Last week, after Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced their decision to dissolve the Knesset and advance the election, I asked Reuven Rivlin if he had thought, during the traditional photo shoot of the swearing-in of the government, that it would last only a year.
Rivlin smiled and replied, "The truth is I did not believe it would last even this year."
The tenth president of the State of Israel, who has since parted ways with the Mishkan in Jerusalem in July last year, at the end of seven years in office, declared himself silent - agreed to give me a special interview that will be published in full in my new book "Rubbing".
The book, which will be published next week, deals with the functioning of the legislature from the point of view of a journalist who has wandered in the Knesset for 31 years.
Following the political drama that took place last week, I returned to Rivlin and asked him if he thought Bennett and Lapid's decision to dissolve the Knesset was committed to reality.
"They had no other choice," he ruled, "it is impossible to lead a government when there is no majority in the Knesset. They both wanted to end this chapter in a dignified manner and not as those being blackmailed by a few individual Knesset members."
The main part of the interview took place a few months ago in his new office in Jerusalem.
It was a different conversation from all the dozens of meetings I had with him during the years he was President of the State, Speaker of the Knesset, Minister of Government and Member of the Knesset.
This time we talked in private, without the presence of speakers and assistants.
Despite his age (82), Rivlin is as sharp as ever, much more liberated than he was during his presidency.
Suddenly I noticed that I was not addressing him as "Mr. President" but I went back to calling him "Ruby", as in those long years, before he was elected president.
From carriers to carriers
The past year, in which the coalition was dependent on individual votes, brought to the public consciousness MKs who might otherwise have remained anonymous in the day-to-day gray work of the plenum. Individual MKs from the coalition, who allowed themselves to ignore the decisions of their parties and acted independently, will be required to return the mandate.
"I oppose legislation that would allow the removal of a Knesset member who did not vote according to the faction's decision, because it would infringe on the freedom of action of elected officials," he says.
And what about Justice Minister Gideon Saar's initiative to enact the "defendant law" at this time, according to which a person who has been indicted will not be able to form a government?
"This is definitely a value law and important to be enacted, but not at the present time when the Knesset dissolves. The current legal situation is due to a mistake that happened with the repeal of the law for direct election of the prime minister, "It states that the Deri-Pinhasi rule (that is, a minister in the government must resign if an indictment is filed against him; GA) does not apply to a prime minister."
Find a listening ear.
Putin, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Are you concerned about the deterioration that has taken place in the past year in the level of discourse in the Knesset?
"Very. The discourse in the Knesset has always been political, but the problem is that today, unlike in the past, the public leaders who are supposed to be the leaders are not fulfilling their role. They do not know where to go but want to ask the opinion of the public who elected them. "He wants to be re-elected and therefore he wants to hear what the electorate wants - the face of the generation is turned into the face of the dog, and this is what our leaders look like."
Do you liken our politicians to dogs?
The owners of the additions said 'the face of public leaders is like the face of a dog'. Anyone who has a dog knows that when he goes out to talk to him he always goes in front of the owner, as long as he knows where the owner wants to go. "Forward, and sometimes he goes back. The dog does not know where his owner wants to go, so he lowers his head and tail to see what his owner plans to do. That is, the owner is the one to lead and decide where his face is headed."
Why do you think some elected officials dare to speak rudely, curse and slander their opponents?
"The deterioration in the level of discourse is due to the fact that people need political power. In the past, public leaders did not take seriously the words of people with extremist positions. When the leader of this, Rabbi Meir Kahana, was elected to the Knesset, The leaders of those years, Ben-Gurion and Begin, even though they quarreled and insulted each other, wanted the good of the state.
"Once the Knesset elected people who have the ability to contribute to society, today Knesset members blatantly treat their opponents because they believe that the public will only value them if they express themselves sharply and point to their opponents as traitors. Public leaders, unfortunately, instead of pointing to achievements "The failure of their opponents. The Knesset loses the people's trust because it cannot make decisions. In this way, the deterioration deepens to the point of endangering democracy."
Is this why young and talented people are reluctant to jump into the political pool?
"Once the public wanted to choose people who proved their abilities. Today they are not required to prove skills but only their loyalty to the leader of their party. Some people did not know their name before being in the Knesset, nor will they remember their name after they cease to be MKs.
We have now reached a situation where the silent majority did not even come to the polls on Election Day to vote, and says that the Knesset is not worthy. "
Is the situation in which a politician like Naftali Bennett, who headed a party that won only seven seats in the election, served for about a year as prime minister, is not distorted?
"Once upon a time there were two blocs in the country - of Mapai led by Ben-Gurion and of the Herut movement led by Begin, and then Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres stood opposite each other.
When the law of direct election was enacted in 1992, I believed that it would bring about the stability of the government, but instead it harmed the political system, because it created a sectoral system that the state is less interested in, but mainly the sector to which its heads belong.
The only question before their eyes is how the system will take care of them.
"Take for example the Arab public, which has never been able to unite into one list, and did so only after the Knesset raised the blocking percentage. Today we have sectors or tribes in the country that say they also have a state, while the tribes should belong to the state. In the past, there was only one bloc shuffling, and that is the Likud with only 30 seats, while the other bloc crashed. "
The duty of supervision of the Knesset
Rivlin never hid his opinion on Israeli politics, especially during his term as president, and today he looks at those fighting for prime minister and longs for new, refreshing figures.
Israel, in his opinion, suffers from a leadership crisis, no less.
"Many in the public say that if the state does not interest the leaders - why should the leaders interest me? I am annoyed by the cooling law, which prevents senior officers from the rank of major general and above from joining politics for three years. "They could enter politics and contribute their ability and experience."
Today he was not assigned.
Kahana,
Let's talk about Norwegian law. Is there no exaggeration in the use made of it? In the current Knesset, there are more than 20 new MKs who entered the Knesset through this law. Do you not think this is an unnecessary waste of millions of shekels?
"In my opinion, Norwegian law is invalid for the simple reason that such a sweeping law makes Knesset members who entered thanks to it without independents. The independence of elected officials is a fundamental condition for the proper existence of democracy."
In light of your extensive parliamentary experience, do the Knesset have the tools, capacity and means to maintain real oversight of the functioning of the government and its ministries?
"The Agranat Committee, set up following the failures of the Yom Kippur War, reprimanded the Knesset at the time for not presenting to the prime minister the question of why you did not recruit reservists on the eve of the war. That is. A Knesset that relinquishes its authority to ask, examine and investigate does not fulfill its role.
"For example, the role of the Knesset was to ask before the disaster in Lag B'Omer last year in Meron - in which 45 men and children were killed and 145 people were injured - how you can hold a celebration in Meron without restricting the movement of people.
In other words, there are issues that are not only the Knesset's right to know, but also its duty. "
Do you think there will ever be a constitution for Israel?
"David Ben-Gurion understood that we have to pay lip service on the constitution, but we will not have a constitution. All the prime ministers who served after him understood this and they also paid lip service on the constitution. The reason there will be no constitution is that the Arabs will not agree, because they claim "Israel must be a state of all its citizens and not just a Jewish and democratic state. In addition, the ultra-Orthodox demand clarification in law on the question of who is a Jew, which is also disputed. The consideration that prevented the constitution from being enacted for years was everything political."
Between Moscow and Washington
In February 2016 it was reported in the media that Rivlin had decided to cancel his state visit to Australia to fly to Moscow in order to meet urgently with President Putin.
Sources at the President's House then claimed that Rivlin made the decision after a meeting with then-Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he made it clear to him that the meeting with Putin was more important.
Why was it so important to Netanyahu that you actually fly to a meeting with Putin in the Kremlin? What was the topic of conversation in the meeting between you two?
"My visit to Moscow was at the request of the Air Force Commander, Major General Amir Eshel. At the meeting, I told Putin that I had come to speak on behalf of the Air Force Commander on a topical issue that is important to both countries." From the ground by Russian soldiers stationed there.
I told Putin that our pilots usually carry out their mission, and when missiles are fired at them from the ground, they return fire.
It is clear to us that the shooters from the ground were Russian soldiers because we know that the air defense system in Syria is run by Russia.
"I told him I do not know why the Russian soldiers fired on our planes - they may not have obeyed your orders? Putin did not answer me directly but understood what I said. He said a sentence that today, against the background of the war between Russia and Ukraine, takes on great significance: "Very much with the American leaders. They must know, and if they do not know, you must make it clear to them that I too have red lines, and I will in no way agree that they will take over the Crimea and the Black Sea, and if they cause me problems I will have to respond."
"I told him that Israel's foreign policy is determined by three principles: the first is our relations with the United States, the second is also our relations with the United States, and the third principle is our relations with the United States."
Over the years, there have been several meetings with President Putin. How were you impressed with his personality?
"The conversations between us were in Russian. A Russian translator who is fluent in Hebrew translated his words, and my words were translated by our ambassador to Russia. In the five meetings we had, three at the Presidential Palace in Jerusalem and two in the Kremlin, we had good chemistry. Putin has a sense of humor. "I see. I was also impressed that he does not like to hear boring things."
And what lesson should Israel learn from the fact that no country in the world has sent its troops to Ukraine in its war against Russia - that we can only rely on ourselves?
"Israel must rely only on itself. Our alliance with the United States allows us to maintain our strength and power with the understanding that we are a strategic asset.
"Countries do not want to interfere in the wars of other countries."
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