As Likud dips, Bibi offers to debate Gantz
► FOR THE first time in 14 years Benjamin Netanyahu, behind in the polls, is prepared to hold a TV debate.
With a week and a half left until the Knesset election, the gap between Likud and Blue & White is holding, and in some polls even growing slightly.
Mr Netanyahu issued the challenge on Tuesday in an interview on the right-wing Channel 20: “I’m prepared to come here [or] another place.”
Addressing Blue & White leader Benny Gantz, he said: “Let’s choose a moderator, or you bring someone and we’ll hold a televised debate, without a teleprompter and say the real things. Welcome. We’ll do a few debates, one on security, on diplomacy, on the economy.”
It does not seem that a debate will take place as Mr Gantz turned him down, saying that the prime minister “remembered [to offer a debate] because of his trial date on March 13”, which was announced hours before Mr Netanyahu made his challenge.
Mr Gantz added: “All this is just one big media spin and I don’t work for this spin. I don’t work for him.”
Mr Gantz had proposed debates in the previous two election campaigns in 2019 and was ignored by Mr Netanyahu. Senior Blue & White figures said this week that they did not see why they had to agree to a debate now the tables had been turned and they are lead Likud in the polls.
There has not been a televised debate between the two main candidates for prime minister job for 24 years. The last time was in 1996 between Mr Netanyahu and the late Shimon Peres. That debate was universally judged an unqualified victory for the youthful challenger over a tired, disinterested Labour prime minister and probably contributed to Mr Netanyahu’s surprising victory. Since then, the frontrunner in the election has never agreed to risk their lead in a debate.
Over the past decade, Mr Netanyahu has always refused to take part in a debate. His challenge to Mr Gantz now is widely seen as an admission that Likud is behind, and the diminishing prospect of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition winning a majority.
Likud’s strategy is to try and boost turnout in its strongholds. In every recent public appearance, Mr Netanyahu has spoken of “300,000 Likudniks who stayed at home in September. If we bring them, we can win.”
But polling experts are skeptical that such a reservoir of reluctant Likud voters exists. Turnout in recent elections has been relatively high at around 70 per cent, and last September was not an exception to this.
According to one study carried out by Professor Asher Cohen of Bar-Ilan University on the 2019 results of 900 polling stations with traditionally high levels of Likud voters, while the turnout in both elections was steady, — averaging 65 per cent — Likud’s vote fell by 3 per cent in September from the party’s previous tally in April.