Bibi Houdini

He did it again. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who came out of the last elections short of the Knesset votes needed to form a government and is due in Jerusalem District Court on May 24 to face serious corruption charges – is on his way to once again being sworn in as prime minister.

It may not be the government of his dreams, he might have to switch places with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz in the middle, but Thursday’s Knesset vote, coupled with the High Court of Justice’s unanimous decision not to disqualify him or the peculiar Likud-Blue and White coalition agreement, means he will soon be prime minister for a fifth time.

King Bibi, magician indeed.

This time, however, his reappearing act was aided heavily by the coronavirus.

Had the plague not appeared on the scene, had

it not generated a bona fide national emergency, it is doubtful Netanyahu’s new ally Gantz would have cast his election campaign promises to the wind and agreed to serve in a Netanyahu government.

He got lucky, his detractors – with much bitterness – will say of the prime minister. But this is not luck. Netanyahu’s ability to survive a damning indictment and three consecutive elections in less than 12 months without being able to put together a coalition and still remain the country’s leader is a testament to consummate political skill, not luck.

A lesser politician in the same situation who was also hit by a pandemic would not necessarily have had the ability to leverage it to his advantage. The coronavirus shuffled the cards, but Netanyahu had the political wisdom to know how to adroitly play the new cards and win.

But now what? Netanyahu has another 18 months as prime minister all but guaranteed. What does he plan to do with it?

And that question cannot be divorced from his trial that is finally set to begin in just over two weeks. Israel will then be in the odd situation of being governed by a man whose attention will be split between the Knesset and the court.

How will one impact on the other?

The court case will obviously divert Netanyahu’s attention. Netanyahu is a workaholic who has shown a remarkable ability over the years to compartmentalize and not let one facet of his life negatively impact on the other, but even he will be challenged by having to split his attention between his weighty court case and the trials facing the nation.

Just as during the three election campaigns over the last 18 months everything he did, all the decisions he made, were suspect of having been done because of electoral considerations, so too as a defendant all Netanyahu’s decisions will be seen through the prism of whether they were affected by the strain of the trial, or whether he is somehow trying to create a public atmosphere that could influence the case.

One of the first questions various interviewees were asked on radio stations on Thursday, after the High Court of Justice threw out the petitions against Netanyahu, was whether the judges were influenced by public opinion – created in part by the prime minister – and concern that intervening in this case would do irreparable damage to the court in the eyes of

the public.

Atmosphere matters, and as prime minister for the next 18 months Netanyahu remains in a good position to influence the public atmosphere as it watches his case unfold in court.

But beyond the court case, Netanyahu’s main order of business, once he will be sworn in, will be to deal with the economic disaster that the virus wreaked, as well as plan for a possible second round of the pandemic in the Fall.

This is, after all, an emergency government. True, there is Iran in Syria to worry about, Gaza, an increasingly volatile situation in Lebanon and that issue about whether to extend Israeli sovereignty over 30% of the West Bank before the US elections in November, but recovering from the virus is why this surprising government is being set up in the first place, and which will be its main focus of attention.

One of Netanyahu’s top priorities now will be to ensure that the country is prepared so that if the virus makes a comeback in a few months, as most assume it will, Israel will be able to cope without having to lock down the entire country to ensure that the understaffed, underfunded and under-equipped health system is not overwhelmed.

The country’s mood coming out of the lockdown is decidedly sour. Netanyahu, whose political ambitions extend beyond the next 18 months in the Prime Minister’s Office, will labor intensively to change that mood, hoping that the public will then be grateful to him for doing so, and show that appreciation the next time elections roll around.

Netanyahu has given no sign that his next stint in power will be his last – even if he is forced to switch seats with Gantz in the middle of a term, and even if he is standing trial.

And those who believe the prime minister must be in his last act are underestimating his unparalleled political staying power and durability. In February, just before the last election, Yisrael Beytenu head and Netanyahu nemesis Avigdor Liberman famously declared, “the Netanyahu era has ended.” But look where Netanyahu is, soon to be sworn in again as prime minister, and where Liberman is – on the opposition backbenches – and draw the conclusion: don’t count Netanyahu out. Ever. •

set the term for the full fourand-a-half years allowed by law in the legislation passed on Thursday, Gantz insisted that the two sides still have to give their approval when the end of the three years approaches. Lowering the threshold for the extension from 80 MKs to 70 was a trust-building compromise between the two party leaders.

But before it became clear that the term would not be changed, an MK from the Joint List overheard the discussions between Netanyahu and Gantz. He immediately got his fellow MKs in the opposition, Meir Cohen and Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid), to take action.

The opposition suddenly withdrew their several hundred remaining amendments to catch the coalition unprepared to pass its own government formation bills that had not yet been finalized between Netanyahu and Gantz. The maneuver caused chaos in the Knesset plenum.

The coalition regrouped and reconvened the committee legislating the bills for voting all night in order to lower the threshold. The opposition eventually surrendered and let the government formation bills pass into law long before Thursday night’s deadline.

“They call us neophytes and suckers, but we have plenty to be proud of,” said a source in Blue and White, who was present for the drama. “For 19 MKs in our bloc, we got an impressive haul of portfolios that can help us make positive changes. We robbed the shirt off the back of Bibi, who can’t decide anything without Gantz, can no longer pursue immunity from prosecution, and went from having a yes-man as justice minister in Amir Ohana to having Nissenkorn, who is the opposite.”

Netanyahu’s trial that begins in two weeks will determine whether he can last through his year-and-a-half term and whether there is any chance that after Gantz’s year-and-ahalf, he can come back to office again.

Completing the entire fourand-a-half-year term remains highly unlikely. But coming anywhere close to that is far more palatable to the public than, once again, having multiple elections in a single year. •