime minister who you profiled this weekend in Haaretz, and it’s a very interesting read for those who haven’t read it yet, who, as you say, is easily labelled. But perhaps you can take us a little bit behind the slogans and the stereotypes.
So everyone’s saying that Naftali Bennett is the first religious prime minister, some people say he’s the first settler prime minister, and so on. I don’t want to downplay… I’ve no idea what the political slant of everyone listening here tonight is, but I don’t want to downplay some of the–
You’ve got a pretty varied global group, so all across the spectrum.
I don’t want to say… I don’t want to downplay any of Bennett’s previous very right wing, very radical, some quite racist things he’s said over the years, but I do want to say that he is far from being a rigid ideologue. And the same goes for his religion, the same goes for his politics. I mean, he was… Yes, he spent a year and three months as the CEO of the Yesha Settlers Council. The man lived actually on the settlement probably only for four or five months in his life. He much prefers living in Ra'anana. I’m sure a lot of the people here know that Ra'anana is a very nice, upscale neighbourhood of Tel-Aviv. Not exactly a place for far right politics.
Look, he is, in some ways, the most right wing politician Israel has ever had in government, I mean, as a potential prime minister. He’s also the first person welcoming an Arab-Israeli party into his government. So this says something about a lack of… Some people say lack of a backbone, and some people will say a lack of dogma and of rigid ideology here. Bennett is… He’s an opportunist, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing in politics. He is a person who at the age of, what was it, about 28 of 29, went into business, into high-tech. Within four or five years, he was a millionaire. He’d already sold his first company to a global corporation. And at that point, he said, “I’ve had enough.”
He could have stayed in. He was being headhunted for numerous positions as a CEO of various tech companies, and he decided, “I’m okay, I’ve made my money. "I can build a house. "I’m going back from New York, "back to Israel, building my home, "starting to have children, "and now going into politics.” And that’s the character, the person, he is. He’s not somebody who spends a very long time in one place. He’s been in politics now, in total, for 15 years almost but in that 15 years, he’s been a member of five different parties, three of which… Sorry, three of which don’t even exist anymore.
One that he set up himself that broke down, another one that he set up himself and lost. And he hasn’t… It would seem as if he’s had a meteoric rise. He began 15 years ago as the chief of staff to the leader of the opposition, now he’s got his… His foot is on the doorstep of the Prime Minister’s office, not bad. But actually, he hasn’t done very well in politics. He’s just the leader of a small party. He’s had more downs than ups in his political career. But like I say, he’s an opportunist. He’s exactly like the kind of person who knows when a company is worth taking over and making… Which he’s done a couple of times. In a very short period of time, he’s done that a few times.
He saw an opportunity here to position himself as a right wing party which wouldn’t commit to joining Netanyahu’s government, but wouldn’t commit to going against Netanyahu. He rode that horse in the last election and that positioned himself in a place where Yair Lapid, who is the real architect of the new government and you could argue he should be the prime minister ‘cause he’s the leader of the biggest party in the new coalition, had to basically say, “If I want to replace Netanyahu, "I need Naftali Bennett. "So Naftali Bennett, as far as I care, "can be prime minister for the next two years "because that’s the only way "we can replace Netanyahu,” and Bennett knew that from the beginning. And yeah, Bennett made a lot of noise about, “Oh, I’m going to set up a right wing government. "My commitment is to right wing government, "my door is open to Netanyahu.”
But the truth is that this was Bennett’s plan. This is what we hoped would happen all along. And I wouldn’t say it’s a brilliant plan because it was pretty clear to a lot of observers that’s what he was doing, but it really is an incredible opportunity. We’ve never had a situation , where the leader of a small party could become prime minister. In that way, he’s like totally beating the system. He’s a good student of his first political mentor, Benjamin Netanyahu, in that way, in that he’s totally worked the system. And I think that says something about what kind of prime minister he’s going to be, in the sense that we can’t really predict what kind of prime minister he’s going to be. He’ll take whatever opportunity comes his way, and try it, and make that work best for him, hopefully, also best for Israel. But he’s not…
Also his religion, he’s got this tiny little kippah at the back of his bald head with two-way tape, and it’s stuck there. He’s not a massive shul-goer. He’s not the guy who’s going to give you a every, every time you meet him. His wife is secular. They have their own way of living both… I mean, his kids go to religious schools, but what we call in Israel, , “light religious.” And I think that says a lot about how flexible he can be, and it’s… I mean, I’m looking forward, as a journalist, to his time in government because it’ll be interesting. Netanyahu was very interesting but I think I’ve had enough of that type of interesting. Time, I think, for something new. And he’s not going to be a boring prime minister.
I’m not sure politics in Israel could ever be called boring, but yes, I imagine the new coalition will give you lots of different things to write about. So we just touched briefly on Lapid, with 17 seats and arguably the architect behind a lot of this. What do you think has allowed him to bring the players together and get to this point where many others have tried and failed? And he spent a long time trying to unseat Netanyahu.
So I mean, what we’ve seen with Lapid over the last couple of years is a really incredible transformation. Yair Lapid joined politics in 2013 after a long career in the media, but he was never seen as a serious journalist. He was a chat show host, and he was a very popular tabloid columnist. And towards the end of his media career, he became the anchor of the main news programme on the weekend. And everybody remembers that the first time he was on, it was the Friday night Channel 12… was Channel Two news programme, it was like… He presented it…
He opened the programme saying, “I’m Yair Lapid and I’m wearing a tie,” because he’d always made a point that he never wears a tie. And it was such a funny moment, the way he made it all about himself, and that was the way he was in his first few years in politics. It was very much… Yesh Atid was very much a party for that kind of… The kind of person who liked Yair Lapid as a journalist. Sort of Tel-Aviv, middlebrow, middle class, centrist, not very committed to any particular ideology. And people on the right and on the left loved criticising Lapid for his lack of gravitas, for being so self-centered.
And I admit, I’m to blame. I mean, I indulge in this as much as any other journalist. Lapid wouldn’t talk to me for years because of this. In the last couple of years, he has literally transformed himself into the new responsible grownup of Israeli politics. First of all, he put his ego aside when he agreed to be Benny Gantz’s number two in 2019, and agreed to merge Yesh Atid, which was already an established party with an infrastructure, into this brand new platform of Gantz’s Blue and White, and that was… He was sacrificing his own ambitions. Gantz repaid him poorly a year later by agreeing to go into government with Netanyahu.
Lapid, despite what happened, has done it again. He has now yet again agreed to put his own ego, his own ambition… He wants to be prime minister. He said so very clearly at the beginning of his political career. He’s now allowing the leader of a party, which a third of the party of his size. You could argue that Bennett’s party doesn’t even exist really. It was something which was created for this election, it may evaporate by the next election. Yesh Atid is already a party with a track record. Lapid has said, “I don’t care. "I have not run to be prime minister. "I have run to restore normalcy to Israel. "I have run to provide Israel "with a stable government. "And my own personal ambition "to be prime minister, "I’m putting that on hold.” We’ve been, for so long in Israel, in this politics of massive ego, thanks to the Netanyahu era, and that in itself I think is an incredible thing to do. Not just because… Okay, not everybody gets to be Prime Minister but he could claim, “I should be prime minister.” Let’s not make him into a saint, this is all part of a much wider strategy that he’s been running for the last two years, but he’s done it admirably well, he hasn’t put a foot wrong.
He’s got a great strategic advisor, Mark Mellman, a Democratic… An important Democratic pollster in DC. Flies every two months, spends 24 hours sitting with Mellman and working out strategy. Mellman tells him, “Look, these are the words to use.” Obviously he’s got a whole team of pollsters here in Israel doing the research for him. Mellman analyses it and they work out together a strategy. They’ve been doing this for years now. And in the last couple of years, Lapid has simply put together this strategy, he’s stuck to it, and now, finally, it’s about to work. Yes, Naftali Bennett, if this works, will be the next prime minister of Israel.
But without a doubt, this is Yair Lapid’s achievement, and the Israeli public, especially many of his critics from the left and centre left, are now admitting Lapid has… “We didn’t expect this to happen. "He’s exceeded our expectations. "He’s proven himself,” like I said, “as the new responsible grown up.” And I don’t know if Naftali Bennett will ever be Prime Minister again after these two years. I think this is probably his only opportunity and he’ll probably do something else. He’ll be… He’s only 49, he probably, in his early 50s, will go onto his next career outside politics. Yair Lapid, on the other hand, is here to stay. He’s established himself now as one of the next main leaders of Israel, and as the leader of the Israeli centre in its broadest terms. And it’ll be very difficult for the old party of the centre, Labour, which is under a new and very energetic leader, Merav Michaeli, to make any inroads now that Lapid has established himself in this way.
So let’s very quickly talk about Labour, who people have counted out a number of times in the last few elections, and the only party in this coalition led by a woman, although I understand this will be the most number of women MKs in the new coalition. She’s the only woman around our fantasy dinner party table. How did she take Labour through and do you think she’ll be able to build the party through the coalition?
Just on what you said now, there’ll probably be eight women ministers in this cabinet, the highest number. Still only about a third of cabinet ministers, but still a record for Israeli cabinets. Merav Michaeli brought just a new atmosphere to Labour. Labour had been already eulogised under a series of really disappointing leaders. But also without a narrative, the Labour Party found… Literally, it’s a party which founded a st… How many political parties in the world can say that they were a party which founded a state and built that state for the first 30 years? Labour had an incredible achievement and that’s what kept it in power for so long.
Israelis, until 1977, could not imagine, could not conceive of another party leading Israel. And it wasn’t… There was nothing undemocratic about it. They won every election because people saw them as the only safe pair of hands for this country. It took 30 years for Menachem Begin, after eight losing campaigns, to finally become prime minister since '77. And at that point, I think Labour lost its narrative. It wasn’t… If there’s another party which can be trusted to run the country, then what is the point of Labour? And then Labour recreated itself at some point in the early 90s, when Oslo Accords came, as the peace camp…
We all remember that word, “the peace camp.” It was a brand new… It was basically the rebranding of Labour, to say, “We built the state, "we built the security , "we built the IDF, "we built the nuclear programme, "we built all these things "that ensured Israel’s survival. "Israel’s survival is no longer in question, "and therefore this is the time for us "to make a historic compromise "with our closest…” You could say not even a neighbour, but like someone actually sharing our house with us. “We have to do this with the Palestinians "so we can not just survive and be secure, "but we can also have a more normal life "with recognised borders.” And that was the idea behind the rebranding of Labour as the peace camp.
The problem was the peace process didn’t work. It’s a whole other discussion, who’s to blame and why Oslo didn’t reach the promised land of what was supposed to be a two state solution. It didn’t happen, that’s what’s important. And Labour didn’t really have a new narrative to tell because Labour still supports the resolution, but that’s not the main issue now. It’s not on the table. Right now, there is no peace process for whatever reasons, hasn’t been for years, but there are still Israeli elections. What are you going to tell the voters? And Labour hasn’t really had a story to tell the voters. And to be honest, Merav Michaeli hasn’t come up yet with that story. But at least she’s giving the…
She gave voters the feeling that she can come up with a new narrative. I mean, she’s been in politics since 2013 as well, same thing as Bennett and Lapid, but she’s only become a party leader right now. This whole narrative of the way she swept away the old guard, obviously the fact that she’s a feminist activist over many years has helped with that image. But I have to say that Merav Michaeli still hasn’t come up with the answers, and the fact that she won seven… Labour, under her, won seven seats, it’s been seen as an achievement because in the polls, before she came, Labour were beneath the threshold and they were about to be wiped out. The party which founded Israel was about to be wiped out and sent into electoral oblivion. She saved them, she brought them up…
Her force of personality re-energized Labour, so Labour won seven seats. Now, if anybody would’ve said just a few years ago that seven seats for Labour would be seen achievement, “What are you talking about?” Labour won, as recently as 2015, 24 seats, and even that wasn’t… Was nowhere near what it had been at its height. So they’re down to seven seats now, and it’s an achievement to even be in the Knesset. So she’s brought labour back from the aisle of the dead, which something she deserves credit for. But as she herself will admit, this is a very, very long, uphill struggle to make Labour once again a potential party of power, and Yair Lapid’s success in building this coalition isn’t going to make it any easier for Labour to rediscover its role.
So let’s turn to those who are obviously not around the table in this new coalition, and shortly we’ll get to the book that you quite literally wrote on Netanyahu. But before we do, the ultra-orthodox are not at the table. What does that mean in terms of potential bills that may be able to be passed in Israel and the political situation over the next, I guess, year, two years, maybe three, however long this coalition lasts?
So since we don’t know how long this coalition lasts, and one day there’ll be another election in Israel, maybe very soon, maybe just in four years or so, a lot of the people around that coalition table still want to be potential prime ministers or major players in a future Israeli government, the orthodox parties aren’t going away. And I don’t think that right now, there is the political will around that table to move any significant legislation which will change the… Sorry, the status quo on state and religion. The fact that the orthodox parties aren’t in there is also a quirk of how they have positioned themselves as Netanyahu’s eternal allies.
There’s this… We’re not going to go into every twist and turn of their relationship with Netanyahu but right now, they’re in an alliance with Bibi that they can’t get out of. Their own public, the Haredi public, is very pro Bibi. So the leaders of the Orthodox parties can’t really break with him. They’re on the way to the opposition, assuming the government is sworn in. But everybody’s already calculating and thinking about the day after Netanyahu. And a lot of those eight people… A significant chunk of those eight party leaders are already thinking, “Hold on, "I want to form another government myself "in three or four or five years. "I don’t want to totally burn my bridges "with the ultra-orthodox parties. "They’ll still be players.”
So I don’t think there’ll be that many real reforms or pieces of legislation. What will happen, assuming the government is sworn in, is that the finance minister, the man who’s going to control the actual budget, is Avigdor Lieberman. He has broken his… He has burnt his bridges with the Haredi leadership. And he’s insisted on not just being finance minister, but also having one of his Knesset members be the chair of the Knesset Finance Committee. So basically, the two most important government positions which control the budget will be held by Lieberman, 'cause his Knesset members are very, very loyal to him, which means that he’ll have a lot of power over any funding going to the Orthodox community, and there we could see some interesting developments.
That all depends on what Lieberman’s long-term strategy is, and he’s a very crafty fellow. We don’t really know what he is going to do with it. We do know that ultra-orthodox are petrified of what Lieberman can do to their institutions. They need this government funding to keep all their many Torah yeshivas, and seminaries, and schools, which are all independent from the government structure, but all funded, to a very large degree, by the government. That is going to be in jeopardy now. And Lieberman could do a lot of stuff there and could cause them a lot of damage, to the leadership, and perhaps even cause a situation where a lot of young men and women will decide to leave these institutions and go and study, go and try and get jobs, because they just won’t be the level of financial support that, currently, the students in these places have.
So in our last 15 minutes or so, let’s turn to discuss Netanyahu. And as I say, for those members of our audience who haven’t read your book on it, he is a fascinating character. And perhaps you can tell us in a couple of minutes, how did we get here? So many of Netanyahu’s allies, if you can call them that, within the party have even urged him to consider resigning to give Likud a chance, but he says he will go on to be the leader of the opposition. So how did we get to this position?
Well, if you look at this new government, which may be sworn in, in a few days, it’s made up, to a very large degree, of former Netanyahu advisors. This is a government that Netanyahu himself formed because Naftali Bennett, Gideon Sa'ar, Avigdor Lieberman, all former Netanyahu aides, all served as ministers under him, all are now irrevocably opposed to him, even though they haven’t changed… They haven’t said, “I am against Netanyahu because "I disagree with his positions,” or “I have a different ideology.” No, they’re all still right wingers, but they still won’t sit with Netanyahu on the same table anymore because of the way that Netanyahu has… He just is incapable of cultivating a real team of people under him, people who have their own ambitions, and have their own talents, and their own popularity, and their own supporter base.
Netanyahu has only agreed to have sycophants around him, and people whose loyalty is without question, and people who don’t have their own independent power base. So all these people, Bennett, and Lapid, and Lieberman, but not just them. Look at the other people in their pockets, Ayelet Shaked and Ze'ev Elkin, and the list goes on and on, are people who used to want… Who used to be Netanyahu’s supporters, Netanyahu aides, people who if Netanyahu had trusted them and had worked with them differently, could have all still today been in Likud and all part of a really strong team working under Netanyahu.
The fact that they’re now implacably opposed to it, the fact that they’re willing to sit with the left wing that they’ve abominated for so many years. Naftali Bennett called Mansour Abbas, two and a half months ago, a terrorist supporter. Now, he’s calling him a brave man, a decent man, a leader, and he’s talking about him as if he’s his long lost brother. Part of that is Mansour Abbas’s interesting charm, part of that is Lapid bringing them together, but the biggest part of that is Netanyahu pushing Bennett into a position where he has no choice but to embrace Mansour Abbas, and Meretz, and Labour, and so on.
So this is what Netanyahu has done, and you look back and actually, wow, he’s managed to stay 12 years in government, despite alienating almost everybody who’s worked with him because of his incredible sense of purpose, because of his incredible energy, and because he broke all the rules. Things Netanyahu has done in Israeli politics, to call an election just immediately after Knesset was just sworn in 'cause he can’t make his own coalition, he won’t let anybody else try, people were just flabbergasted about this two years ago. People couldn’t imagine that Netanyahu was calling an election, was dissolving the Knesset which had just been sworn in a week ago. This is just one example of the way he’s broken all the rules.
And sometimes, when someone has no commitment whatsoever to the rules, every time you’re being surprised by what he’s prepared to do, you can just stand back and admire it. But everybody’s shocked, and that’s the way Netanyahu’s been doing politics for so long. He came to Israel after his time as a diplomat in the 1980s in the US, and the way he ran the campaign, nobody had ever run a television-style, American primaries campaign trail thing before that. It was like… People just looked on astonished, like, “What’s that guy doing?” Even Netanyahu’s sex scandals were like something that Israelis had never seen before. It was totally imported from American politics. And the list goes on of his innovation.
I mean, he’s one of the first politicians in the world who started using internet. He had a personal website before almost any other politician. His use of social media… And actually, the man is a bit of a technophobe. He doesn’t have a computer on his table, he doesn’t have his own smartphone, but he knows that these are things he can use, and some of his best… His only remaining really good aides are these young whiz kids who just enjoy working for him because they can do things that none of us old fuddy duds even understand about…
With all kinds of da… He was using data analysis before Cambridge Analytica. I mean, there literally are so many innovations that are now almost standard in a political campaign that he was the first, or certainly a very early adopter, of. And yeah, he breaks the rules as well, sometimes, doing these things, or he’s ahead of the rules. But finally, it seems to be catching up with him.
So how do you think he will be back in opposition? He’s made it quite clear that he’s not bowing out yet.
So yes, the next few… Assuming the government… I have to all keep saying this, assuming the government’s sworn in, he has said, “We are going to get back "and we’re going to beat them very soon. "We’re going to get back.” And that will certainly be the tone he’ll take in the next few months because he wants to get back. He wants either to somehow muster a majority in this Knesset or to go for another election, have another throw of the dice. He wants still to pass an immunity law that can get him out of his trial, or to fire the attorney general and appoint a much more convenient one who will re-examine the case against him. He still wants to do all that, and he will certainly be breathing down the government’s collective collars in the next few months as leader of the opposition.
But I think the real question is what’s going to happen if this government proves that, in the short term at least, it’s viable, and the eight parties somehow stick together for four, five months until the winter? Then, after a few months as leader of the opposition, Netanyahu will start chafing in his new situation. He won’t have the entourage, he won’t have the residence, he won’t be able to fly abroad wherever he wants on a government chartered plane with his family to wherever he want… Wherever there’s a convenient head of state willing to meet him, because leader the opposition doesn’t have any of those things. He gets a car, and a bodyguard, and an office, and that’s it, more or less. And since in Israel, Knesset members are not allowed to have any outside income, he won’t be able to take up all the many, many, many offers he’ll have from right wing and evangelical groups to fly to America, or to other countries, and to speak for six figure fees, which will be offered to him. And there, he’ll have a very big dilemma.
The government… If the government doesn’t collapse in its first few months, he’ll have a huge dilemma whether to remain a Knesset member. Now, if he’s not a Knesset member, he can’t come back immediately into power. He has to win an election. But if he is a Knesset member, then he can’t take up any of these offers. And these offers are not just his opportunity to start travelling again and to live a nice life, which he likes and his wife likes and so on, it’s also his only opportunity to start accumulating enough money to pay his legal bills because he’s still on trial. But we haven’t talked about Netanyahu’s trial; it’s ongoing. He’s got a team of expensive lawyers and he’ll have to pay them, by the end of this trial, at least a seven figure sum in dollars, probably an eight figure sum in shekels. He’s a wealthy man, he can pay for it, but he doesn’t want to pay for it. He wants to have some kind of fund, which his rich benefactors will contribute to, to pay for his legal bills.
As a serving politician, he can’t do that. His only way of doing that is to, at least temporarily, leave politics, do these speaking engagements, go around shaking hands with billionaires, and getting that money he needs to pay his legal bills. So Netanyahu’s problem isn’t just this government lasting for more than a few months, it’s that his… To live the lifestyle he wants to live and to gain the money he needs, he has to make a very tough decision a few months down the road. That’s where I see Netanyahu stepping back perhaps.
Maybe… I could be wrong. Maybe he’ll stay the course and remain leader of the opposition as long as it takes. Also, at some point, there’ll be a verdict in the trial. The trial is going to take another couple of years. But when the verdict comes and if it goes against, and then he’s finished. So does he try and get a plea bargain before that? So many dilemmas the moment he leaves office, and this government, if it’s sworn in, if it lasts a few months, Netanyahu’s story is not over but he seems to be going into his twilight. But so many people have already eulogised Netanyahu and lived to regret those words.
Yeah, so I was going to ask you about the trial, which you’ve basically covered but just to push a little further, what does the next few months, or as you say, few years look like in relation to Netanyahu’s legal problems?
So he’s on trial now for three charges of fraud and breach of trust, one charge of bribery. These are very complex trials, especially the main bribery trial, which is government regulations and media law. And was this regulation changed because Netanyahu got involved? And was there justification? And was it part of the quid pro quo? And every single… And because it’s not just Netanyahu on trial, it’s also the former main shareholders of Israel’s largest telecommunications company, they’ve both got teams of lawyers. Every witness is going to be examined and cross-examined at…
Well, we’re still on the first witness and it’s been going on two months already. Just one witness. Not all witnesses will be this long, but there’ll be many. The officials from the… People that we’ve never heard of yet. All kinds of mid-level management in the telecommunications ministry will start talking about spectrum and so many things that you’ve really got to be in that kind of business to understand. It’s going to be very drawn out. It’s a white collar case, it’s not an open shot kind of thing. Also, the whole concept of this part of the prosecution saying that favourable coverage can be seen as a quid pro quo in bribery, that’s a bit innovative.
There are a lot of politicians around the world who could probably be prosecuted for something similar. Then, the case… Will Netanyahu be indicted for accepting boxes of cigars and champagne? That’s the other case, Case 1,000. And Case 2,000, The conversation between him and another fraud. A lot of really technical issues. I can tell you that most Israelis have already lost interest in the case. We’ve been living with this case now for over four years in Israel. Yeah, incredible things are coming out every day. But it’s like, “Okay, so what? "We know that Bibi has been using his influence, "we know that people have been willing "to do so many different things for him.”
I don’t think there’s anything which is going to really shock anybody about this case. But at the end of the day, two or three years down the road, there’ll be a verdict. And even if only some of the charges are upheld against him, there’ll be enough him certainly to be disqualified from being prime minister ever again, perhaps send him to prison, and we’ve already had one prime minister in prison here, not that long ago, Ehud Olmert, which is why there may be a plea bargain at some point. And the plea bargain will almost certainly involve Netanyahu agreeing never to serve in office again. So it’s beginning to look as if we’re sort of end… Getting into this end strait, both politically and legally, where Netanyahu doesn’t have that much of a future. But like I said a few minutes ago, I’ll say it again, we’ve counted him out so many times.
So just to conclude, let’s end where we started off. Talk us through the numbers, in terms of exactly how many the proposed coalition have, where the Joint List, or what was, is likely to go, and you know how tight we are to the proposed new coalition not being able to form a government.
So it’s very tight because the proposed coalition is… The eight parties of the coalition have, on paper, 62 members. One has already defected and saying they’re going to vote against, one of Bennett’s Yamina party. Down to 61. Now, you can pass a confidence vote in the Knesset with a regular majority, you don’t need 61. It could be just a two to one majority. But there are already… But if there are 61, if they lose one more, it means that they will need to rely on the one party which is not part of the government, but also not part of the Netanyahu block, and that’s the Joint List. The Joint List still has six seats.
Now, some of the members of the Joint List already said, “We are not going to be an obstacle "to replacing Netanyahu. "Yes, we’re not going to be part of the government, "we’re certainly not very happy "that Naftali Bennett, "this far right nationalist, "is going to be the next prime minister "but we also agree that Netanyahu has to be replaced. "So if the coalition loses one "or two of its remaining members, "we’ll give either the necessary vote "or we’ll abstain, "and the coalition can win.” However, that may be too much for the right wing elements of this coalition to swallow.
They don’t want, or they’re even refusing, to be part of a government which won its initial confidence vote thanks to the Joint List. So they may change their mind but it’s a problem. If one more member of this coalition abandons ship, or even says they’re going to vote against, like that member of Yamina did, the Joint List, or some of Joint List, will be there to save the government, but parts of the government do not want to be saved by the Joint List. So really, the number 61 is… It’s also symbolic. You want to swear in a government as a majority government, not as a minority government getting some help from a party which you don’t actually want to be part of your government. So if…
I mean, right now, the 61 are there. We know of one, basically, Knesset member who’s wavering. But he’s still saying to Bennett, “Okay, I won’t screw you over. "I’ll be there for you "at least for that vote.” Or he’ll resign and the next in line on the Yamina slate is a Bennett loyalist. She’s already said, “If they need me, "if I’m the next member…” Because if he resigns, she immediately becomes the next Knesset member. Lovely woman called Shirly Pinto, deaf, big… It’s always a very special thing when she gives an interview 'cause she comes with her sign language… I’m not sure what the word is, the person who speaks for her. She’s a great activist for Israelis with disabilities, and she has already said, “I’m going to be with Bennett.”
So there probably will be 61. The waiverer either will stick by Bennett or they’ll resign and the replacement will be. So right now, it looks like we’ll get to the wire with the majority intact, whether the vote is going to be Wednesday, Thursday, or the following Monday. But it’s wafer thin. Something happens to one member, whatever, things could change. And Netanyahu’s going to be fighting it every minute, every inch of the way, until Bennett is sworn in.
Thank you, Anshel. Well, there is never a dull moment, and in fact, while we’ve been talking, I think Bennett and Netanyahu have been taking pot shots at each other, so the fun will continue. Thank you very much and I’m going to hand back over to Wendy.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, well thank you, Anshel, and thank you, Carly. Anshel, I’m actually not sure how you managed it, but thank you for breaking down the incredibly complicated situation in Israeli politics so clearly for us all. So we’ll be watching on tenterhooks and bearing your commentary in mind.
Today’s photo of the eight party leaders shows what could be ahead for Israel. But as you say, there is still a week to go, and in Israel, a week is a very long time. So let’s see who goes from left to right and right to left. We will certainly be watching with baited breath. And yes, exciting times ahead. So thank you very much once again. Thanks Carl. And yes, let’s drink to the health and to the state of Israel for peace in the future.
- Thank you very, very much.