Oded Balilty AP
JERUSALEM — The governing coalition now poised to take power in Israel is an ideological mix — many would say mess — of factions that range from religiously oriented advocates of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to secular supporters of an independent Palestinian state.
But there is one thing they all agree on: It is time for Benjamin Netanyahu to go.
This new government, if it is voted into power by the parliament in coming days, will be the anti-Netanyahu government. The organizing principle of the “change coalition” is the assertion that the prime minister’s dogged push to keep his office after four inconclusive elections is harming the country.
Netanyahu, who was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in 2019 and has been on trial for a year, has waged a scorched-earth campaign against prosecutors and judges. He dissolved parliament in 2018 rather than let rivals have a chance to form a government. And he has railed against lawmakers wanting to replace him as leftist radicals, raising fears of political violence harking back to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Jewish nationalist.
Several of the coalition leaders are former Netanyahu allies who share many, if not most, of his hawkish views. They say, however, they can no longer share a government with him because of their personal experience with his record of breaking promises, humiliating partners and sidelining potential rivals.
Several also have been fired over the years from cabinet jobs by Netanyahu, including Naftali Bennett, who is on deck to become prime minister under the coalition agreement, and Yair Lapid, the opposition leader. Netanyahu’s former chief lieutenant Avigdor Liberman, who now heads his own party, says it is “unclear” whether Netanyahu “is 100 percent mentally fit.”
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The leader of the Yamina party, Naftali Bennett, is poised to be the next Israeli prime minister.
Benny Gantz, the current alternate prime minister and defense minister, was slammed by many of his own voters when he joined Netanyahu’s emergency unity government last year, only to say later that he regretted doing so because of the prime minister’s broken pledges. Gantz has agreed to join the new government. And Gideon Saar, one of several former members of Netanyahu’s Likud who left the party in protest of the prime minister’s actions, said replacing his former mentor has become “a national priority.”
Netanyahu’s history with those seeking to assemble the new governing coalition may explain their reaction to his recent attempts to woo some of these lawmakers back to his camp. His increasingly lavish offers of shared power and rotating prime minister roles have been met with one hard no after another.
“No one believes a word he says. Why would they?” said Jonathan Rynhold, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University. “Part of it is personal with these people who know him. And part of it is that all of them have come to believe that Mr. Netanyahu has put his personal interests ahead of the interests of the State of Israel because he can no longer distinguish between the two.”
[Netanyahu battles to block opposition parties from taking power]
Rynhold describes Netanyahu’s willingness to break rules and attack institutions as a departure even from Israel’s rough-and-tumble politics. Eventually, Rynhold said, the prime minister’s behavior united the country’s fractious political spectrum, with lawmakers of many stripes vowing to end a political crisis that has seen Israelis forced to vote in four elections in just two years.
“It’s nothing to do with policy or ideology at this point. It’s character,” Rynhold said.
Few national politicians have had a relationship with Netanyahu more complex and tumultuous than Bennett, who first entered politics 15 years ago as his chief of staff.
Bennett, along with his second-in-command, Ayelet Shaked, helped transform Netanyahu from leader of the opposition to prime minister.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a political statement in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem on May 30.
Bennett named his first son after Netanyahu’s brother Yoni, who died in the famed 1976 raid in Entebbe, Uganda, to free more than 100 Israelis taken hostage by Palestinian hijackers at the international airport there.
But in 2008, both Bennett and Shaked abruptly abandoned their positions at Netanyahu’s side. Although they refused to officially explain their departure, it was widely reported in the Israeli media that the two had run afoul of Netanyahu’s wife, Sara.
When Bennett returned to the Knesset in 2013 to take over the pro-settler Jewish Home party, Sara Netanyahu submitted a handwritten request to Israeli authorities asking for damaging intelligence on Bennett and his wife, Gilat, according to Israel’s Channel 12. Another Channel 12 report said Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for a smear campaign against the Bennett family with a series of articles on the Israeli news site Walla, including one about Gilat Bennett working as a pastry chef at a non-kosher restaurant.
Netanyahu’s alleged manipulation of his friendship with the site’s former owner is now at the center of one of the corruption cases against the prime minister. The Netanyahus have denied any wrongdoing.
Despite the acrimony, Bennett served under Netanyahu as economy and religious services minister from 2013 to 2015 and as education minister from 2015 to 2019. In that year, Netanyahu fired him and Shaked, who was justice minister, without explanation.
Now Bennett is on the cusp of replacing his former boss, leading a bare-majority government that would include left-wing members and rely on support from the Islamist party Ra’am. Bennett would serve as Israel’s next prime minister, according to terms of the deal reported by Israeli media, to be succeeded in that role by Lapid, at a later date.
Political observers say a government composed of such diverse members may be forced to bypass controversial issues, such as reviving peace negotiations with the Palestinians or expanding settlements in occupied territories. Instead, conservative and liberal parties are likely to focus on a consensus agenda of improving the economy, health care and education.
“It may be that they can finally take a more national view,” Rynhold said. “At the end of the day, they are all pragmatic.”
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