The events of the past week have once again proved that the political system in Israel has one axis around which everything revolves.
Benjamin Netanyahu is his name.
Apparently the members of the government were preoccupied with their affairs, but in practice only one thing preoccupied them - a plea bargain, yes or no.
Many of them know that not only Netanyahu's future will be decided these days, but also their own future.
Earlier this week, when media reports equated the feeling that Otto was signing a deal and Netanyahu was resigning from political life, some Likud Knesset members tried to initiate a move that would allow him to continue as party chairman even after retiring from the Knesset. Netanyahu's loyalists in the faction but also others.
To put the Likud in a spin of electing a temporary chairman in the center, and then primaries for the party leadership among the functionaries - such a move could create real chaos, they thought.
But the initiative was torpedoed.
Some of the candidates for the party leadership made it clear that once Netanyahu signs, he must leave immediately.
Those who cannot be a Knesset member cannot be the head of the Likud movement, the initiators were told.
This is because the party's constitution stipulates that the party's chairman is a candidate for prime minister. If he cannot be prime minister, he cannot be the party leader either, they explained and buried the move.
One of the candidates who will not allow the rules to be bent is Israel Katz.
Katz is considered strong in the center.
The only one who can challenge him there is Yuli Edelstein. Certainly not Nir Barkat. If he is elected, Katz will be able to try for a few months to dissolve the government and form another government under his leadership.
But Katz's path will not be easy.
The other candidates will not sit idly by and see him take over the movement through his power at the center.
In recent days, some of them have tried to contact Haim Katz and ask him to demand the position of interim chairman, as the current chairman of the center.
According to the constitution, until the elections are held in the center - the chairman of the center himself serves as a temporary chairman.
It is not certain that Haim Katz will want to go against Israel Katz.
In the past, the two were a common central axis.
But the pressure on him is growing.
The other candidates for the party leadership have made it clear that they are not ready for Netanyahu to remain chairman until the election, but they are also not ready for a person who intends to run for the party leadership to be elected as interim chairman.
Their main concern is from creeping into a government that will leave them out.
The same candidates informed Israel Katz that they were not willing to run for both the interim chairman and the permanent chairman and even threatened that this might dismantle the Likud.
Katz, meanwhile, is not convinced by the threats.
His election campaign against members of the center will begin a second after Netanyahu signs, if he does.
If elected, the other senior Likud members will announce that any political negotiations conducted by Katz will not be acceptable to them, and that he is acting without authority. Hence the road to chaos, perhaps even division, is very short.
Lapid's new red line
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and successor Prime Minister Yair Lapid said this week that in their opinion there is no reason to dismantle the coalition, since despite its complexity it is functioning quite well, and therefore it must remain in its current composition. Torch does not have and could not have a coalition of a different kind. Levant yes. Therefore, his remarks that the current government has moved from a status of "no choice", as he defined it a few months ago, to a status of a "good functioning government" - not very surprising. After all, in any other government he will lose the primacy. The rare coincidence that allowed him to form a government of 61 MKs and head it with only six seats in his lap, would not be relevant in any other coalition composition.
Therefore, more than the words of Bennett and Lapid, it was interesting to hear the words of Gideon Saar and Eilat Shaked. Or rather their silence. Not for nothing that they were silent. There is an appreciation in both parties that the two, along with other elements on the right and with new hope, have decided to be coordinated in everything related to the political developments in the Likud if Netanyahu resigns. The next chairman of the Likud may be their entry ticket back to the mother party. In exchange for the prime minister's throne, the Likud chairman will grant pardons to boys who have left the right-wing bloc, forgive them of the past sins of the current government and welcome them to the Likud. This situation will give victory to all parties: the Likud upon its return to power, and the refugees to the right and new hope - a political horizon that is so lacking now.
In this context, another name in the Likud-led primaries that has been somewhat forgotten overseas is Gilad Ardan.
Timing is certainly not something for him.
Still moving with the family to New York, getting used to the new environment and educational institutions, language and culture, and then folding and running between branches and weddings - this is not something he planned to do now.
And yet the opportunity to occupy the Likud leadership, the first to do so after the Netanyahu era - will probably leave him no choice.
Arden may be not only the preferred candidate for Likud members but also for Bennett and Shaked.
Although he came from the rival party, when an ambassador to the UN maintained stateliness and for Bennett provided the goods. Of the Likud candidates, Bennett would have preferred Arden, even if the two eventually find themselves on both sides of the barricade.
Lapid internalized the changes and tectonic changes in the coalition and has already marked the next enemy, namely the next glue in the days after Netanyahu: the Religious Zionist Party. An anti-Zionist party like Balad defined it this week, when asked why it filed an appeal against Simcha Rotman's citizenship law, which was approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation. Even the Labor Party did not object but abstained.
Lapid may have forgotten that only a moment ago his senior partners Bennett and Shaked were partners in the same anti-Zionist party, and they too forgot to comment on this this week.
Lapid drew a red line.
He will be ready for the expansion of the government, probably also for negotiations with the Likud without Netanyahu - and all this only so that religious Zionism will not be part of the package. A catalyst for the dissolution of the government, but an opportunity to drive a wedge inside the right-wing camp. Netanyahu is the main glue of the coalition, but also of the opposition.
Bargaining card - audience love
The tens of thousands of donors to the crowdfunding campaign to cover Netanyahu's legal expenses do not support the former prime minister's blind support. For them, this sentence is extremely important. Many of them joined the Likud support from other parties, sometimes even from the opposing camp, just because of the trial. Because of the opportunity to clean stables. Because of the problematic conduct, in their opinion, of senior law enforcement officials.
The feeling is that the Netanyahu trial, since it began, has begun to supply the goods in this area. Research methods at angles. Dismissal of witnesses. Controversial evidence in the main charges. Indictment amended several times, and indictments deleted and replaced. The prevailing opinion among them is that the longer the trial lasts, the more failures will be revealed and exposed, and all the rough seams that make up the full and distorted picture will be revealed.
A plea deal will cut short the process while in Ivo. But worse is that the next prime minister, any prime minister, will already learn the lesson. Be more submissive and much more obedient to the justice system. Netanyahu's removal from public life will be a milestone for all who follow him. Conveying a message that one does not mess with this system. Whoever wants to make a change may be able to start, but the end will be like that of his predecessors - Olmert and Netanyahu.
With Olmert, it was much easier for them.
After the Second Lebanon War, the prime minister's popularity plummeted, and in polls his party stood for a single-digit figure.
Only a few seats above the number of seats the current prime minister receives.
When the police investigations opened, Olmert's political power could no longer stand him, and his government collapsed.
Netanyahu not only did not fall in the popularity index, but also rose during the investigations and trial.
Netanyahu understood the lesson following Olmert's conviction and therefore insisted on remaining in the system and not retiring.
Better as a prime minister, but if not helped - at least an alternate prime minister or at least an opposition leader.
Netanyahu realized that his popularity was a card that he could draw in the moment of truth, a moment that is taking shape these days.
On the luggage?
Arden,
In the end, it's a personal decision
And Netanyahu also saw how Olmert surrendered and withdrew even before the indictment was filed against him, and remained virtually without means and without defense.
And decided that it would not happen to him, so he insisted on staying.
And there was another thing he saw in Olmert.
How to take a prime minister, charge him with three cases and five counts, and how, despite the resounding acquittals for the most part, he goes into a lengthy prison sentence.
As with Netanyahu, Olmert also had three cases in which he was charged: the Investment Center, the money envelopes (Talansky) and Rashontours.
While Netanyahu was charged with only three counts, Olmert on five: bribery, fraud, breach of trust, false registration in corporation documents and receiving anything fraudulently under aggravated circumstances.
The Jerusalem District Court acquitted Olmert in almost all sections of all cases, except for the offense of breach of trust in the Investment Center case.
The sentence handed down to him was a suspended sentence and a fine, however the Supreme Court reversed the decision, added a number of minor charges, of which bribery was not one, and sentenced him to eight months of actual imprisonment.
Netanyahu, who is apparently genuinely convinced he did nothing wrong, knows that it is not enough to prove that there was no bribery in the 4000 case - and he probably does - and that a smaller charge, such as fraud in one of the other cases, is enough for district or Supreme Court justices to actually sentence him. He also sees his supporters send him to fight to the end, and even raising a lot of money for him, he enjoys and gets excited about the support, but knows that within the walls of the prison he will sit alone. Netanyahu's dilemma is a test of leadership: if he stays to lead a public, to lead a way, whatever the price, or he prefers to retire and make his home. Leave the struggles or surrender to others.
While Netanyahu snatches from his fans, the spokesman Avichai Mandelblit is also criticized by his supporters. From any agenda, gatekeepers are important only if they fulfill their destiny to persecute the right.
And on the sidelines: The Minister of Health attended a press conference this week at which the new drug basket was unveiled and seemed full of constant pleasure.
He managed to bring his liter of meat to the community to which he belongs, when the committee approved voice change treatments for transgender people.
While everyone's health minister promotes progressive agendas and smiles from ear to ear, diabetics will have to spend a fortune on Osmic to lead a normal life, and multiple myeloma patients and Huntington's will continue to lead their lives without proper drugs at a reasonable price.
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