Days of judgment
Will he enjoy tranquility or suffer? Mandelblit and Likud members will decide
The “Unetaneh Tokef” prayer that is recited at the peak of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services describes how the fate of mankind is decided between the two holidays.
“Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted,” the prayer says.
Those words also describe the political and legal fates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which are in the process of being decided.
It is very symbolic that Netanyahu’s marathon legal hearings are taking place during this time of judgment on the Jewish calendar. The hearings that could end the career of a powerful leader of Israel began on the Fast of Gedalya, which marks the assassination of the last Jewish leader of a Jewish state before nearly 2,000 years of exile.
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan fasted all day as they questioned Netanyahu’s lawyers, before breaking their fasts together over falafel during a short break. They then resumed the hearing, which totaled 11 hours on its first day alone.
Mandelblit will decide whether Netanyahu will enjoy the tranquility of cases being closed or downgraded, or suffer a bribery indictment that would likely end his political career and could land him in prison.
NETANYAHU DID his best to play the game of “business as usual” during his hearings. He tried his hardest to change the subject of the public’s focus.
He invited Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to a meeting. When Gantz canceled, he invited Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman. He met with visiting congressmen and the heads of other parties in his political bloc.
None of that really worked, so it was time for Netanyahu to drop his political bombshell: primaries in the Likud.
Netanyahu has done his best to avoid a Likud leadership race since he returned to the helm of the party following Ariel Sharon’s departure in 2005. He defeated a tough challenger in then-foreign minister Silvan Shalom in that primary.
Since then, every time he called a primary, he did it at an unexpected time to catch prospective challengers off guard. The result was that the only challengers were candidates like Danny Danon and Moshe Feiglin, who had no chance of winning. Netanyahu won at least 70% of the vote in Likud primaries that were not seen as serious, and then even candidates with no chance stopped bothering to run, and the primaries were canceled.
Perhaps Netanyahu thought the same thing would happen this time. But within minutes of Likud spokesman Yonatan Urich’s message that the prime minister was considering holding a primary, a serious challenger in MK Gideon Sa’ar threw his hat in the ring on Twitter.
Moments earlier, Blue and White officials were lamenting in the Knesset cafeteria that there was no candidate in the Likud with the courage to challenge Netanyahu. They warned that Netanyahu could get away with initiating a third election just because of the fecklessness of potential challengers in the Likud.
Sa’ar then went to the Likud faction meeting, where the media kept trying to talk to him, but his Knesset colleagues in the Likud acted like he had a contagious disease, especially when Netanyahu was in the room. No one addressed Sa’ar, and no one mentioned him.
Perhaps the situation would
have been different had Mandelblit already decided whether to indict the prime minister. Netanyahu wants to receive a mandate from Likud members to remain leader of the party for another four years before Mandelblit decides his legal fate.
The legal and political timetables of Netanyahu are as intertwined as ever. Blue and White leaders are eager for the question of who becomes prime minister to be decided only after Mandelblit’s decision. Netanyahu desperately wants to preempt it.
Since the moment the election results were announced in the aftermath of the September 17 election, it has been clear that neither Netanyahu nor Gantz would be able to build a government, and the only chance for a coalition to be formed would be during the three-week period after both candidates failed.
During those 21 days, any candidate could obtain the support of 61 MKs and form a government. If no one succeeds, a third election in a year is automatically initiated.
It is for those three weeks that Netanyahu has been preparing meticulously. In retrospect, every step Netanyahu has taken since the election needs to be viewed in that context.
He first created a bloc of 55 MKs on the Right to solidify his leadership and make him look like a winner in an election that he arguably lost. He then convened the Likud faction to symbolically reaffirm his leadership and prevent an immediate rebellion.
The next time the Likud faction met, Netanyahu told the MKs that he would be their party’s candidate in the three-week period, even though he had not yet even been given a mandate to form a government by President Reuven Rivlin.
Netanyahu’s meetings with Gantz and with Rivlin were also political posturing in preparation for the big 21 days. The talk about Netanyahu returning his mandate early to Rivlin is also because he wants the 21 days to happen before Mandelblit’s decision.
At a meeting of right-wing and religious party leaders on Wednesday, Netanyahu’s political ally Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin already tried to get them to sign a document saying that Netanyahu would be their only candidate for prime minister during those fateful three weeks.
Their refusal to sign the document made it necessary for Netanyahu to initiate the Likud primary, to be held over the next month, while Gantz gets his turn to try and fail to form a government led by him.
In that primary, Netanyahu’s political fate will be decided by the 130,000 Likud Party members. They will have a tough choice to make, because it will be made clear to them by Blue and White’s leaders that they would agree to form a government with Sa’ar and not Netanyahu.
Sa’ar could end up going first in a rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office with Gantz. If Liberman gives up his demand for a secular unity government, there could even be a right-wing government without Blue and White.
But it will be made clear to the Likud members that if Netanyahu beats Sa’ar, a third election would be inevitable.
That would make the indictment decision’s timing less important, because even if it would not happen before the 21 days, it would definitely happen during that third election, which could cause great harm to the Likud.
In the likely scenario that Netanyahu beats Sa’ar by a wide margin, he would be strengthened ahead of those 21 days.
It remains unclear whether Netanyahu will be degraded or exalted. But the decisions on Netanyahu’s fate will be made soon after the fall Jewish holidays are over. •