Netanyahu – the Harry Houdini of Israeli politics
WHATEVER one thinks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there’s no denying that he’s a remarkable survivor. Come to think of it, there’s probably no other world leader right now who can match him when it comes to political escapology.
Give Bibi – as he’s commonly known in Israel – a crisis that looks likely to lead to his demise and, hey presto, he pulls something out of the hat that allows him to stay in power.
Barely a week ago Israel’s longest serving prime minister, who has been in office for 12 straight years, was about to be unseated from his fifth premiership after four stalemated elections had led Mr Netanyahu into a something of a political cul-de-sac.
With his failure to form a government, his political rivals Yair Lapid of the centre right Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett of the right-wing nationalist Yamina party, were circling like vultures ready to form a motley coalition of their own, spanning the political spectrum from left to right, united by little more than a desire to finally unseat Mr Netanyahu.
As if this was not threat enough to Mr Netanyahu, Israeli courts too were once again opening after the coronavirus lockdown and the spectre of his trial on corruption charges loomed large.
Then, suddenly, enter stage left another upsurge in the long brewing dispute over who controls the al-aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem with clashes between Israeli police and Muslim protesters, followed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas lobbing rockets deep into Israel and Mr Netanyahu lives to fight another day.
“Netanyahu had no cards left to play, and suddenly, he was saved by the bell,” was how Aviv Bushinsky, a former aide to Netanyahu, described this latest 11th-hour reprieve for the Israeli leader. “He’s so lucky, every time,” observed Mr Bushinsky, marvelling at his former boss’s good fortune.
In fact, such was the timely intervention of this latest escalation of hostilities in the Israeli-palestinian conflict, that some among the ranks of Israel’s more conspiratorial political observers were even inclined to suggest that the prime minister might have had a hand in stirring up the crisis to undermine opposition to him.
As political rival Yair Lapid noted last Sunday as the violence escalated, “the fire always breaks out precisely when it’s most convenient” for the embattled prime minister.
There’s little doubt that regarding Jewisharab relations, Mr Netanyahu over the years has done pretty much everything he could to exacerbate generations-old hatreds between communities.
As back up to their claims that Mr Netanyahu was manipulating the recent crisis in the interests of political selfpreservation, some analysts pointed to his allowing, even nurturing, domestic provocations in Palestinian East Jerusalem, with the pushing of Jewish settlements in neighbourhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan and the fencing off of the Damascus Gate during Ramadan along with the heavyhanded
police action at the Al-aqsa mosque.
Sceptics, however, say master political tactician as he is, even Mr Netanyahu could not have foreseen Hamas’s rocket attack on Jerusalem or the inter-communal violence between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel.
“Was Netanyahu controlling things from A to Z? No. It was more likely half conspiracy and half contingency,” was how Amos Harel, veteran military affairs reporter of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz summed it up.
In fact, there’s a certain irony in that a flare up in the Israeli-palestinian conflict should come to Mr Netanyahu’s aid. As Jonah
Shepp in the New York Magazine recently highlighted, the current violence in fact “graphically illustrates his failures.”
For not only has Mr Netanyahu “buried the peace process,” but “foreclosed the possibility of a Palestinian state, brought virulently anti-arab Kahanists into his government, and opted to ‘manage’ the conflict rather than resolve it.”
Strange as it might seem, if there’s been one thing these past years that Mr
Netanyahu has managed to do during his lengthy time in office, it’s the way he’s been able to detach the Palestinian issue from the lives of most Israelis. For the past few
elections now, what was once a key issue for voters has not really played a significant part in any campaigning.
Writing in Haaretz last week Louis Fishman, an associate professor at Brooklyn College, described this as Mr Netanyahu’s “greatest magic trick,” effectively blinding Israeli Jews to their state’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Now, however, as the country experiences an unprecedented level of communal violence between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, the façade that Mr Netanyahu has created is being starkly stripped away.
“Even the most carefully constructed house of cards eventually starts tumbling down, and that is exactly what is happening now … Impregnable Netanyahuism, the work of a master illusionist, is shattering,” observed Professor Fishman.
So, where does the 71-year-old Mr Netanyahu, who has seen off numerous rivals during his three-decade career, go from here?
Clearly, the most obvious thing for now is that by scuttling his political rivals’ chances of forming a coalition, the ongoing crisis with the Palestinians has bought Mr Netanyahu some time to change his fortunes.
The most likely forthcoming scenario is that once Israel inevitably “wins” this latest round of fighting in Gaza and has finished “mowing the grass,” as some Israeli security officials offensively describe such military campaigns in the coastal strip, then Israel will probably go to the polls for a fifth time.
Whether the current violence gives Mr Netanyahu better odds this time around than in the previous ballots is another question.
“From a political vantage point, this has put him back on the horse... and he’s riding it,” said Yohanan Plesner, the director of the think-tank Israel Democracy Institute, speaking to the Financial Times as Mr Netanyahu vowed to step up the military response in Gaza.
As the age-old adage goes, “a week is a long time in politics” and never has that been truer over the past seven days than for the Israeli prime minister. For so long now Benjamin Netanyahu has come to seem like a permanent fixture in his country’s politics. Like or loathe the politics he represents, Mr Netanyahu’s latest Harry Houdini act means that he might still be around for a while yet.
Regarding Jewisharab relations, Mr Netanyahu has done everything he could to exacerbate generations-old hatreds between communities