Israel: Angry Netanyahu plots his comeback
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister went out on a spiteful note, said Limor Livnat in Yedioth Ahronoth. After 12 years in office, Benjamin Netanyahu is livid that he has been unseated by a fragile coalition of parties from the left, right, and center that are united only in their desire to end his tenure. And Netanyahu made no attempt to hide his fury as the new government was sworn in at the Knesset this week, after winning a confidence vote by the narrowest of margins, 60 to 59. When new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was speaking, Netanyahu allowed lawmakers from his Likud party and their ultra-Orthodox allies to shout and heckle, forcing security to usher member after member out of the chamber. Netanyahu’s own farewell speech was “a verbal assault.” He called Bennett’s government fraudulent, saying the right-wing voters who picked Bennett’s tiny party would never have done so had they known it would ally with leftists and Arabs. In the most “outrageous” slander, Netanyahu claimed that Iran was celebrating the new “weak and unstable government,” because it won’t be able to stop the Biden administration from reviving the Iran nuclear deal. He was unbearably “smug” in his assertion that only he can protect Israel.
That arrogance is earned, said Gary Willig in Arutz Sheva. Netanyahu’s mastery of the security narrative dragged Israeli politics far to the right, perhaps permanently. And in foreign policy, Bibi was “the best prime minister Israel has ever had.” Before he took office, our international standing was defined by the Palestinian issue and we were shunned by much of the world. Netanyahu began an economic outreach, betting that many countries’ “interest in Israeli know-how and technology” would trump their “ideological commitment to the Palestinian Arabs.” Now Israel has good relations with countries from Latin America to the Arab Gulf to India. But Netanyahu was so certain that his fortunes were Israel’s fortunes, said Gidi Weitz in Haaretz, that he was willing to tear down the justice system to cling to power. He was charged with corruption following the 2019 leak of damning tapes in which he offered a media mogul regulatory help in exchange for favorable coverage. Paranoid and punitive, Bibi used the weight of his office to harass and possibly spy on the attorney general and chief prosecutor. Even Supreme Court justices “show signs that they fear being targeted by Netanyahu’s aggressive machine.”
Don’t count him out, said Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar in AlJazeera.com (Qatar). Netanyahu says he will return to power within months, and he has “the backing of hot-headed legions of supporters.” One way he could topple the government is by working through the ultra-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir “and his Arab-hating coterie.” Ben-Gvir is exploiting his parliamentary immunity to stage provocations at Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Netanyahu is betting that Palestinian militants will retaliate with missiles, and Bennett’s government—which contains an Israeli-Arab party—will collapse rather than mount a military response. Netanyahu has “declared war on his successor,” and he will do anything to win this fight.