I've been patiently waiting for this moment, ever since I published a post 6 weeks ago laying out the coalition problems of one Benjamin Netanyahu. Having prompted the March elections, having won a stunning victory over the Zionist Union and having trounced his rivals to his right, PM Netanyahu has for the moment become the weakest link.
A few minutes ago, Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman announced that his small 6-seat party Yisrael Beitenu will not be joining the next government, and furthermore announced his resignation as Foreign Minister of Israel. "It's about principles," said the former bar bouncer, "it's not about [cabinet] chairs."
As things stand now (with a bit more than 48 hours to go before the mandated deadline for coalition formation), Netanyahu has a signed deal with 2 coalition partners: Moshe Kahlon's Kulanu party, and the ultra-Orthodox Yahadut ha-Torah. For those counting: that's a grand total of 46 seats - 15 short of a 61 seat majority. Supposedly waiting in the wings are two further parties - Aryeh Deri's Shas with 7 and Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi with 8. But neither has signed yet, and are now smelling blood in the water.
There you have it - the minimum mathematical threshold for forming a government of 61. So now the fun begins. No sane PM would want a government of 61. Internationally, it projects weakness. Domestically, it means any single member of Kenesset (MK) in the coalition can plausibly threaten to bring it down - over a matter of policy, of money, or of "honor."
So what to do? Settle for 61 now, and hope to bring in more partners later? Siphon off a few disgruntled MKs from other parties? Go back to Lieberman and sweeten the pot in order to get to a slightly more respectable number of 67? Or turn to Buji Herzog and the Zionist Union (24) and try for a broad government of national unity?
This drama of political brinksmanship will play out over the next 48 hours, and for those of us who enjoy Israeli domestic politics, we are in for a fun roller coaster ride.
If Bibi can't form a government in the next 48 hours, the President of Israel is obliged to go through another round of consultations and then turn to the leader who is best indicated to form a government - in this case one would expect Buji Herzog, leader of the ZU - to try and form a government, while the former government (now, mind you, without a Foreign Minister) carries on as caretaker. Now THAT would be interesting...
Update (a few hours later - 5:10 PM EDT) - Shas has now signed its coalition agreement, so now Netanyahu is at 53. Will Naftali Bennett and his Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party - the holdout - be joining soon? Or is this the perfect set-up for a one-day full-court press to get Herzog to join the government? None of the signed partners would present a particular problem for Herzog - and none of the big cabinet positions (other than Treasury) have been formally doled out. If there is going to be a play for national unity, it will happen now.
Showing posts with label Netanyahu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netanyahu. Show all posts
Monday, May 04, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
How to Avoid "Reassessment"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next Prime Minister of Israel. This we know. The world also knows how he campaigned in the final days of the election, and is repulsed by how he did so. After following an imperial "Rose Garden" tactic of avoiding the press, in the last 5 days of the campaign Bibi went on a media frenzy, and in the course of those 5 days he morphed comfortably into a right-wing demagogue, Lee Atwater style, in which he volunteered out loud a series of positions that revealed his inner ideological heart, including a last-minute racist scare warning that "Arab voters are streaming to the polling stations." It was ugly, it was shocking, and while it worked, it has caused the Obama White House to use the dreaded "R" word - "reassessment." In order to win this election at all costs, Bibi purged his Likud party of the worst extremists, snubbed President Obama by holding a campaign rally in the halls of Congress, and in the end loudly retracted his 2009 commitment to a 2-state solution. It was a winning strategy, but it came with a painful price on the world stage.
Yesterday Bibi unconvincingly spoke again to the media - this time to Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and this time in English, using his governing persona instead of his campaigning persona. He tried to walk it all back. It was a pathetic performance. Bibi won the electoral battle, but lost the bigger war for international legitimacy.
In the not so complicated schizophrenia that is Benjamin Netanyahu, there is the inner Bibi for domestic consumption (in Hebrew), and the public Bibi for the diplomatic community (in English). The two are not the same. And Netanyahu is smart enough to know that Israel needs the continued support of its principal ally, and that what he had to do to win has now placed his next premiership at risk with the European Union, with the White House, and even with American Jews.
There is only one path for Bibi to extract himself from the sullied victory he just achieved - a national unity government that projects some kind of softer image to the world. While Netanyahu can certainly say "fuck all of you" and opt for a narrow right-nationalist-religious coalition government, he knows that if he does so the international isolation and US administration anger will not abate. "Fortress Israel" will simply not work. Netanyahu will at least have to consider the option of a broader national unity government in order to paint lipstick on his pig.
For this he needs help from Isaac Herzog, leader of the Labor Party and co-chair of the newly created (for this campaign cycle) Zionist Union with Tzipi Livni. Tzipi Livni is a perennial failure, surpassing Shimon Peres for the title of Israel's "The Biggest Loser." Livni is another example of an Israeli politician much more popular abroad than at home.
She was a child of Likud all her political life, but like many others broke with her political home base when Ariel Sharon grew tired of Likud infighting and created the Kadima party. She actually once won an election in 2009 as head of Kadima, but because of her uncompromising negotiating style allowed a government to slip out of her hands. She was ousted internally from Kadima, temporarily retired from politics, and then reconstituted herself as a tiny vanity party - ha-Tenu'ah. Her odyssey from Likud royalty to moderate international diplomat eventually brought her to Labor - but not as a Laborite. For the umpteenth time, weakened Labor tried a "combina" - a sleazy opportunistic merger - in an effort to create a "big tent" centrist alternative to right-wing Likud. They called it the Zionist Union. Herzog and Livni even came up with their own internal "rotation" plan, promising the Israeli electorate that if they should win, the two would rotate the premiership over the course of its four-year life expectancy. The merger spectacularly failed, and as polling indicated just how reviled Livni was with the electorate, the two leaders gamely retracted the rotation plan on the eve of the election. It didn't help. So much for the big tent.
Of the 24 seats now held by the Zionist Union, 5 belong to Livni. Labor by itself would remain the 2nd largest party in the Knesset. The Zionist Union serves no further purpose. It is time to put a stake through its heart. Either Herzog should break the Zionist Union, or Livni should resign.
So here is a scenario - Bibi needs to repair the damage. Herzog leads a bloc of 19 seats without toxic Livni. Isaac Herzog as Foreign Minister would be precisely the antidote to Bibi's now thrice-revealed inner heart.
In order to manage and staunch the crisis of an American reassessment, Bibi needs a national unity government. But domestically, a good part of the purpose of this campaign was to be rid of Livni forever. For Netanyahu, Livni is the poison pill of national unity. If she were gone, Bibi could form a broad-based government. It doesn't hurt that Labor has served this junior role more than once in Likud- or Kadima-led governments. So try this:
Likud 30
Labor 19
Kulanu 10
Shas 7
And you have 66 seats. Add Yahadut ha-Torah and/or one of the two right-wing parties ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi or Yisrael Beytenu and you approach 80 seats. National Unity. A dysfunctional inner cabinet. Another two-faced self-contradictory government - but that is the only way out of the isolation chamber Bibi has created for himself.
I admit this is a long-shot proposition. But it is the only way the next 22 months of a Netanyahu-led government can hope to have any respectability in the international arena.
It's precisely the kind of chicanery that comes up in every coalition-building negotiation. It's sleazy and opportunistic, hypocritical and devious.
After all, this is Israeli politics.
Yesterday Bibi unconvincingly spoke again to the media - this time to Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and this time in English, using his governing persona instead of his campaigning persona. He tried to walk it all back. It was a pathetic performance. Bibi won the electoral battle, but lost the bigger war for international legitimacy.
In the not so complicated schizophrenia that is Benjamin Netanyahu, there is the inner Bibi for domestic consumption (in Hebrew), and the public Bibi for the diplomatic community (in English). The two are not the same. And Netanyahu is smart enough to know that Israel needs the continued support of its principal ally, and that what he had to do to win has now placed his next premiership at risk with the European Union, with the White House, and even with American Jews.
There is only one path for Bibi to extract himself from the sullied victory he just achieved - a national unity government that projects some kind of softer image to the world. While Netanyahu can certainly say "fuck all of you" and opt for a narrow right-nationalist-religious coalition government, he knows that if he does so the international isolation and US administration anger will not abate. "Fortress Israel" will simply not work. Netanyahu will at least have to consider the option of a broader national unity government in order to paint lipstick on his pig.
For this he needs help from Isaac Herzog, leader of the Labor Party and co-chair of the newly created (for this campaign cycle) Zionist Union with Tzipi Livni. Tzipi Livni is a perennial failure, surpassing Shimon Peres for the title of Israel's "The Biggest Loser." Livni is another example of an Israeli politician much more popular abroad than at home.
She was a child of Likud all her political life, but like many others broke with her political home base when Ariel Sharon grew tired of Likud infighting and created the Kadima party. She actually once won an election in 2009 as head of Kadima, but because of her uncompromising negotiating style allowed a government to slip out of her hands. She was ousted internally from Kadima, temporarily retired from politics, and then reconstituted herself as a tiny vanity party - ha-Tenu'ah. Her odyssey from Likud royalty to moderate international diplomat eventually brought her to Labor - but not as a Laborite. For the umpteenth time, weakened Labor tried a "combina" - a sleazy opportunistic merger - in an effort to create a "big tent" centrist alternative to right-wing Likud. They called it the Zionist Union. Herzog and Livni even came up with their own internal "rotation" plan, promising the Israeli electorate that if they should win, the two would rotate the premiership over the course of its four-year life expectancy. The merger spectacularly failed, and as polling indicated just how reviled Livni was with the electorate, the two leaders gamely retracted the rotation plan on the eve of the election. It didn't help. So much for the big tent.
Of the 24 seats now held by the Zionist Union, 5 belong to Livni. Labor by itself would remain the 2nd largest party in the Knesset. The Zionist Union serves no further purpose. It is time to put a stake through its heart. Either Herzog should break the Zionist Union, or Livni should resign.
So here is a scenario - Bibi needs to repair the damage. Herzog leads a bloc of 19 seats without toxic Livni. Isaac Herzog as Foreign Minister would be precisely the antidote to Bibi's now thrice-revealed inner heart.
In order to manage and staunch the crisis of an American reassessment, Bibi needs a national unity government. But domestically, a good part of the purpose of this campaign was to be rid of Livni forever. For Netanyahu, Livni is the poison pill of national unity. If she were gone, Bibi could form a broad-based government. It doesn't hurt that Labor has served this junior role more than once in Likud- or Kadima-led governments. So try this:
Likud 30
Labor 19
Kulanu 10
Shas 7
And you have 66 seats. Add Yahadut ha-Torah and/or one of the two right-wing parties ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi or Yisrael Beytenu and you approach 80 seats. National Unity. A dysfunctional inner cabinet. Another two-faced self-contradictory government - but that is the only way out of the isolation chamber Bibi has created for himself.
I admit this is a long-shot proposition. But it is the only way the next 22 months of a Netanyahu-led government can hope to have any respectability in the international arena.
It's precisely the kind of chicanery that comes up in every coalition-building negotiation. It's sleazy and opportunistic, hypocritical and devious.
After all, this is Israeli politics.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Quick Post-#IsraElex Analysis
I suck at predicting American presidential politics. But I am pretty damn good when predicting Israeli politics. I've gotten every Israeli election right since I've undertaken this blog 10 years ago - which means I've been right four out of four. And today I will reveal my analytical secret as to why I always get it right.
If you were to believe all the wishful-thinking journalism generated over the 2015 elections in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was fighting for his political life. I never believed it, not for a second. Fifty days before the election, even working off of incorrect polling numbers, I boldly predicted that Netanyahu would be the next PM of Israel. This turns out to have been an easy call.
And boy-oh-boy, were the numbers ever faulty. Throughout the entire election cycle, poll after poll pointed to a slight advantage in electoral strength to the Zionist Union combination of Buji Herzog's Labor and Tzipi Livni. Even the initial election day exit polls, in which voters in certain key demographic polling stations were asked to accurately indicate their choice, were all uniformly wrong - meaning that tens of thousands of voters regarded it as their civic duty to purposefully fuck with the media. Lesson one - there is no way to accurately gauge the modern Israeli electorate.
But here we are - highest turnout in 16 years; smallest number of parties in the 20th Knesset since 1988; lowest performance of religious parties since 1992; and best performance by the right wing bloc since 2003.
But the bottom-line reality is this - there are essentially 4 blocs of voters. 10% of the electorate is locked in as the Arab (and naturally characterized as leftist) vote. A bit less than 20% of the electorate is locked in as the religious (and naturally characterized as a kind of rightist) vote. A little less than a third of the electorate is locked in to the secular center-left. And a little more than a third of the electorate is locked in as secular right-nationalist. That leaves about 10% of the electorate as a perennial swing vote, which can break to the center-left or to the right depending on each individual election.
Lesson two - when the national security environment is non-threatening or hopeful, this 10% breaks towards the center-left. When the national security environment is threatening and inhospitable, this 10% breaks right.
The closest comparable election to 2015 is 2003, the year Ariel Sharon's Likud trounced Ehud Barak's Labor. The 2003 election was cast against the backdrop of the violent Second Intifada. The right-nationalist bloc picked up 14 seats and the non-Arab center-left lost 7 seats. Sharon then created a fairly stable secular right-center coalition.
The 2015 election was carried out against the backdrop of the inconclusive war with HAMAS of 2014, and the growth of Da'esh to the left (Sinai) and to the right (Syria). The floating 10% responded accordingly: the right-national bloc picked up 15 seats, and the non-Arab center-left lost 6 seats. Given that the previous government was already led by Netanyahu, it was easy to predict his victory.
And that's what I did.
And by the way, fifty days ago I wrote "I think the polling numbers for Bennett's ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi party are too high." I got that right too. The polls said 15; BY ended up with 8.
Now, with the final Knesset numbers fixed, the question is what kind of government will emerge. Most of the Israeli punditry has talked itself into the formation of a so-called narrow right-nationalist-religious government. It is easy to see how such a government can be formed.
Likud 30
Kulanu 10
ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi 8
Shas 7
Yahadut ha-Torah 6
gets one to the threshold of 61, and if you add Yisrael Beytenu's 6, you have a government of 67 seats.
But it isn't that simple. Netanyahu must dole out the legally mandated 18 (likely to be expanded to 22) ministries of his coalition cabinet in a way that satisfies his lesser coalition partners and his own Likud party. Netanyahu has already promised the pandora's box of Treasury to Kulanu's Moshe Kahlon. Shas's Arye Deri wants to return to the Interior Ministry from which he was forced out 23 years ago. But the biggest prizes are Defense and the Foreign Ministry - the so-called inner cabinet. Yisrael Beytenu's weakened Avigdor Lieberman wants Defense. ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi's Naftali Bennett wants the Foreign Ministry or Defense. Netanyahu would prefer keeping his current Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, and needs to find something honorable for his many Likud politicians, including most prominently the number 2 man on the Likud list Gilad Erdan.
The badly beaten Zionist Union or the smaller Yesh Atid might yet become part of the solution to Netanyahu's intricate sudoku puzzle. But since the point of Netanyahu's decision to go to the polls was to be rid of ZU's Tzipi Livni and Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid, I can only imagine him taking back at most one of the two. Livni, one of the most toxic politicians in recent Israeli history, might break away or be forced out from the Zionist Union, clearing a path for Labor to join.
That is the best one can hope for - a national unity government with ZU but minus both Livni and Lapid. If so, then attacking Iran remains off the table. But if a narrow right-nationalist-religious government with an inner cabinet of adventurous hawks is the order of the day, I expect Israeli jets over Natanz before the fourth premiership of King Bibi falls.
If you were to believe all the wishful-thinking journalism generated over the 2015 elections in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was fighting for his political life. I never believed it, not for a second. Fifty days before the election, even working off of incorrect polling numbers, I boldly predicted that Netanyahu would be the next PM of Israel. This turns out to have been an easy call.
And boy-oh-boy, were the numbers ever faulty. Throughout the entire election cycle, poll after poll pointed to a slight advantage in electoral strength to the Zionist Union combination of Buji Herzog's Labor and Tzipi Livni. Even the initial election day exit polls, in which voters in certain key demographic polling stations were asked to accurately indicate their choice, were all uniformly wrong - meaning that tens of thousands of voters regarded it as their civic duty to purposefully fuck with the media. Lesson one - there is no way to accurately gauge the modern Israeli electorate.
But here we are - highest turnout in 16 years; smallest number of parties in the 20th Knesset since 1988; lowest performance of religious parties since 1992; and best performance by the right wing bloc since 2003.
But the bottom-line reality is this - there are essentially 4 blocs of voters. 10% of the electorate is locked in as the Arab (and naturally characterized as leftist) vote. A bit less than 20% of the electorate is locked in as the religious (and naturally characterized as a kind of rightist) vote. A little less than a third of the electorate is locked in to the secular center-left. And a little more than a third of the electorate is locked in as secular right-nationalist. That leaves about 10% of the electorate as a perennial swing vote, which can break to the center-left or to the right depending on each individual election.
Lesson two - when the national security environment is non-threatening or hopeful, this 10% breaks towards the center-left. When the national security environment is threatening and inhospitable, this 10% breaks right.
The closest comparable election to 2015 is 2003, the year Ariel Sharon's Likud trounced Ehud Barak's Labor. The 2003 election was cast against the backdrop of the violent Second Intifada. The right-nationalist bloc picked up 14 seats and the non-Arab center-left lost 7 seats. Sharon then created a fairly stable secular right-center coalition.
The 2015 election was carried out against the backdrop of the inconclusive war with HAMAS of 2014, and the growth of Da'esh to the left (Sinai) and to the right (Syria). The floating 10% responded accordingly: the right-national bloc picked up 15 seats, and the non-Arab center-left lost 6 seats. Given that the previous government was already led by Netanyahu, it was easy to predict his victory.
And that's what I did.
And by the way, fifty days ago I wrote "I think the polling numbers for Bennett's ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi party are too high." I got that right too. The polls said 15; BY ended up with 8.
Now, with the final Knesset numbers fixed, the question is what kind of government will emerge. Most of the Israeli punditry has talked itself into the formation of a so-called narrow right-nationalist-religious government. It is easy to see how such a government can be formed.
Likud 30
Kulanu 10
ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi 8
Shas 7
Yahadut ha-Torah 6
gets one to the threshold of 61, and if you add Yisrael Beytenu's 6, you have a government of 67 seats.
But it isn't that simple. Netanyahu must dole out the legally mandated 18 (likely to be expanded to 22) ministries of his coalition cabinet in a way that satisfies his lesser coalition partners and his own Likud party. Netanyahu has already promised the pandora's box of Treasury to Kulanu's Moshe Kahlon. Shas's Arye Deri wants to return to the Interior Ministry from which he was forced out 23 years ago. But the biggest prizes are Defense and the Foreign Ministry - the so-called inner cabinet. Yisrael Beytenu's weakened Avigdor Lieberman wants Defense. ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi's Naftali Bennett wants the Foreign Ministry or Defense. Netanyahu would prefer keeping his current Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, and needs to find something honorable for his many Likud politicians, including most prominently the number 2 man on the Likud list Gilad Erdan.
The badly beaten Zionist Union or the smaller Yesh Atid might yet become part of the solution to Netanyahu's intricate sudoku puzzle. But since the point of Netanyahu's decision to go to the polls was to be rid of ZU's Tzipi Livni and Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid, I can only imagine him taking back at most one of the two. Livni, one of the most toxic politicians in recent Israeli history, might break away or be forced out from the Zionist Union, clearing a path for Labor to join.
That is the best one can hope for - a national unity government with ZU but minus both Livni and Lapid. If so, then attacking Iran remains off the table. But if a narrow right-nationalist-religious government with an inner cabinet of adventurous hawks is the order of the day, I expect Israeli jets over Natanz before the fourth premiership of King Bibi falls.
Saturday, February 07, 2015
The Fashla - הפשלה
Today I'd like to start with a bit of Hebrew slang. Like much Hebrew slang, the etymology of the term under consideration comes from Arabic. I'm talking about the slang word fashla, which I best translate as "a complete disaster" or "an unanticipated (and probably predictable) fuck-up." It comes from the Arabic verb fashala, "to lose courage, to become cowardly, to despair, to fail, to become unsuccessful."
You are fortunate enough to be living in an age in which you can witness a perfectly executed Israeli fashla.
Sometime before the State of the Union speech, when President Obama declared he would veto any bill that proposed tougher sanctions on Iran, House Speaker John Boehner was approached with an idea - some published reports argue it was casino mogul and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson who presented the idea - invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. Netanyahu would lay out the threat of "radical Islam" to the civilized world, and would specifically address the menacing nuclear threat of a fanatic and viciously anti-Semitic Shi'ite theocracy.
Boehner liked the idea. He contacted the Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer. Ron Dermer is known, Karl Rove-like, to be "Bibi's brains." He has been a close political confidant and speechwriter for Netanyahu since 2008 until his appointment to the plum ambassadorship of Israel's closest ally in 2013. Before immigrating to Israel in 1997 he had worked for a time with Republican political consultant Frank Luntz. If either Dermer or Netanyahu had stayed in America, they would today be Republicans in heart and soul. Boehner knew he'd find a sympathetic ear and direct access to the Boss.
The three together planned a stunning Republican congressional protest, all within Constitutional bounds, against a threatened Presidential veto of a bipartisan call for more stringent sanctions on Iran. Bibi Netanyahu was a master of the Speaker's rostrum. Back in 2011 Boehner, then in grudging cooperation with the White House, had extended a similar invitation to Netanyahu, and Bibi was treated to energetic support from those seated in the House chamber. In fact, this would be the third time Bibi addressed Congress, an honor granted only Winston Churchill, one of Netanyahu's heroes.
For Netanyahu, the added benefit of appearing on domestic wall-to-wall media coverage of his "historic mission" to Washington just 2 weeks before an Israeli election was irresistible. Bibi has portrayed his principal political adversary Yizhak (Buji) Herzog as a weak-on-security neophyte and a bumbling amateur. On the other hand, Netanyahu imagines himself a cunningly wise leader, the absolutely right man for these dangerous times.
For creating a fashla, this was a perfect storm.
The too clever by half masterstroke, once it was finally revealed to the unsuspecting White House and the Democratic leadership less than 48 hours after the State of the Union speech, quickly turned into a classic fashla. No amount of spin or fudging the facts of the invitation would turn it around. Within a week of the announcement, bipartisan support for tougher sanctions against Iran - the very mission which Netanyahu had intended to reinforce - crumbled apart. Democrats had to choose between their President and the Prime Minister of Israel. It was an easy call.
Two weeks after the announcement, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was hinting at a wholesale defection of dozens of Democratic congressman from the audience. Vice President Joe Biden, who has missed only one joint session designed to host an invited foreign leader, announced suddenly he would be out of town that day. The image of a half-filled chamber, with Republican Senator and President pro tempore Orrin Hatch sitting in the left chair, will not make for a rousing moment reminiscent of Bibi's prior appearances.
In classic fashla fashion, the masterstroke has completely backfired. Iran has disappeared from the discussion, and instead the only discussion is the worsening relations between Netanyahu, Obama, the Democrats, and even American Jews, who view the entire matter with growing concern.
So there you go - a first-class, high-drama fashla.
And thus concludes today's lesson in Israeli slang.
You are fortunate enough to be living in an age in which you can witness a perfectly executed Israeli fashla.
Sometime before the State of the Union speech, when President Obama declared he would veto any bill that proposed tougher sanctions on Iran, House Speaker John Boehner was approached with an idea - some published reports argue it was casino mogul and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson who presented the idea - invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. Netanyahu would lay out the threat of "radical Islam" to the civilized world, and would specifically address the menacing nuclear threat of a fanatic and viciously anti-Semitic Shi'ite theocracy.
Boehner liked the idea. He contacted the Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer. Ron Dermer is known, Karl Rove-like, to be "Bibi's brains." He has been a close political confidant and speechwriter for Netanyahu since 2008 until his appointment to the plum ambassadorship of Israel's closest ally in 2013. Before immigrating to Israel in 1997 he had worked for a time with Republican political consultant Frank Luntz. If either Dermer or Netanyahu had stayed in America, they would today be Republicans in heart and soul. Boehner knew he'd find a sympathetic ear and direct access to the Boss.
The three together planned a stunning Republican congressional protest, all within Constitutional bounds, against a threatened Presidential veto of a bipartisan call for more stringent sanctions on Iran. Bibi Netanyahu was a master of the Speaker's rostrum. Back in 2011 Boehner, then in grudging cooperation with the White House, had extended a similar invitation to Netanyahu, and Bibi was treated to energetic support from those seated in the House chamber. In fact, this would be the third time Bibi addressed Congress, an honor granted only Winston Churchill, one of Netanyahu's heroes.
For Netanyahu, the added benefit of appearing on domestic wall-to-wall media coverage of his "historic mission" to Washington just 2 weeks before an Israeli election was irresistible. Bibi has portrayed his principal political adversary Yizhak (Buji) Herzog as a weak-on-security neophyte and a bumbling amateur. On the other hand, Netanyahu imagines himself a cunningly wise leader, the absolutely right man for these dangerous times.
For creating a fashla, this was a perfect storm.
The too clever by half masterstroke, once it was finally revealed to the unsuspecting White House and the Democratic leadership less than 48 hours after the State of the Union speech, quickly turned into a classic fashla. No amount of spin or fudging the facts of the invitation would turn it around. Within a week of the announcement, bipartisan support for tougher sanctions against Iran - the very mission which Netanyahu had intended to reinforce - crumbled apart. Democrats had to choose between their President and the Prime Minister of Israel. It was an easy call.
Two weeks after the announcement, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was hinting at a wholesale defection of dozens of Democratic congressman from the audience. Vice President Joe Biden, who has missed only one joint session designed to host an invited foreign leader, announced suddenly he would be out of town that day. The image of a half-filled chamber, with Republican Senator and President pro tempore Orrin Hatch sitting in the left chair, will not make for a rousing moment reminiscent of Bibi's prior appearances.
In classic fashla fashion, the masterstroke has completely backfired. Iran has disappeared from the discussion, and instead the only discussion is the worsening relations between Netanyahu, Obama, the Democrats, and even American Jews, who view the entire matter with growing concern.
So there you go - a first-class, high-drama fashla.
And thus concludes today's lesson in Israeli slang.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu, the next PM of Israel
Crunch the polling numbers any way you want - the inevitable outcome, barring a seismic shift in Israeli voter sentiment over the course of the next 50 days, will be a government headed by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two days remain before final party lists are published, and I can imagine yet another "surprise" joining together of currently separated lists. But barring that, we have the broad contours of the Israeli electorate in the winter of 2015. I think we're looking at a variation of the 2009 Israeli elections, in which Netanyahu's Likud came in second place, but still formed the government.
The best poll averaging web site is Project 61. Seven weeks out, the renamed Labor party - now calling itself "the Zionist Camp" - leads with a projected 25 seats. Netanyahu's Likud party comes in a close second, at 23. The remaining 60% of legislative seats are divided, in descending order, between right-wing, religious, centrist, Arab, and left-wing parties.
As in 2009, the winning party will not be called on to form a government. That task will fall to the leader who can convince Israel's President Ruvi Rivlin that he has the best shot to form a government. And that leader will be Netanyahu.
Take the long view. I've gone back 7 Knesset elections back to 1992, and broken down the political parties into 4 blocs: 1) secular-right-national; 2) secular-center-left; 3) religious-ultra-Orthodox; and 4) Arab. When the secular-center-left bloc gets above 49, it forms a government. It takes 43 seats for the secular-right-national bloc to form the government. According to Project 61, we're at 37 for the secular-right-national and 38 for the secular-center-left. No one has crossed the threshold for a certainty.
The newly united Arab parties' list is not a factor in coalition politics, because all Zionist players consider the Arab parties treyf. So in fact a leader must get to 61 from the remaining 107 seats.
The growing religious-ultra-Orthodox bloc will hold the key. It might surprise you, but various components of this bloc could go either way - it all depends on what is offered party leaders in the inevitable coalition negotiations that will ensue after elections.
One caveat - I think the polling numbers for Bennett's Bayit Yehudi party are too high.
Netanyahu will have two different paths to the required 61 seat majority in the Knesset. Most likely, he will attempt a so-called "national unity government." Despite the acrimony of the current election campaign (oftentimes quite personal), never underestimate the desire of Israeli politicians to have delivered to them control of massive governmental bureaucracies. I could easily imagine a secular center-right coalition made up of Likud, Zionist Camp, Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu, and Moshe Kahalon's new Kulanu party, for a total of 64 seats. Some of these parties could be dismissed for religious parties and still maintain a semblance of "national unity." And if the "unity" fever becomes strong, one could imagine a not particularly stable government of over 75 seats. This unwieldy scenario would be the best outcome for hopes of holding in abeyance any military misadventure with Iran because of serious disagreements within the unity umbrella. But it would mean continued stalemate with the Palestinians, with a government of Israel torn internally on how to best move forward. One governmental crisis and the whole thing would collapse.
Or Bibi can go the "hard-right" route. Here he works with right-wing, religious, and ultra-Orthodox parties, with Avigdor Lieberman's dwindling Yisrael Beytenu vanity party. He would have 62-69 seats this way. Then the chances of a military attack on Iran go way up, and re-energized opposition to any American-brokered diplomatic path to resolving Palestinian claims becomes the norm.
Another good web site is batelbe60.com. They try to "Nate Silver" the election polling, and they come up with similar results. While they don't break up the parties into the same blocs that I do, they argue that the current numbers give a very high chance for the formation of a national unity government, either secular or with some ultra-Orthodox components. Next would come a not too impossible center-left government, with some ultra-Orthodox. Least likely would be a hard-right religious ultra-Orthodox government. Impossible would be a center-left secular government.
What is abundantly clear is that these elections are a waste of everyone's time - and that just may be the point. It may have seemed to Netanyahu in December that a rearrangement of the political deck-chairs on the Titanic was in order. Or it may have seemed a convenient way to take a pause from dealing with Israel's security and domestic problems. Either way, the systemic and incapacitating divisions of the Israeli electorate remain. Nothing has changed: the Israeli electorate is as divided as ever, creeping to the right and towards God.
The best poll averaging web site is Project 61. Seven weeks out, the renamed Labor party - now calling itself "the Zionist Camp" - leads with a projected 25 seats. Netanyahu's Likud party comes in a close second, at 23. The remaining 60% of legislative seats are divided, in descending order, between right-wing, religious, centrist, Arab, and left-wing parties.
As in 2009, the winning party will not be called on to form a government. That task will fall to the leader who can convince Israel's President Ruvi Rivlin that he has the best shot to form a government. And that leader will be Netanyahu.
Take the long view. I've gone back 7 Knesset elections back to 1992, and broken down the political parties into 4 blocs: 1) secular-right-national; 2) secular-center-left; 3) religious-ultra-Orthodox; and 4) Arab. When the secular-center-left bloc gets above 49, it forms a government. It takes 43 seats for the secular-right-national bloc to form the government. According to Project 61, we're at 37 for the secular-right-national and 38 for the secular-center-left. No one has crossed the threshold for a certainty.
The newly united Arab parties' list is not a factor in coalition politics, because all Zionist players consider the Arab parties treyf. So in fact a leader must get to 61 from the remaining 107 seats.
The growing religious-ultra-Orthodox bloc will hold the key. It might surprise you, but various components of this bloc could go either way - it all depends on what is offered party leaders in the inevitable coalition negotiations that will ensue after elections.
One caveat - I think the polling numbers for Bennett's Bayit Yehudi party are too high.
Netanyahu will have two different paths to the required 61 seat majority in the Knesset. Most likely, he will attempt a so-called "national unity government." Despite the acrimony of the current election campaign (oftentimes quite personal), never underestimate the desire of Israeli politicians to have delivered to them control of massive governmental bureaucracies. I could easily imagine a secular center-right coalition made up of Likud, Zionist Camp, Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu, and Moshe Kahalon's new Kulanu party, for a total of 64 seats. Some of these parties could be dismissed for religious parties and still maintain a semblance of "national unity." And if the "unity" fever becomes strong, one could imagine a not particularly stable government of over 75 seats. This unwieldy scenario would be the best outcome for hopes of holding in abeyance any military misadventure with Iran because of serious disagreements within the unity umbrella. But it would mean continued stalemate with the Palestinians, with a government of Israel torn internally on how to best move forward. One governmental crisis and the whole thing would collapse.
Or Bibi can go the "hard-right" route. Here he works with right-wing, religious, and ultra-Orthodox parties, with Avigdor Lieberman's dwindling Yisrael Beytenu vanity party. He would have 62-69 seats this way. Then the chances of a military attack on Iran go way up, and re-energized opposition to any American-brokered diplomatic path to resolving Palestinian claims becomes the norm.
Another good web site is batelbe60.com. They try to "Nate Silver" the election polling, and they come up with similar results. While they don't break up the parties into the same blocs that I do, they argue that the current numbers give a very high chance for the formation of a national unity government, either secular or with some ultra-Orthodox components. Next would come a not too impossible center-left government, with some ultra-Orthodox. Least likely would be a hard-right religious ultra-Orthodox government. Impossible would be a center-left secular government.
What is abundantly clear is that these elections are a waste of everyone's time - and that just may be the point. It may have seemed to Netanyahu in December that a rearrangement of the political deck-chairs on the Titanic was in order. Or it may have seemed a convenient way to take a pause from dealing with Israel's security and domestic problems. Either way, the systemic and incapacitating divisions of the Israeli electorate remain. Nothing has changed: the Israeli electorate is as divided as ever, creeping to the right and towards God.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
King Bibi, Messiah Bibi
In Israel, the surprise announcement has been roundly criticized in the media and amongst Netanyahu's political opponents, but it remains to be seen how the ploy will play with Netanyahu's base and with undecided voters in national elections to be held exactly two weeks after the speech. Even Dan Margalit, columnist for Israel Hayom - the Sheldon Adelson-financed free newspaper which many identify as an organ for Netanyahu's amen corner - criticized the timing and stylistics of what otherwise Margalit regards as a just cause.
In the United States, the Republicans are crowing over the poke-in-the-eye delivered to a President they believe coddles the dithering and duplicitous Iranians. Democrats are furious with Netanyahu, and the White House can hardly contain its anger. American Jews are collectively wringing their hands, No less an Israel supporter than Abe Foxman has called the invitation "ill-advised."
Time Magazine once proclaimed Netanyahu "King Bibi." But I think he is going for something more. When, I asked myself, was the last time a Jew has traveled to the Emperor's doorstep to admonish the Emperor? It's been nearly 750 years since a Jew challenged the reigning hegemon of his day. In 1280 the Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia travelled to Rome to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism. The Pope was at his palace in Soriano, and defying a threat to be burned at the stake, Abulafia traveled to the castle, and was immediately placed under arrest for his insolence, and was ordered to be put to death for his outrage. Only when learning that the Pope himself died was Abulafia released, and from there he went on to Sicily to pronounce himself Messiah. Abulafia, who has left us dozens of books, some of an autobiographical nature, soon disappeared from the historical record. To this day we do not know the precise date of his death. As with all false messiahs, he didn't deliver.
Is that the new role that Netanyahu is taking on for himself? Netanyahu's father was a medieval historian, his brother a lionized martyr from the 1976 Entebbe raid. Netanyahu sees himself on an historic mission to deliver his nation from an Iranian nuclear armageddon. He is a Prime Minister soon to be reelected and to thereby become the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history, even outdistancing the historic founder David Ben-Gurion.
Is Bibi maneuvering to something more than King of the Jewish state? Is he going for the ultimate crown?
This won't end well.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Operation Protective Edge vs. Operation Ramadan
I meant this to go up last night, and saved it only as a draft. In the meantime, both of my "indicators" came true today:
And so it begins, the next stage. In the wake of an attempted "pause" that fizzled out, rocketeers from Gaza - some certainly Hamas this round - fired nearly 70 rockets into Israel in the last 24 hours, and tonight the Israel Air Force and Navy launched a rain of fire on Gaza in an operation dubbed in English "Protective Edge" and in Hebrew צוק איתן, so the English is not exactly literal. Whatever its name, the coining of an operational name is meant to communicate to the Israeli citizenry that the Government of Israel has finally made up its mind. After 4 days of hemming and hawing (which brought the long-simmering feud between Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the breaking point) the folks at the Kiryah were instructed to produce another tough-sounding 2-word combina and let 'er rip.
For every onlooker who believes this tit-for-tat was orchestrated by an Israel chomping at the bit to torpedo the recently announced Palestinian unity government, there is a similar contingent who are convinced that Hamas was itching for a grand confrontation with the Zionist occupiers during the sacred month of Ramadan.
Both conspiracy theories sound wise and plausible; far more likely neither is true. Instead, the simple explanation seems best. The discredited US "peace processors" who argued that the absence of even the hint of a diplomatic process would lead to certain disaster turn out to be exactly correct. In this conflict, take away the diplomats and all you have left are angry, humiliated people with long-festering grudges.
Predictably, the Twitter-verse is immediately taking sides. In one corner are the #GazaUnderAttack people. who are blind to the horror of lobbing rockets willy-nilly onto a civilian population. In the other corner are the #IsraelUnderFire folks who are blind to the horror of lobbing not-nearly-as-precise-as-imagined munitions onto a civilian population.
If experience is a guide, the Islamic Jihad rocketeers will pull out their longer Fajr models, the ones that can put metropolitan Tel Aviv on edge. Two things to be looking for in the next 24 hours: 1) will anything be heard from Hezbollah in the north? and 2) how widespread will the next round of military mobilization (formally announced at a "mere" 1,500 so far) in Israel be? Watch for these two indicators - they will tell you if this pile-on will be more like 2009's Cast Lead (i.e., ground invasion) or 2012's Pillar of Defense (i.e., air alone). So far, less than 12 hours in, it looks like this confrontation will be more like the latter than the former.
And so it begins, the next stage. In the wake of an attempted "pause" that fizzled out, rocketeers from Gaza - some certainly Hamas this round - fired nearly 70 rockets into Israel in the last 24 hours, and tonight the Israel Air Force and Navy launched a rain of fire on Gaza in an operation dubbed in English "Protective Edge" and in Hebrew צוק איתן, so the English is not exactly literal. Whatever its name, the coining of an operational name is meant to communicate to the Israeli citizenry that the Government of Israel has finally made up its mind. After 4 days of hemming and hawing (which brought the long-simmering feud between Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the breaking point) the folks at the Kiryah were instructed to produce another tough-sounding 2-word combina and let 'er rip.
For every onlooker who believes this tit-for-tat was orchestrated by an Israel chomping at the bit to torpedo the recently announced Palestinian unity government, there is a similar contingent who are convinced that Hamas was itching for a grand confrontation with the Zionist occupiers during the sacred month of Ramadan.
Both conspiracy theories sound wise and plausible; far more likely neither is true. Instead, the simple explanation seems best. The discredited US "peace processors" who argued that the absence of even the hint of a diplomatic process would lead to certain disaster turn out to be exactly correct. In this conflict, take away the diplomats and all you have left are angry, humiliated people with long-festering grudges.
Predictably, the Twitter-verse is immediately taking sides. In one corner are the #GazaUnderAttack people. who are blind to the horror of lobbing rockets willy-nilly onto a civilian population. In the other corner are the #IsraelUnderFire folks who are blind to the horror of lobbing not-nearly-as-precise-as-imagined munitions onto a civilian population.
If experience is a guide, the Islamic Jihad rocketeers will pull out their longer Fajr models, the ones that can put metropolitan Tel Aviv on edge. Two things to be looking for in the next 24 hours: 1) will anything be heard from Hezbollah in the north? and 2) how widespread will the next round of military mobilization (formally announced at a "mere" 1,500 so far) in Israel be? Watch for these two indicators - they will tell you if this pile-on will be more like 2009's Cast Lead (i.e., ground invasion) or 2012's Pillar of Defense (i.e., air alone). So far, less than 12 hours in, it looks like this confrontation will be more like the latter than the former.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Israel Election 2013 - Iran off the Table
So it looks like there will be no Israeli attack on Iran in 2013. That might be the big takeaway from the January 2013 legislative elections just held in Israel.
What just happened?
First, overall turnout was slightly higher than in 2011. Possibly the longish hiatus between elections prompted more Israelis to cast a participatory vote after a decidedly uneventful and far from mesmerizing campaign. Rather than shifting to a more hard-line right-wing pose (as many had predicted), the country moved away a slight bit from the hard-line pro-settler, pro-muscular security and foreign policy orientations of "fortress Israel."
I've yet to see any turnout numbers by electoral sector, but it looks like the Arab-Israelis voted at a rate close to previous elections, bringing to a halt the long decline that has been noted by poll watchers. In fact - though the numbers aren't yet final - it looks like the 3 so-called "Arab" parties improved their standing, possibly picking up a seat between them.
Second - and here is what I think is the big story - an unprecedented 29 seats went to religious parties (though with a proviso). This is an unheralded new number - the last benchmark was 27 seats set in 1999. Almost a quarter of the Israeli electorate voted for parties that insist they have the interests of the Torah-observant as either their ultimate or central focus. The proviso is that it is hard to pin down precisely what Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party is all about, and the likelihood that a sizable number of non-religious voters neverthless turned to Bennett's rebranding of what in the end is nothing more than the National Religious Party, version 2.0.
Third - the demise of incumbency. An unprecedented 53 new faces will be sworn into the new Knesset. That means more than a 40% changeover in lawmakers. Many pundits argue that the massive disgruntlement of the general population with the socio/economic condition of the country (remember the tent city protests of 2010?) resulted in the "out with the scoundrels" turnover of legislators.
Fourth - the collapse of Kadima, the vanity party created by Ariel Sharon in 2005, and the wholesale shift of the centrist voter from Kadima to the New Kid on the Block, Yair Lapid. This is being touted as the "big story" of election night. I'll have more on that later.
And finally - elections 2013 was a serious setback for Netanyahu. Bibi will still be selected to form a new government, though as a much weakened leader who in all likelihood will have to bring into his next government the 19 new faces which make up Lapid's Yesh Atid party (though at least 2 are seasoned security veterans). A domestically weakened Bibi, forced to turn to his left, will take an Iran attack off the table.
Until the next election...which will come much sooner than 2017.
Here is a not particularly outlandish prediction for the coming month of coalition negotiations: watch for at least one "rotten deal" - some improbably underhanded alliance between sworn political enemies - to be floated, or consummated.
What just happened?
First, overall turnout was slightly higher than in 2011. Possibly the longish hiatus between elections prompted more Israelis to cast a participatory vote after a decidedly uneventful and far from mesmerizing campaign. Rather than shifting to a more hard-line right-wing pose (as many had predicted), the country moved away a slight bit from the hard-line pro-settler, pro-muscular security and foreign policy orientations of "fortress Israel."
I've yet to see any turnout numbers by electoral sector, but it looks like the Arab-Israelis voted at a rate close to previous elections, bringing to a halt the long decline that has been noted by poll watchers. In fact - though the numbers aren't yet final - it looks like the 3 so-called "Arab" parties improved their standing, possibly picking up a seat between them.
Second - and here is what I think is the big story - an unprecedented 29 seats went to religious parties (though with a proviso). This is an unheralded new number - the last benchmark was 27 seats set in 1999. Almost a quarter of the Israeli electorate voted for parties that insist they have the interests of the Torah-observant as either their ultimate or central focus. The proviso is that it is hard to pin down precisely what Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party is all about, and the likelihood that a sizable number of non-religious voters neverthless turned to Bennett's rebranding of what in the end is nothing more than the National Religious Party, version 2.0.
Third - the demise of incumbency. An unprecedented 53 new faces will be sworn into the new Knesset. That means more than a 40% changeover in lawmakers. Many pundits argue that the massive disgruntlement of the general population with the socio/economic condition of the country (remember the tent city protests of 2010?) resulted in the "out with the scoundrels" turnover of legislators.
Fourth - the collapse of Kadima, the vanity party created by Ariel Sharon in 2005, and the wholesale shift of the centrist voter from Kadima to the New Kid on the Block, Yair Lapid. This is being touted as the "big story" of election night. I'll have more on that later.
And finally - elections 2013 was a serious setback for Netanyahu. Bibi will still be selected to form a new government, though as a much weakened leader who in all likelihood will have to bring into his next government the 19 new faces which make up Lapid's Yesh Atid party (though at least 2 are seasoned security veterans). A domestically weakened Bibi, forced to turn to his left, will take an Iran attack off the table.
Until the next election...which will come much sooner than 2017.
Here is a not particularly outlandish prediction for the coming month of coalition negotiations: watch for at least one "rotten deal" - some improbably underhanded alliance between sworn political enemies - to be floated, or consummated.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Israeli Election Eve 2013 - No Change
It has been my practice on this blog to make predictions about American and Israeli elections. My track record on American presidential records has been simply awful. I was embarrassingly wrong in 2008 and wrong again in 2012. I should just stop trying.
But...when it comes to Israeli elections, I do much better. I got the 2006 elections pretty much right. The 2009 election was much harder to call, insofar as it ended with a dead tie favoring the right, but I didn't too badly.
Which brings us to 2013.
The last set of scientific polling has been published. The polls all point to an outcome that will require the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, to conduct his mandated consultations with party leaders and then designate Binyamin Netanyahu with the task of assembling a coalition government under his leadership.
What will Netanyahu then do?
This is the same question that emerged in February and March of 2009, after similar political consultations led Peres to reluctantly request Netanyahu to form a government. Normally, the President is mandated to turn to the winning parliamentary bloc with the task of forming a government. But back in 2009, even though Netanyahu's Likud party came in a close second in the race for Knesset seats, Peres learned that a coalition of smaller religious/nationalist and conventionally designated "right-wing" parties were prepared to join Likud, and not the leading bloc of Kadima. For Peres it must have been a bitter pill to swallow. It was also a disappointing outcome for the incoming Obama administration, which clearly preferred a Kadima-led government.
Netanyahu indeed assembled a comfortable coalition government in 2009. Starting with his 27 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, he reached an agreement with Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is Our Home") faction of 15 seats (=42), and then added to his total Labor's 13 seats and Shas's 11, as well as the 3 seats of the former National Religious Party, now renamed The Jewish Home (ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi) (=69). A day after he presented the government to the nation, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism added its 5 seats to the coalition, creating an unassailable majority of 74 seats.
Netanyahu's government survived for nearly its full 4-year term. A number of changes whittled away slightly at the coalition's majority. Many Laborites were unhappy with Ehud Barak's decision to join the Netanyahu government, forcing Barak out and withdrawing their support. Barak formed a rump party and took 3 Laborites with him. The remaining wreck of Labor (now a mere 8 seats) went into opposition.
In the early summer of 2012 Netanyahu attempted a short-lived "national unity government" with Kadima (after Kadima had ejected its leader in the 2009 campaign, Tzipi Livni, for her internal rival, Shaul Mofaz). That experiment, which created a super-majority of 96 seats and prompted Time magazine to call Netanyahu "King Bibi," lasted for all of 70 days.
In the fall of 2012 Netanyahu calculated that new elections would strengthen his already strong hand. He announced a call for elections by dissolving the parliament, and immediately merged his Likud with Lieberman's party, beginning therefore with an unassailable bloc of 42 seats.
Two "new" parties have emerged this election cycle: one was formed by a popular former news reader and talkshow host, Yair Lapid, with the name Yesh Atid ("There is a Future"). A second party was cobbled together by Livni, with the simple and bombastic name ha-Tenu`ah ("The Movement"). The Jewish Home went through a rebranding, and for all intents and purposes can be regarded as a "new" political force. And finally, Barak's Independence party simply disappeared from the scene, with Barak "retiring" yet again from politics.
Internally, each of the parties held primaries to determine the order of their lists. Israeli elections are national, not regional, enterprises - a voter votes for a party, and then the vote is divided into 120. Every seat won is designated to a list - and if your party wins 17 seats, and you appear as number 18 - you're shit out of luck. So the higher you appear on a party's list, the more likely you will become a MK (member of Knesset). The newsworthy outcome of the party primary voting took place in Likud - a sizable number of current ministers and conventionally-described Likud "moderates" were ousted from their high positions, to be replaced by right-wing settler representatives. Likud turned harder to the right.
So that sets the stage for Tuesday's voting: a more right-wing Likud now merged with Yisrael Beiteinu, campaigning with the slogan: "A strong Prime Minister - a strong Israel"; a new Labor under the leadership of (yet another) former media star, Shelly Yachimovich; a collapsed and no longer relevant Kadima under loser Mofaz; a rebranded Jewish Home under the leadership of American immigrant and hi-tech tycoon Naftali Bennett; a new party led by the cipher Lapid; and a new party under perennial loser Livni.
It is simply too much to follow, all these comings and goings. So most pollsters and pundits neatly divide the squabbling parties into 3 blocs: the right-religious; the center-left; and the Arab parties (who never play a part in coalition formation). Looked at that way, the current situation of the outgoing Knesset is thus:
Right-Religious coalition - 67
Center-Left "blocking" opposition - 42
Arab parties - 11
First, notice the low numbers for Arab parties. Though Arabs constitute 20% of the population of Israel, they hold only 10% of Knesset seats (though there are a handful of Israeli Arab candidates scattered amongst the Jewish Zionist parties). This is because of the question of voter turnout. Essentially, Arab voters have given up voting in Israeli elections. But this question of turnout relates to a bigger trend: religious and nationalist Jews turn out at a much higher rate than either the secular Jewish Israeli or the Israeli Arab. In 2009, overall turnout was 65% (in fact slightly up from 2006) - certainly impressive when compared to other democracies. But there persists a wide gulf between the turnout of self-defined religious voters (over 85%) and secular voters (slightly more than 50%). Mobilized small-sector interest groups rule the roost in contemporary Israeli democracy. Put another way - if Israeli secularists were as interested in participating in democracy as the Orthodox, then the religious and right-wing camps would be proportionally smaller factions in parliament.There has been a concerted effort to stress the issue of voter turnout, but it is likely the results will vary little from historic patterns.
Noisy foreign protagonists and antagonists of Israel devote a great deal of time to her conflicts, and can get quit passionate in their advocacy. On the other hand, a sizable number of Israelis couldn't give a shit one way or the other.
That brings us to the polls. First, going in to the weekend the polls uniformly report that 15% of likely voters are undecided. This is not as newsworthy a number as it might first appear. Many undecided voters know what they believe - for them the question is simply which party in the Israeli political smorgasbord will best enable their vote.
Even though the larger outcome - an easy Netanyahu victory leading to a 3rd government under his leadership - is all but certain, there are still a few small surprises to be had.
Let's take a look at the numbers of the last round of polls (current size in parentheses):
Likud Beiteinu (merged parties - 42) - 32-34
Labor (8) - 16-17
Yesh Atid (0) - 12-13
Shas (11) - 10-12
Kadima (28) - 0-2
Jewish Home (7) - 12-14
Movement (0) - 7-9
Meretz (3) - 6
Arab Parties (11) - 11-12
So what have been the main story lines? First, it has been a dull and uneventful campaign - hardly an energizing civic exercise. Given all the fateful decisions facing a new government - Iran, continued tension with the US administration, the seething Palestinian powderkeg - this election campaign has generated minimal interest amongst Israeli voters. Unlike elections past, there hasn't been a single nationally televised candidates' debate. Imagine that - no debates.
Second, the merger of Netanyahu and Lieberman (sometimes dubbed "Biberman") has been a tactical failure - the constituent parts equal more than the combined whole by a wide margin.
Third, the surprise new party (and there always seems to be at least one each election cycle) has got to be Lapid's. Livni's new party and its single-digit results has been described as a bitter disappointment for her. What we are likely seeing is the scattering of Kadima voters (who might be described as right-centrists) for smaller factions. And the rebranding of the old NRP under Bennett is notable (Likud Beiteinu defections?).
Finally - it is worth noting the recovery of Labor under Yachimovich to at least semi-respectable size, and the apparent doubling of the leftist bastion Meretz party.
Now let's look at the final polling numbers by breaking them down into the 3 aforementioned big blocs:
Right-Religious coalition - approx. 66
Center-Left "blocking" opposition - approx. 42
Arab parties - 11-12
And look! - bottom line...nothing changes. Only if there is a serious divergence - a swing from bloc to bloc of 7 or 8 seats - does there emerge a serious opportunity for Peres to entertain the option of turning to anyone other than Netanyahu to form the next government. Highly unlikely.
Netanyahu always has the option of reaching out to some of the Center-Left opposition in order to abandon the religious-Orthodox (a persistent pipe dream of secularists - and hinted at for a time in his short-lived national unity government of 2012), but his likely route to a stable coalition is to turn to his "natural" partners. Depending on the final numbers, that is what he will do.
Will there be any surprises? In other words, polls have a history of getting something wrong. What will be the electoral surprise of 2013? I think that the numbers for Bennett are too high - Israelis are enamored with his personal story, but there are many unpalatable forces underlying his rebranded party, and I suspect he won't do as well as the polling suggests. Expect a better outcome for Likud Beiteinu than 32, and a poorer showing for The Jewish Home than 13.
Finally, there is an interesting rule in Israeli parliamentary elections - a party must garner a minimum 2% of the raw vote in order to gain one seat in the Knesset. Are there any current parties who will fall below the threshold? Yes, possibly Mofaz and Kadima - the party created by Ariel Sharon in 2005 as a vehicle for implementing his short-lived and new-found conversion. Good riddance to pointless Kadima.
Will any tiny party break through the threshold in 2013? I always hold out hope for Green Leaves (`Alei Yaroq) - the decriminalization of marijuana party, now trying to recast itself as an economic, anti-corruption party. Much more likely is Strength to Israel (`Otzmah la-Yisrael), a rightist splinter group.
Bottom line - to repeat - nothing changes. One of the most pointless and insubstantial Israeli elections in history. Then comes the month-long rug-trading to form a coalition. That's where the story - if any - will emerge.
But...when it comes to Israeli elections, I do much better. I got the 2006 elections pretty much right. The 2009 election was much harder to call, insofar as it ended with a dead tie favoring the right, but I didn't too badly.
Which brings us to 2013.
The last set of scientific polling has been published. The polls all point to an outcome that will require the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, to conduct his mandated consultations with party leaders and then designate Binyamin Netanyahu with the task of assembling a coalition government under his leadership.
What will Netanyahu then do?
This is the same question that emerged in February and March of 2009, after similar political consultations led Peres to reluctantly request Netanyahu to form a government. Normally, the President is mandated to turn to the winning parliamentary bloc with the task of forming a government. But back in 2009, even though Netanyahu's Likud party came in a close second in the race for Knesset seats, Peres learned that a coalition of smaller religious/nationalist and conventionally designated "right-wing" parties were prepared to join Likud, and not the leading bloc of Kadima. For Peres it must have been a bitter pill to swallow. It was also a disappointing outcome for the incoming Obama administration, which clearly preferred a Kadima-led government.
Netanyahu indeed assembled a comfortable coalition government in 2009. Starting with his 27 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, he reached an agreement with Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is Our Home") faction of 15 seats (=42), and then added to his total Labor's 13 seats and Shas's 11, as well as the 3 seats of the former National Religious Party, now renamed The Jewish Home (ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi) (=69). A day after he presented the government to the nation, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism added its 5 seats to the coalition, creating an unassailable majority of 74 seats.
Netanyahu's government survived for nearly its full 4-year term. A number of changes whittled away slightly at the coalition's majority. Many Laborites were unhappy with Ehud Barak's decision to join the Netanyahu government, forcing Barak out and withdrawing their support. Barak formed a rump party and took 3 Laborites with him. The remaining wreck of Labor (now a mere 8 seats) went into opposition.
In the early summer of 2012 Netanyahu attempted a short-lived "national unity government" with Kadima (after Kadima had ejected its leader in the 2009 campaign, Tzipi Livni, for her internal rival, Shaul Mofaz). That experiment, which created a super-majority of 96 seats and prompted Time magazine to call Netanyahu "King Bibi," lasted for all of 70 days.
In the fall of 2012 Netanyahu calculated that new elections would strengthen his already strong hand. He announced a call for elections by dissolving the parliament, and immediately merged his Likud with Lieberman's party, beginning therefore with an unassailable bloc of 42 seats.
Two "new" parties have emerged this election cycle: one was formed by a popular former news reader and talkshow host, Yair Lapid, with the name Yesh Atid ("There is a Future"). A second party was cobbled together by Livni, with the simple and bombastic name ha-Tenu`ah ("The Movement"). The Jewish Home went through a rebranding, and for all intents and purposes can be regarded as a "new" political force. And finally, Barak's Independence party simply disappeared from the scene, with Barak "retiring" yet again from politics.
Internally, each of the parties held primaries to determine the order of their lists. Israeli elections are national, not regional, enterprises - a voter votes for a party, and then the vote is divided into 120. Every seat won is designated to a list - and if your party wins 17 seats, and you appear as number 18 - you're shit out of luck. So the higher you appear on a party's list, the more likely you will become a MK (member of Knesset). The newsworthy outcome of the party primary voting took place in Likud - a sizable number of current ministers and conventionally-described Likud "moderates" were ousted from their high positions, to be replaced by right-wing settler representatives. Likud turned harder to the right.
So that sets the stage for Tuesday's voting: a more right-wing Likud now merged with Yisrael Beiteinu, campaigning with the slogan: "A strong Prime Minister - a strong Israel"; a new Labor under the leadership of (yet another) former media star, Shelly Yachimovich; a collapsed and no longer relevant Kadima under loser Mofaz; a rebranded Jewish Home under the leadership of American immigrant and hi-tech tycoon Naftali Bennett; a new party led by the cipher Lapid; and a new party under perennial loser Livni.
It is simply too much to follow, all these comings and goings. So most pollsters and pundits neatly divide the squabbling parties into 3 blocs: the right-religious; the center-left; and the Arab parties (who never play a part in coalition formation). Looked at that way, the current situation of the outgoing Knesset is thus:
Right-Religious coalition - 67
Center-Left "blocking" opposition - 42
Arab parties - 11
First, notice the low numbers for Arab parties. Though Arabs constitute 20% of the population of Israel, they hold only 10% of Knesset seats (though there are a handful of Israeli Arab candidates scattered amongst the Jewish Zionist parties). This is because of the question of voter turnout. Essentially, Arab voters have given up voting in Israeli elections. But this question of turnout relates to a bigger trend: religious and nationalist Jews turn out at a much higher rate than either the secular Jewish Israeli or the Israeli Arab. In 2009, overall turnout was 65% (in fact slightly up from 2006) - certainly impressive when compared to other democracies. But there persists a wide gulf between the turnout of self-defined religious voters (over 85%) and secular voters (slightly more than 50%). Mobilized small-sector interest groups rule the roost in contemporary Israeli democracy. Put another way - if Israeli secularists were as interested in participating in democracy as the Orthodox, then the religious and right-wing camps would be proportionally smaller factions in parliament.There has been a concerted effort to stress the issue of voter turnout, but it is likely the results will vary little from historic patterns.
Noisy foreign protagonists and antagonists of Israel devote a great deal of time to her conflicts, and can get quit passionate in their advocacy. On the other hand, a sizable number of Israelis couldn't give a shit one way or the other.
That brings us to the polls. First, going in to the weekend the polls uniformly report that 15% of likely voters are undecided. This is not as newsworthy a number as it might first appear. Many undecided voters know what they believe - for them the question is simply which party in the Israeli political smorgasbord will best enable their vote.
Even though the larger outcome - an easy Netanyahu victory leading to a 3rd government under his leadership - is all but certain, there are still a few small surprises to be had.
Let's take a look at the numbers of the last round of polls (current size in parentheses):
Likud Beiteinu (merged parties - 42) - 32-34
Labor (8) - 16-17
Yesh Atid (0) - 12-13
Shas (11) - 10-12
Kadima (28) - 0-2
Jewish Home (7) - 12-14
Movement (0) - 7-9
Meretz (3) - 6
Arab Parties (11) - 11-12
So what have been the main story lines? First, it has been a dull and uneventful campaign - hardly an energizing civic exercise. Given all the fateful decisions facing a new government - Iran, continued tension with the US administration, the seething Palestinian powderkeg - this election campaign has generated minimal interest amongst Israeli voters. Unlike elections past, there hasn't been a single nationally televised candidates' debate. Imagine that - no debates.
Second, the merger of Netanyahu and Lieberman (sometimes dubbed "Biberman") has been a tactical failure - the constituent parts equal more than the combined whole by a wide margin.
Third, the surprise new party (and there always seems to be at least one each election cycle) has got to be Lapid's. Livni's new party and its single-digit results has been described as a bitter disappointment for her. What we are likely seeing is the scattering of Kadima voters (who might be described as right-centrists) for smaller factions. And the rebranding of the old NRP under Bennett is notable (Likud Beiteinu defections?).
Finally - it is worth noting the recovery of Labor under Yachimovich to at least semi-respectable size, and the apparent doubling of the leftist bastion Meretz party.
Now let's look at the final polling numbers by breaking them down into the 3 aforementioned big blocs:
Right-Religious coalition - approx. 66
Center-Left "blocking" opposition - approx. 42
Arab parties - 11-12
And look! - bottom line...nothing changes. Only if there is a serious divergence - a swing from bloc to bloc of 7 or 8 seats - does there emerge a serious opportunity for Peres to entertain the option of turning to anyone other than Netanyahu to form the next government. Highly unlikely.
Netanyahu always has the option of reaching out to some of the Center-Left opposition in order to abandon the religious-Orthodox (a persistent pipe dream of secularists - and hinted at for a time in his short-lived national unity government of 2012), but his likely route to a stable coalition is to turn to his "natural" partners. Depending on the final numbers, that is what he will do.
Will there be any surprises? In other words, polls have a history of getting something wrong. What will be the electoral surprise of 2013? I think that the numbers for Bennett are too high - Israelis are enamored with his personal story, but there are many unpalatable forces underlying his rebranded party, and I suspect he won't do as well as the polling suggests. Expect a better outcome for Likud Beiteinu than 32, and a poorer showing for The Jewish Home than 13.
Finally, there is an interesting rule in Israeli parliamentary elections - a party must garner a minimum 2% of the raw vote in order to gain one seat in the Knesset. Are there any current parties who will fall below the threshold? Yes, possibly Mofaz and Kadima - the party created by Ariel Sharon in 2005 as a vehicle for implementing his short-lived and new-found conversion. Good riddance to pointless Kadima.
Will any tiny party break through the threshold in 2013? I always hold out hope for Green Leaves (`Alei Yaroq) - the decriminalization of marijuana party, now trying to recast itself as an economic, anti-corruption party. Much more likely is Strength to Israel (`Otzmah la-Yisrael), a rightist splinter group.
Bottom line - to repeat - nothing changes. One of the most pointless and insubstantial Israeli elections in history. Then comes the month-long rug-trading to form a coalition. That's where the story - if any - will emerge.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
First Look at 2013 Israeli Elections
One of the most volatile and fickle electorates in the world - certainly in the Middle East - is about to go to the polls. I've not ventured yet into the thorny subject of the 2013 Kenesset elections in Israel, as has been my wont in elections past, because I firmly believed this election would not be decided until the last few weeks of campaigning. I just didn't believe the story was worth my time - not until the shifting political players had finally dug in for the final push. And we've now reached that point.
Outgoing (and the smart money says incoming) PM Benyamin Netanyahu has been enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls, and the left-center potential opposition has been fractured, rudderless, and ineffective. Thus, every imaginable pundit and pollster has predicted a comfortable majority for an even harder right Netanyahu-led coalition once the voting takes place.
But as any seasoned Israeli election watcher ought to remember, there is a general rule of thumb that renders all early punditry meaningless: there is a solid, consistent 40% of the Israeli electorate which votes for the right/religious/nationalist parties (the "Fortress Israel" crowd), and a solid, consistent 40% of the Israeli electorate which votes for the left/secular/centrist parties (the accommodating "peace process" crowd). It is the 20% perennial undecideds, the moody feel-it-in-their-kishkes Israeli voters, who make the difference. These bipolar voters often do not decide until the final 48 hours of a campaign.
And this year, despite the collective wisdom of the pundits, the undecideds are definitely in play.
It looks for the moment like the undecideds are leaning to the right. That's why all the polls are showing an easy majority for "Fortress Israel." But now that the election, which has been bereft of issues and debate-free (not a single one has been scheduled between any of the principal contenders), is heating up, watch for some surprises. I'll try to highlight some of these surprises in the coming days.
Take this weekend: the most recent former heard of the General Security Service (known in Hebrew as shabak - think of the FBI with spycraft and special ops) gave an interview published Friday in Israel's largest circulation daily newspaper, in which he labelled Netanyahu and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak as unfit to lead the nation. We've heard these complaints from other former Israeli intelligence chiefs - but the gravitas of Yuval Diskin's critique is a carefully timed body blow to Netanyahu's carefully messaged narrative of a strong national leader.
Will Diskin's charges have any effect on the undecideds? There are new and untested parties and political figures in the hunt, and thus there is no historical data for predicting how Israeli voters will respond to reading yet again of credible doubts concerning their current PM. Unfortunately, there has yet to emerge any Nate Silver-like authority who has an accurate read of voter preferences, and historically, pre-election polls are often wildly off the mark.
So I'll simply put it this way: it's time to start paying attention to the campaign. All the electoral verities of the last 2-1/2 months are melting away in the harsh light of the looming election scheduled for January 22.
Election Day may yet turn out to be an easy rout for Netanyahu. But don't lay odds just yet. The game has finally begun.
Outgoing (and the smart money says incoming) PM Benyamin Netanyahu has been enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls, and the left-center potential opposition has been fractured, rudderless, and ineffective. Thus, every imaginable pundit and pollster has predicted a comfortable majority for an even harder right Netanyahu-led coalition once the voting takes place.
But as any seasoned Israeli election watcher ought to remember, there is a general rule of thumb that renders all early punditry meaningless: there is a solid, consistent 40% of the Israeli electorate which votes for the right/religious/nationalist parties (the "Fortress Israel" crowd), and a solid, consistent 40% of the Israeli electorate which votes for the left/secular/centrist parties (the accommodating "peace process" crowd). It is the 20% perennial undecideds, the moody feel-it-in-their-kishkes Israeli voters, who make the difference. These bipolar voters often do not decide until the final 48 hours of a campaign.
And this year, despite the collective wisdom of the pundits, the undecideds are definitely in play.
It looks for the moment like the undecideds are leaning to the right. That's why all the polls are showing an easy majority for "Fortress Israel." But now that the election, which has been bereft of issues and debate-free (not a single one has been scheduled between any of the principal contenders), is heating up, watch for some surprises. I'll try to highlight some of these surprises in the coming days.
Take this weekend: the most recent former heard of the General Security Service (known in Hebrew as shabak - think of the FBI with spycraft and special ops) gave an interview published Friday in Israel's largest circulation daily newspaper, in which he labelled Netanyahu and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak as unfit to lead the nation. We've heard these complaints from other former Israeli intelligence chiefs - but the gravitas of Yuval Diskin's critique is a carefully timed body blow to Netanyahu's carefully messaged narrative of a strong national leader.
Will Diskin's charges have any effect on the undecideds? There are new and untested parties and political figures in the hunt, and thus there is no historical data for predicting how Israeli voters will respond to reading yet again of credible doubts concerning their current PM. Unfortunately, there has yet to emerge any Nate Silver-like authority who has an accurate read of voter preferences, and historically, pre-election polls are often wildly off the mark.
So I'll simply put it this way: it's time to start paying attention to the campaign. All the electoral verities of the last 2-1/2 months are melting away in the harsh light of the looming election scheduled for January 22.
Election Day may yet turn out to be an easy rout for Netanyahu. But don't lay odds just yet. The game has finally begun.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Bibi and the Bomb
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| A different Jericho missile |
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| Pinhas Lavon |
Rachlevsky is a controversial journalist who first made a name for himself with a best-selling investigative book in 1998 entitled Messiah's Donkey, which has never been translated into English. Written in the aftermath of the Rabin assassination and on the eve of Netanyahu's rise to power, the book was an examination of the messianic and racist doctrines of contemporary Israeli religious Judaism and painted an extremely dark portrait for the future of liberal democratic values in the Jewish state. In 2008 he published a second book in a similar vein entitled No Limit. As best I can determine, Rechlevsky became a regular columnist for Haaretz in 2011.
The main point of Rachlevsky's column yesterday was to argue that Netanyahu intends to run yet another Eseq ha-Bish by unilaterally attacking Iran in October of this year -- just weeks before the US presidential elections -- in order to hopefully draw the much more capable yet reluctant American military into an unavoidable attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Wrote Rechlevsky:
The logic is simple. According to Netanyahu and Barak, Israel has the military power to delay Iran's nuclear project by only one year. This is the up-to-date estimate based on operations research by the body in charge of the matter in Israel: the air force. There is no significance to a delay of that length. There is, however, a force that can stop the Iranian project militarily: the United States. The problem, Netanyahu says, is that the U.S. administration is not willing to do so.The solution is simple. A moment before the U.S. presidential elections, when Mitt Romney - the candidate of Netanyahu's patron, Sheldon Adelson - is breathing down Barack Obama's neck, and in the wake of the large number of casualties and the extensive damage that the Iranian response is likely to cause in the region and particularly in Israel, the American president will have no choice but to order his armed forces to join in the war.Netanyahu is gambling that if Obama does not do so, he will lose the elections. Then Romney will replace him and, as a token of gratitude, will complete the military work. And if the gamble fails? For that there is no backup plan.
Whatever the wisdom of Rechlevsky's editorial speculation (and I remain unpersuaded), there is a significant difference between the print version of the article and the e-version of the article. An entire paragraph from the Hebrew print version is absent from the online version, and therefore also from the English online version. This difference was (first?) noted by researcher Avner Cohen, author of two definitive academic studies of Israel's own nuclear program and policy and posted on his Facebook page.
Here is a translation of the missing paragraph:
In 1998, Saddam Hussein, weakened by the American no-flight zone, made one hollow threat. In response, [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu ordered to consider the arming of Jericho missiles. An order that wasn’t issued even during the [1973] Yom Kippur War, under a fear of destruction. Three people went to Netanyahu: Ariel Sharon, [former Chief of Staff and minister] Rafael Eitan, and CoS Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. They told him to relax, take a pill, and forget about it. Some things even a prime minister shouldn’t do. Will [Ehud] Barak be one of the three this time around? I don’t know.
Online speculation has it that the military censor got wind of Rachlevsky's article in the print version, which had not been submitted to censorship review, and insisted that the online version not carry the paragraph. Haaretz, it is then speculated, complied with the order. The 7th Eye reports that neither the military censor nor Haaretz will comment on the article's treatment.
This of course raises the thorny issue of the Israeli military censorship regime. Aluf Benn, the current editor-in-chief of Haaretz, has in the past criticized the censorship regime regarding the nuclear question. There is a long history of combat between Israeli media and the military censor. Normally, it is the paper's responsibility to submit potentially offending news articles to the censor for review. Negotiations ensue, an administrative review might be held, but the censor's ruling is final. Occasionally a paper protests the censor's decision by publishing a blank paragraph or sentence to indicate to readers the hand of the censor. Sometimes an Israeli journalist will "pass" the item to a foreign journalist and get it printed with an overseas dateline. Foreign journalists who run afoul of the censorship regime (a very rare occurrence, insofar as foreign journalists rarely have access to truly sensitive information) have lost their press credentials and been required to leave the country.
It is safe to assume that Rachlevsky's op-ed piece was never submitted for review, insofar as the 1998 incident it recounts is a widely known "urban legend" that has been recounted in public many times. Yet the paragraph must have hit a nerve, as the debate over an attack on Iran has become more heated in recent weeks. One can imagine that there must have been a bit of an argument between Benn and the military censor Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil yesterday, but in the end Haaretz -- as it must according to the long-standing understanding between censorship authorities and the media -- relented. Not a great moment in the history of what many believe is "Israel's only 'quality' newspaper" and not a great moment for the military censor, who apparently demanded a change in an opinion piece before it was placed online. But the "missing" paragraph is nevertheless part of the public record, found in every paper copy of yesterday's edition, and on the internet for anyone who digs a bit.
So this entire episode raises a number of dark semi-secrets that touch upon Israel's plans for Iran, the nature of Israel's free press, and the competency of Netanyahu's judgment. You can draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The 70-Day Reign of King Bibi (Part II)
Earlier today in Part I I briefly recounted the back story concerning yesterday's developments in Israeli domestic politics -- the resignation of the senior coalition partner from Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu's seemingly formidable national unity government, a development not nearly as newsworthy as its creation 70 days ago.
In Part II I want to look at what this change to Netanyahu's ruling government portends.
Does this most recent bout of musical chairs in Jerusalem tell us anything about Netanyahu's threat to order his military to openly attack Iranian nuclear installations? For reasons I have explained elsewhere, neither the inclusion of the Kadima party into the governing coalition back in early May nor its recent departure serve as a marker in determining Israeli actions against Iran. Any foolish conspiracy theorist who conjures up a scenario which uses this maneuvering as a readable tea leaf concerning Netanyahu's plans for Iran, or the timing for a strike, is simply over-reaching. I go on record for a third time in as many months stating that there will be no Israeli attack on Iran in 2012. The outcome of American domestic elections has far more to do with Netanyahu's calculations than anything going on between coalition partners in Israel.
But this then brings us to the question of when Israeli voters might go to the polls, because it is my contention that Netanyahu will not strike Iran before November, 2012 (because of the US elections) nor during an Israeli election cycle (which is usually a short 90-day European-style parliamentary campaign). Here the calculation has shifted a bit.
The full life expectancy for Bibi's coalition government (a 4-year term) brings us out to approximately October, 2013. The government almost dissolved itself in late April, 2012, with anticipated elections in September. But then in a dramatic late-night machination, Bibi announced the inclusion of 28-seat Kadima into a new national unity government, which held for exactly 70 days. Now that this arrangement has dissolved, calls have suddenly arisen to move the elections to the first quarter of 2013. But for the moment these calls are no more than wishful thinking on the part of pundits and weak opposition politicians. One window of opportunity for a military operation might exist for Netanyahu between November and year's end (Israel used the pause between American elections and inauguration back in December 2008-January 2009 for Cast Lead), but if first quarter 2013 elections are held, even that window is shut.
There are forces in play that might persuade Netanyahu to opt for early elections. All the opposition parties are now in complete disarray. Snap elections would likely produce a reaffirmation of Netanyahu's continued rule with a fresh mandate. But at the same time, Netanyahu has been weakened considerably in stature by this 70-day ruse, and has thus put his reputation at greater risk than it was in April. Furthermore, the social-justice protest movement of 2011 is in the process of re-energizing. The prospect for a second summer in a row of 300,000 Tel Avivis marching against the government's failed economic policies (the first signs of a recession have arrived to the Israeli economy) can not be the backdrop against which Bibi wants to run a campaign.
What are the alternatives to Bibi? The Israeli political system tends to prefer former PMs over new faces, and Israel currently has 5 living Prime Ministers. Two of the 5 are not possibly fit to return to the job: Ariel Sharon is a vegetable in a hospital bed at Hadassah Hospital, and President Shimon Peres is 92 years old. Aside from Bibi, there is the current Defense Minister Ehud Barak and there is Ehud Olmert. Barak today is the leader of a tiny parliamentary vanity party created as cover for his defection from once powerful Labor, which he once led, and has tied his fortunes to Netanyahu. Olmert was recently exonerated by an Israeli court of serious corruption charges (but faces some further charges) and is lurking in the shadows, possibly planning to grab the reigns of the now desultory Kadima. Other than that, there is no politician on the radar screen who can emerge as a credible rival in a snap election. I'd keep my eye on Olmert.
A weakened and somewhat humiliated Netanyahu will perform as he always has: he will prefer to stay in power with his current coalition of 66 seats than face the roll of the dice which snap elections entails. But this means Bibi must mollify his current coalition partners, which he is growing less able to do. Weakened by the entire affair, King Bibi will sit on his hands as long as he can. And that means that once again -- as it was from 2009 until mid-2012, the kingmakers in the government of Israel are Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the senior coalition partner Yisrael Beiteinu party (15 seats), and Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai, head of the religious Shas party (10 seats). One of the disputes between these two coalition partners was the very issue of national conscription, which brought Netanyahu to the brink of calling early elections and led to the inclusion of Kadima. That unresolved issue looms over the immediate horizon. If either of these smallish parties bolt the coalition, the government collapses. It will take all of Netanyahu's hemming and hawing to keep them in. My bet is a line from an Arik Einstein song: "Outwards, it's all for the country, but inwards, it's all for the seat." In other words, better to stay in power in a government where everyone possesses the deterrent of mutually assured destruction than face an unpredictable and fickle electorate.
What does this mean for the Arab-Israeli conflict? Here, the answer is simple -- this contraction of the national unity government into its former hard-right format does not bode well for the moribund peace process, the prospects for a 2-state solution, or the easing of tensions. Kadima had placed some flowery language in its now tattered coalition agreement about taking historic risks for peace with the Palestinians, but none of it now matters. Once again fractured Israel, the various Palestinian Hatfields and McCoys, and the United States aren't interested right now in anything involving the peace process. In fact, I expect a turn further to the right in the peace process from the revived hard-right Netanyahu government. That might be the only way Bibi can keep Lieberman and Yishai at bay.
Syria's dynasty of Alawites is unraveling in the streets of Fortress Damascus. A new Muslim Brotherhood president and legislature is locked in a struggle for legitimacy with the generals of Egypt. Palestine is absorbed with the bones of Yasser Arafat. The US is about to enter its debilitating silly season.
And King Bibi has been brought back down to earth.
In Part II I want to look at what this change to Netanyahu's ruling government portends.
Does this most recent bout of musical chairs in Jerusalem tell us anything about Netanyahu's threat to order his military to openly attack Iranian nuclear installations? For reasons I have explained elsewhere, neither the inclusion of the Kadima party into the governing coalition back in early May nor its recent departure serve as a marker in determining Israeli actions against Iran. Any foolish conspiracy theorist who conjures up a scenario which uses this maneuvering as a readable tea leaf concerning Netanyahu's plans for Iran, or the timing for a strike, is simply over-reaching. I go on record for a third time in as many months stating that there will be no Israeli attack on Iran in 2012. The outcome of American domestic elections has far more to do with Netanyahu's calculations than anything going on between coalition partners in Israel.
But this then brings us to the question of when Israeli voters might go to the polls, because it is my contention that Netanyahu will not strike Iran before November, 2012 (because of the US elections) nor during an Israeli election cycle (which is usually a short 90-day European-style parliamentary campaign). Here the calculation has shifted a bit.
The full life expectancy for Bibi's coalition government (a 4-year term) brings us out to approximately October, 2013. The government almost dissolved itself in late April, 2012, with anticipated elections in September. But then in a dramatic late-night machination, Bibi announced the inclusion of 28-seat Kadima into a new national unity government, which held for exactly 70 days. Now that this arrangement has dissolved, calls have suddenly arisen to move the elections to the first quarter of 2013. But for the moment these calls are no more than wishful thinking on the part of pundits and weak opposition politicians. One window of opportunity for a military operation might exist for Netanyahu between November and year's end (Israel used the pause between American elections and inauguration back in December 2008-January 2009 for Cast Lead), but if first quarter 2013 elections are held, even that window is shut.
There are forces in play that might persuade Netanyahu to opt for early elections. All the opposition parties are now in complete disarray. Snap elections would likely produce a reaffirmation of Netanyahu's continued rule with a fresh mandate. But at the same time, Netanyahu has been weakened considerably in stature by this 70-day ruse, and has thus put his reputation at greater risk than it was in April. Furthermore, the social-justice protest movement of 2011 is in the process of re-energizing. The prospect for a second summer in a row of 300,000 Tel Avivis marching against the government's failed economic policies (the first signs of a recession have arrived to the Israeli economy) can not be the backdrop against which Bibi wants to run a campaign.
What are the alternatives to Bibi? The Israeli political system tends to prefer former PMs over new faces, and Israel currently has 5 living Prime Ministers. Two of the 5 are not possibly fit to return to the job: Ariel Sharon is a vegetable in a hospital bed at Hadassah Hospital, and President Shimon Peres is 92 years old. Aside from Bibi, there is the current Defense Minister Ehud Barak and there is Ehud Olmert. Barak today is the leader of a tiny parliamentary vanity party created as cover for his defection from once powerful Labor, which he once led, and has tied his fortunes to Netanyahu. Olmert was recently exonerated by an Israeli court of serious corruption charges (but faces some further charges) and is lurking in the shadows, possibly planning to grab the reigns of the now desultory Kadima. Other than that, there is no politician on the radar screen who can emerge as a credible rival in a snap election. I'd keep my eye on Olmert.
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| Back to FM Lieberman & PM Netanyahu |
What does this mean for the Arab-Israeli conflict? Here, the answer is simple -- this contraction of the national unity government into its former hard-right format does not bode well for the moribund peace process, the prospects for a 2-state solution, or the easing of tensions. Kadima had placed some flowery language in its now tattered coalition agreement about taking historic risks for peace with the Palestinians, but none of it now matters. Once again fractured Israel, the various Palestinian Hatfields and McCoys, and the United States aren't interested right now in anything involving the peace process. In fact, I expect a turn further to the right in the peace process from the revived hard-right Netanyahu government. That might be the only way Bibi can keep Lieberman and Yishai at bay.
Syria's dynasty of Alawites is unraveling in the streets of Fortress Damascus. A new Muslim Brotherhood president and legislature is locked in a struggle for legitimacy with the generals of Egypt. Palestine is absorbed with the bones of Yasser Arafat. The US is about to enter its debilitating silly season.
And King Bibi has been brought back down to earth.
The 70-Day Reign of King Bibi (Part I)
Like all celebrity marriages, the nuptials were far more exciting than the divorce.
Seventy days ago, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu arranged the creation of Israel's largest unity government in the annals of the young country's politics. Composed of an unassailable super-majority of 94 parliamentarians (out of 120), the new unity government promised that Bibi would be able to live out the full 4 years of his premiership free of even the occasional nuisance of a symbolic no-confidence vote in the Knesset, given that Israeli law requires such a motion garner the signatures of 40 MKs. With a wall-to-wall parliamentary coalition, not even that often futile maneuver lay on the horizon. Ninety-four seats meant that Bibi could claim to his nation and to his dwindling list of allies that whatever path he chose -- on Iran, on the Palestinians, on the question of conscription, on the national budget -- he had the full support of his democracy. On May 28, his face was draped on the cover of Time magazine and he was proclaimed "King Bibi." He was the master of his domain.
Some in the Israeli media and amongst the sherds of what remained of the opposition howled in disdain. But what Bibi was attempting was nothing short of a complete realignment of Israeli politics -- he was attempting to revive the grand coalition that once made up his own party, the right-nationalist Likud, which had been ripped apart in 2005 by its creator, Ariel Sharon. Back in 2005, facing a drumbeat of internal opposition to his Gaza disengagement from within Likud, Sharon created a brand-new vanity party of moderate Likudniks called Kadima (literally: "Forward"). A few spurned members of the main opposition Labor, including no less than Shimon Peres, joined the new party, but it left the Likud diehards (under the leadership of Netanyahu) an isolated boutique opposition party, to be consigned to irrelevancy for the next election cycle.
Within a few short months of its creation, Sharon stroked out, and the raison d'etre for Kadima disappeared. But Kadima somehow managed to survive the ensuing crisis as the accidental caretaker PM Ehud Olmert squeaked out an electoral victory in 2006 and kept the Kadima moderates in power. Olmert, who presided over a stormy and militaristic premiership, was in turn eventually accused by the State Attorney of rampant corruption, and was forced to resign, leading to a power struggle between lesser personalities (former Likudniks all) in the progressively more pointless grab bag known as Kadima.
When Bibi's Likud lost the election (Kadima actually won one more seat than Likud) but won the default opportunity to assemble his premiership in 2009, he had a choice. Netanyahu could form a right-center coalition with Kadima, or a hard-right coalition with smaller nationalist and religious parties. He chose the latter route, leaving Kadima outside. Netanyahu would have a second chance to be PM.
What remained of Kadima was a party with no galvanizing personality and no political agenda. Internal squabbling ensued. The leader who had presided over Kadima's electoral "almost" victory, former Likudnik Tzipi Livni (who couldn't muster religious or right wing support in her attempt to form a government), was challenged over her bumbling record by former Likudnik Shaul Mofaz, who promised Kadima functionaries a different outcome. In internal elections earlier this year, Mofaz trounced Livni. Then, as the prospect for early elections (which pollsters predicted Bibi would handily win) loomed over the country, Mofaz struck a deal with Bibi, and brought his bloc of 28 MKs into a numerically unprecedented national unity government. Simultaneously, Livni quit the party, and resigned her political post as Knesset member. Mofaz could also read polls, and understood that the Israeli electorate had grown weary of Kadima. Early elections (which might have been held in September) would spell the effective end of Kadima. So Mofaz traded certain electoral demise in 3 months' time for a seat at the cabinet table for 16 months.
That was 70 days ago.
What prompted all this maneuvering in early May was a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that the government of Israel's conscription law was unconstitutional. A makeshift and temporary law had been crafted in 2002 which had attempted to address the inequity of Israel's conscription regime (which granted an automatic deferment to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students) by essentially encoding the inequity into law, and it was this so-called "Tal law" that was judged unconstitutional. The unconstitutional law had expired, and by Supreme Court decree the government of Israel had until August 1 to come into compliance. The first among many intractable domestic issues which Bibi and Mofaz committed themselves to was to construct an equitable resolution for Israel's illegal conscription farce, all by the August 1 deadline.
Seventy days ago, Bibi made it sound like he was finally ready to accede to the demands of the secular Israeli majority, and together with Mofaz he would craft a historic conscription law which would bring the ultra-Orthodox citizens of Israel into the shared responsibility of national service. But when the moment of decision came, King Bibi reverted to form. It is now a well-known pattern of his leadership: Netanyahu consistently prefers stasis over any change that threatens his comfortable rule.
Mofaz, known to change positions on a dime, this time stood his ground, and yesterday the national unity government dissolved after the Kadima parliamentarians voted 25 to 3 to leave the government.
And with that, the grand reunification of Likud ended. And with it came the end of Mofaz's attempt to resuscitate Kadima and assert his relevancy as a potential national leader.
BUT, the withdrawal of Kadima does not mean the collapse of Netanyahu's ruling coalition (now still a respectable 66-seat majority). No longer a wall-to-wall PM, but merely a PM presiding over a hard-right coalition, former King Bibi still rules the land. There is even the possibility that some holdouts might jump the sinking ship of Kadima and join Bibi's Likud, making his coalition even more solid. Whether elections come as scheduled in October 2013 or a bit earlier, Bibi -- tarnished by this maneuvering but not mortally wounded -- remains PM.
What does it all mean (for Iran, for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and for Israeli domestic politics)? For that, I'll have another posting later today.
Part II can be found here.
Seventy days ago, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu arranged the creation of Israel's largest unity government in the annals of the young country's politics. Composed of an unassailable super-majority of 94 parliamentarians (out of 120), the new unity government promised that Bibi would be able to live out the full 4 years of his premiership free of even the occasional nuisance of a symbolic no-confidence vote in the Knesset, given that Israeli law requires such a motion garner the signatures of 40 MKs. With a wall-to-wall parliamentary coalition, not even that often futile maneuver lay on the horizon. Ninety-four seats meant that Bibi could claim to his nation and to his dwindling list of allies that whatever path he chose -- on Iran, on the Palestinians, on the question of conscription, on the national budget -- he had the full support of his democracy. On May 28, his face was draped on the cover of Time magazine and he was proclaimed "King Bibi." He was the master of his domain.
Some in the Israeli media and amongst the sherds of what remained of the opposition howled in disdain. But what Bibi was attempting was nothing short of a complete realignment of Israeli politics -- he was attempting to revive the grand coalition that once made up his own party, the right-nationalist Likud, which had been ripped apart in 2005 by its creator, Ariel Sharon. Back in 2005, facing a drumbeat of internal opposition to his Gaza disengagement from within Likud, Sharon created a brand-new vanity party of moderate Likudniks called Kadima (literally: "Forward"). A few spurned members of the main opposition Labor, including no less than Shimon Peres, joined the new party, but it left the Likud diehards (under the leadership of Netanyahu) an isolated boutique opposition party, to be consigned to irrelevancy for the next election cycle.Within a few short months of its creation, Sharon stroked out, and the raison d'etre for Kadima disappeared. But Kadima somehow managed to survive the ensuing crisis as the accidental caretaker PM Ehud Olmert squeaked out an electoral victory in 2006 and kept the Kadima moderates in power. Olmert, who presided over a stormy and militaristic premiership, was in turn eventually accused by the State Attorney of rampant corruption, and was forced to resign, leading to a power struggle between lesser personalities (former Likudniks all) in the progressively more pointless grab bag known as Kadima.
When Bibi's Likud lost the election (Kadima actually won one more seat than Likud) but won the default opportunity to assemble his premiership in 2009, he had a choice. Netanyahu could form a right-center coalition with Kadima, or a hard-right coalition with smaller nationalist and religious parties. He chose the latter route, leaving Kadima outside. Netanyahu would have a second chance to be PM.
What remained of Kadima was a party with no galvanizing personality and no political agenda. Internal squabbling ensued. The leader who had presided over Kadima's electoral "almost" victory, former Likudnik Tzipi Livni (who couldn't muster religious or right wing support in her attempt to form a government), was challenged over her bumbling record by former Likudnik Shaul Mofaz, who promised Kadima functionaries a different outcome. In internal elections earlier this year, Mofaz trounced Livni. Then, as the prospect for early elections (which pollsters predicted Bibi would handily win) loomed over the country, Mofaz struck a deal with Bibi, and brought his bloc of 28 MKs into a numerically unprecedented national unity government. Simultaneously, Livni quit the party, and resigned her political post as Knesset member. Mofaz could also read polls, and understood that the Israeli electorate had grown weary of Kadima. Early elections (which might have been held in September) would spell the effective end of Kadima. So Mofaz traded certain electoral demise in 3 months' time for a seat at the cabinet table for 16 months.
That was 70 days ago.
What prompted all this maneuvering in early May was a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that the government of Israel's conscription law was unconstitutional. A makeshift and temporary law had been crafted in 2002 which had attempted to address the inequity of Israel's conscription regime (which granted an automatic deferment to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students) by essentially encoding the inequity into law, and it was this so-called "Tal law" that was judged unconstitutional. The unconstitutional law had expired, and by Supreme Court decree the government of Israel had until August 1 to come into compliance. The first among many intractable domestic issues which Bibi and Mofaz committed themselves to was to construct an equitable resolution for Israel's illegal conscription farce, all by the August 1 deadline.
Seventy days ago, Bibi made it sound like he was finally ready to accede to the demands of the secular Israeli majority, and together with Mofaz he would craft a historic conscription law which would bring the ultra-Orthodox citizens of Israel into the shared responsibility of national service. But when the moment of decision came, King Bibi reverted to form. It is now a well-known pattern of his leadership: Netanyahu consistently prefers stasis over any change that threatens his comfortable rule.
Mofaz, known to change positions on a dime, this time stood his ground, and yesterday the national unity government dissolved after the Kadima parliamentarians voted 25 to 3 to leave the government.
And with that, the grand reunification of Likud ended. And with it came the end of Mofaz's attempt to resuscitate Kadima and assert his relevancy as a potential national leader.
BUT, the withdrawal of Kadima does not mean the collapse of Netanyahu's ruling coalition (now still a respectable 66-seat majority). No longer a wall-to-wall PM, but merely a PM presiding over a hard-right coalition, former King Bibi still rules the land. There is even the possibility that some holdouts might jump the sinking ship of Kadima and join Bibi's Likud, making his coalition even more solid. Whether elections come as scheduled in October 2013 or a bit earlier, Bibi -- tarnished by this maneuvering but not mortally wounded -- remains PM.
What does it all mean (for Iran, for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and for Israeli domestic politics)? For that, I'll have another posting later today.
Part II can be found here.
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