A boon for Israel ... and Bibi
TELAVIV • A triumphant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nation for seven minutes on Thursday evening, a mere two hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced to the world on Twitter that, in a telephone call earlier in the day, the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Israel agreed on a historic, “full” normalization of relations.
Netanyahu has been hammered in recent weeks for neglecting critical public health and economic issues, direct fallout from his mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis. His party was in free fall in the polls, demonstrations were constant and increasingly violent, his corruption trial was progressing and his political coalition had become an unmitigated disaster.
Not only does peace with the U. A. E. “reset the whole region,” he enthused in his live address, “but we are going to collaborate immediately on a COVID vaccine.”
Emirati investment in Israeli technology and the country’s enormous wealth will give Israel a tremendous economic boost, he said, “in spite of coronavirus.”
With those words, the disaster scenarios that seemed inescapable for Netanyahu were flipped. Representatives from the U. A. E. and Israel will start meeting immediately to formulate a broad range of programs and investments, and work out details on opening embassies.
“Peace for peace,” Netanyahu stated, signalling that Israel gave up nothing, perhaps not even the prime minister’s plans to annex specific areas of the West Bank, as long as it gets the go- ahead from the United States.
At press time, reactions from other regional interests as well as the European Union were yet to come, but there are strong hints from the White House that a second country in the region will also “normalize” relations with Israel in the coming days.
Unsurprisingly, the Palestinians are furious, but have said little thus far. Their isolation is intensifying and their all-or-nothing approach to peace negotiations is clearly not working.
Netanyahu seized on this when speaking with the feisty Israeli press corps following his remarks. “You said it wasn’t possible,” he reminded them, referring to negotiating regional peace deals before matters were settled with the Palestinians.
And the press has to give the man they love to malign huge props for bringing home an astonishingly momentous, gamechanging regional peace deal. And he did it just when they thought he was done for.
In mid- May, an overly- confident Netanyahu urged Israelis to “go out and enjoy yourselves.” As the people partied with abandon, Bibi became engrossed in other things, including stirring up an international fuss over his intentions to annex portions of the West Bank. The lack of focus on the ongoing public health crisis resulted in a surge of COVID-19 cases — from fewer than 10 a day throughout much of June, to almost 2,000 a day by early July.
Netanyahu’s failure on this file cost him dearly in the polls and benefited several of his rivals. Chief among them was Yair Lapid, an unwavering centrist who just came through a messy split with Benny Gantz, the putative leader of their short- lived Blue and White party. Initially a little battered, Lapid has remained true to his core principles — reinforcing Israel’s secularist institutions and traditions, while retaining its Jewish character — and has been rewarded recently with a strong spike in the polls.
Also benefiting from Netanyahu’s missteps was Naftali Bennet, leader of the hard- right Yamina party. In spite of their bitterly acrimonious relationship, Bennet supported Netanyahu’s rightwing bloc through three elections, only to be dumped, humiliated and shut out of cabinet or any meaningful role in the current government.
Not given to sulking, Bennet picked up, dusted himself off and worked the public with a vengeance, offering constructive suggestions as to what the government ought to be doing in order to manage the public health crisis. And, lo and behold, Bennett quadrupled his seat projection in current polls, from five to 20, while Likud’s seat projections dropped from 40 several months ago, to 27.
Now in the early stages of his trial on multiple charges of corruption and bribery, Netanyahu was desperate to change the channel, and there is no better way to do so than to create a crisis. That seemed to be the approval of a state budget, which the prime minister thought should only cover the next three months, while the opposition pressed for one that would get the country through the next 15.
The budget tussle was becoming very, very messy and threatened to bring down the dysfunctional government, an outcome Netanyahu could simply not tolerate.
Bibi had allowed his self- interest and obsessive control of the most granular events to obscure his view of the people he is trusted to lead and govern. At the weekly demonstrations outside his official residence in Jerusalem, even staunch Likudniks had recently joined the hundreds of people who Netanyahu and his cohort reflexively dismiss as “Tel Aviv leftists.”
The protests have continued to grow in number and diversity over recent weeks. They have been protesting everything under the sun, but the common draw is a profound frustration and anger with a prime minister who seems to be utterly detached and unruffled by the economic and social devastation wreaked by the coronavirus.
Regular folk who have been hardest hit by pandemic economy were running out of patience for the prime minister’s increasingly erratic and self- interested behaviour. And many of them were diehard Likud loyalists.
On Thursday morning, Netanyahu’s prospects did not look good, with polls showing the pro- and anti- Netanyahu blocs in a dead heat. The coronavirus was killing his future. The public’s fury showed no signs of abating, short of a miracle — which was conveniently delivered on Thursday evening.
“Together,” he told the nation, “we have an awesome future.”
In additional to his personal resurrection, he has engineered a momentous shift in the balance of power in the Middle East, one that was unthinkable just a few years ago.