The gunshot that could lead to Netanyahu’s downfall

“The shot that killed Abdel Fattah al-sharif may not have been heard around the world,” said Amos Harel in Foreign Policy (Washington DC), but it has certainly “succeeded in rocking Israeli society”. Sharif was one of two young Palestinians involved in a knife attack on Israeli troops in Hebron a couple of months ago. After being shot and wounded, he was lying helpless on the ground when an Israeli soldier effectively executed him with a bullet to the head. The incident has sharply divided opinion in Israel, highlighting a clash between those who think the country is losing sight of its values and those who believe that even the most extreme measures are justified in the face of a recent upsurge in stabbing attacks. The ongoing row has now claimed its first “political casualty”: Israel’s widely respected defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, a former commander of the Paratroopers’ Brigade special forces. He has been forced out and replaced with Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist known for his bellicose rhetoric.

This is a deeply “irresponsible” move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Ron Ben-yishai on Ynetnews.com (Tel Aviv). In a desperate bid to shore up his weak coalition, he has swapped an “experienced, cool-headed, reasonable” defence minister for a man with almost no military experience – a Russian-born resident of an illegal settlement who has suggested bombing Egypt’s Aswan Dam “and turning Gaza into a soccer field”. This marks a significant power shift, said Jonathan Cook in The National (Abu Dhabi). The influence of Israel’s religious hardliners has been growing across all areas of public life in recent years, but until now Israel’s traditional secular elite have “clung on to the top rungs” of the defence establishment. No more, it seems.

But Netanyahu may yet come to regret this reshuffle, said Gil Hoffman in The Jerusalem Post. Ya’alon, a “security figure whom Israelis trust”, has already “announced his intentions to seek the national leadership”, and he would be well placed to lead a rival centre-right bloc. There are certainly many right-leaning Israelis out there who are unhappy with the recent direction of the country, said Harel. Just last month, for instance, Israel’s veteran military correspondent Roni Daniel admitted on television that, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted his children to remain living in Israel. “If Daniel, a pillar of Israel’s political mainstream and a staunch Zionist, says this, Netanyahu might be in more political trouble than he currently estimates.”