In memory, the year 2005 seems light years away: Joseph Ratzinger becomes Pope Benedict XVI, Erwin Teufel resigns from Baden-Württemberg as CDU Prime Minister, Munich fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer is murdered.
However, 2005 was also the year in which Benjamin Netanyahu took over the chair of Likud, after having led it for a short time in the 1990s. Since then he has been at the head of the right-wing conservative party.
A few years ago, Philipp Missfeld, who died young, said in a Phoenix TV round that his CDU was a kind of Likud sister party. A comparison that lagged in many ways. With regard to the electoral behavior of the base, however, Missfelder was not entirely wrong.
72.5 percent of Likud members are staunch on Netanyahu
Aside from Netanyahu, there have only been four men to head the Likud, founded in 1977, as party leader. The approximately 115,000 party members are extremely loyal. This was shown again on Thursday.
Although Netanyahu was unable to make two clear elections for himself and his party within a year, and although the Israeli judiciary charged him with bribery, fraud, and infidelity, the 70-year-old clearly won the party presidential election against his challenger Gideon Saar.
72.5 percent of those entitled to vote voted for Netanyahu, the former Minister of the Interior and Education Saar received 27.5 percent of the vote. With this strong result, Netanyahu is now campaigning as the top candidate of his Likud - it is the third within twelve months.
"These elections will be a festival of hate, violence and disgust"
If the governments - and thus the parliamentary majorities of the 20th, 21st and 22nd Knesset - had held in recent years, Israeli voters would not have been called on until 2027 to approve their 120 representatives for the 23rd Knesset determine. Now they have to vote on March 2, 2020.
According to surveys, it has looked like a standoff so far: Neither the right-wing religious camp around Netanyahu, nor the left-wing opposition parties and the blue-and-white center alliance of ex-chief of staff Benny Gantz and Jair Lapid have a governable majority of 61 seats.
Corinna Kern / REUTERS
Benny Gantz and Jair Lapid have not yet had a majority
Lapid already warned of the dirtiest election campaign ever before the Likud election. "Make sure your kids won't be near the TV in the next three months," he said recently. "These elections will be a festival of hate, violence and disgust."
Netanyahu resigns from four ministerial posts until New Year's
Netanyahu should not focus entirely on the election campaign until mid-January. The accused executive prime minister must survive turbulent days and make strategic decisions:
- By New Year's Eve, he will step down from the four ministerial posts that he currently holds alongside his prime ministerial office and name successors for health, agriculture, diaspora and welfare. Officially, Netanyahu is responding to the pressure in the corruption affair. But the experienced tactician may also want to secure loyalty with the promotion of four politicians.
- He'll need it soon after. By January 1, Netanyahu will have to decide whether to ask Parliament for immunity from law enforcement. Should he submit this request and the MPs should vote on it, previous promotions to ministerial posts would certainly not be harmful.
Now that he has finally transformed the Likud into a one-man party and his challenger has sworn allegiance to him - for the moment - after the election results have been published, Netanyahu has little to fear politically.
Especially not from the left camp. It is busy destroying itself and breaking up into splinter troops. According to the latest polls, even the time-honored, once hegemonic workers' party did not even make it to the Knesset in March.
Rather, a showdown between the rule of law and Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected. The result will determine the future of Israel for many years to come.