Funny list of requirements.
Likud representatives in preparation for the formation of the government (Photo: Reuven Castro)
The list of "Likud demands in the coalition negotiations", as published by the party in its official announcement on Tuesday evening, was a particularly funny event.
In the field of law, Likud demands, among other things, "reform to guarantee governance" and "strengthening the position of the Knesset and restoring the proper balance between the authorities."
In the field of culture and sports, among other things, the claim for "encouraging original productions, including on Zionist and heritage issues" is mentioned.
In the field of settlements, "the curbing of illegal construction and the taking over of areas C" and "regulating the young settlement" appear.
Why is this list of requirements funny?
First of all, because it is not clear from whom exactly the Likud demands the execution of this list, when the next prime minister is Binyamin Netanyahu, and how is this list going to be used by the party in the coalition negotiations? Will Netanyahu enter the negotiation room and tell Itamar Ben Gabir or Bezalel Smotrich or Aryeh Deri that he won't enter the government with them if they don't promote the overcoming clause?
And in general, if this list expresses the Likud's worldview, why didn't he carry it out for so many years in which he led the country?
When Ben Gvir and Smotrich come up with such a list, one can understand the claim according to which they walked around for many years with a great desire to change, and with little ability to do it.
But Netanyahu's Likud?
Opposite economic concepts.
Smotrich and Deri at the swearing in of the 25th Knesset, November 15, 2022 (Photo: Reuven Castro)
And that's exactly the point.
The Likud became under Binyamin Netanyahu a kind of stock market skeleton.
Whoever "buys" it, i.e. enters into a partnership with him, determines what will be in it.
A partnership with Yesh Atid in 2013 yields one reference to the ultra-Orthodox world, a partnership with Torah Judaism and Shas yields the opposite reference. A connection with Tzipi, Livni or Kahlon will bring a certain policy vis-à-vis the court, a connection with Smutritz or Gafni will bring an opposite policy. So in the economic field, so In the legal field, so in the settlement field.
It is precisely for this reason that Netanyahu chose not to publish a platform, on the eve of the elections, and not to promise anything.
When Yishi Cohen of the website "Kachr HaShabbat" asked him about his plans in regards to the judicial system, he replied: "I am going to ask to establish an orderly framework that will examine things in a responsible and balanced manner."
What it means?
is nothing.
The only clear thing that could be understood from Netanyahu in this election campaign was that if he wins it, he intends to be prime minister instead of the people who were there before.
And what will he do with it?
And what will happen in the court system?
confidently?
in settlement?
In the Jewish identity of the state?
We won't know until he takes office.
We caught Naftali Bennett for wholesale breach of promises.
Netanyahu didn't even bother to promise.
Take, for example, Yoav Galant, who, according to publications, is Netanyahu's leading candidate for the position of Minister of Defense.
But a few years ago Gallant spoke with deep inner conviction that "a Palestinian state is an Israeli need as much as it is a Palestinian need", that "we must grant the Palestinians territorial continuity" and that "it makes no sense for us to sit in densely populated places with a Palestinian population".
Moments after switching to Likud, he became a party to the record, swore allegiance to the settlement, and pledged: "No to a Palestinian state. It is not possible to have more than one state west of Jordan."
Is it possible to know in advance what his policy will be as security minister?
Not really.
And what about the Ministry of Finance and the idea of taking two people - Smotrich and Deri - who hold opposite economic worldviews and dividing the term between them?
Forget the fact that changing a finance minister every two years is giving Haltora a bad name.
But to take these two and divide the term between them, it reminds of the two who argued with each other, one wanted to travel from Tel Aviv to the north, the other wanted to travel from Tel Aviv to the south, and in the end they decided on a compromise: first they would travel an hour to the north, then they would make a U-turn and travel an hour to the south
Netanyahu had no problem with the destruction of the settlements.
The disengagement plan (Photo: GettyImages)
And since it is not really clear what Netanyahu wants to do, and since history shows that Netanyahu knows how to act even against the basic worldviews of the national camp, it makes sense that people like Smotrich, who seek to promote the ideology of the right, would want to make sure that they have influence at as many intersections as possible where it will be received in the four years The following are the important decisions.
Because with all the desire for a government led by Netanyahu to be formed, it is impossible to forget that the governance problems in the Negev grew under Netanyahu, and the disturbances in the cities involved in the days of the "Guardian of the Walls" were under Netanyahu, and the Palestinians' takeover of the Si territories, which is the biggest failure here on the way to establishing a Palestinian state, has grown with Netanyahu, and it is quite clear that if there are not enough factors to step him on his right foot all the time, there is great doubt as to whether anything will change.
And for those who wonder where the fear comes from, I recommend going, in this context, to page 341 of Netanyahu's new book and reading the 12 pages he devoted to describing his conduct regarding the disengagement plan.
I read this chapter again and again and I did not find a single word from Netanyahu that says he had a problem with the destruction of the settlements, with the demolition of the houses and with the uprooting of 8,500 Jews from their land.
His only problem, as he himself explains, was that we got nothing in return.
that there was no reciprocity.
"We must ensure that Israel leaves Gaza as a victor and not as a vanquished," he quotes what he said to a visiting American diplomatic delegation.
Even in his letter of resignation from the government - which arrived only a few days before the Shoflis invaded Gush Katif and after some of his votes that helped promote Sharon's plan - Netanyahu explicitly stated where his problem with the disengagement was: "From the first conversation in which you presented your plan to me," he wrote to the Prime Minister , Ariel Sharon, "I told you that I am against a unilateral withdrawal without compensation... I always thought that leaving Gaza was possible with an agreement or with receiving an appropriate compensation, which is not the case here."
And why did he choose not to leave the government when it went to the draconian step of uprooting a region of land for its settlers, its greenhouses and its cemetery?
Because it was important to him to complete economic measures that he led at the time as Minister of Finance.
And not only that he himself chose not to leave the government table.
In his book, he also describes how he convinced the "rebels" group in Likud, those who opposed Sharon's moves, to delay their withdrawal from the coalition as much as possible.
"Without them I would not have been able to pass the budget and the economic reforms that accompanied the Settlements Law," he writes.
approved the parade of flags.
Yehuda Weinstein (Photo: Tali Meyer)
Netanyahu has made a career out of his efforts to prevent all kinds of things that his colleagues on the right wanted to do, and to find someone to drop the case on.
In his book "The Counselor" Yehuda Weinstein tells about one such incident.
"At the beginning of my term, the Prime Minister asked me to prevent the 'March of the Right', the 'March of Flags' as it is called, due to the visit of the American envoy, George Mitchell, to Israel and the disturbances that may result, in his estimation."
Weinstein said that he consulted with the state attorney, the legal advisor to the police, and the director of the High Courts Department to hear their position, and when he understood from them that there was no legal reason to prevent the march, he approved it. "Later," he said, "the prime minister called me and asked me to consider returning "With my decision in view of the political and security circumstances." Riots may break out that will cost human lives, Netanyahu claimed.
Weinstein asked him what he was relying on.
Netanyahu replied that he was the head of the Shin Bet. I explained to him, Weinstein continues, that the police are convinced that they can contain the incident and maintain public order, but if he has other information from the head of the Shin Bet, to ask him to call him.
"'That's what I'll do,' Netanyahu replied. Since then I haven't heard anything from him or the head of the Shin Bet about this matter.
If so, I determined, the parade will march.
Indeed, the parade proceeded as planned and the police knew how to contain the event."
True to his ideology.
Smotrich in a meeting with Netanyahu, November 15, 2022 (photo: official website, Likud Doverot)
And why am I mentioning all this?
Because of what the legions of Netanyahu fans did this week on social networks.
These, backed by some of the Likud supporters in the media (with the exception of Yanon Magal, Shimon Riklin, and sorry if I missed someone else), started a campaign to slander and defame Smotrich, a campaign that was accompanied, almost as always with them, by a campaign of hatred against the habitat of Smotrich, Religious Zionism.
In the last year and a half, this group has turned every kippah wearer who did not curse hard enough the one who was required to curse, into a collaborator with the enemy.
Hate has left dust for everything that the extreme left has said about religious Zionism over the years.
I will not elaborate here on the case of the abusers, nor on the case of their mentors in the media.
I was especially amused by the claim of these and those, that Smotrich behaves like pigs, that he needs to learn modesty and that his demands are excessive, with the hardest curse of all: Smotrich is the new Bennet.
Why did that make me laugh?
Because if you are looking for a factor in Israeli politics that reminds you of Bennett, Smotrich is not the right candidate, but rather Netanyahu.
You can love Smotrich and you can hate him, you can support his positions and you can oppose them, but I think his supporters and opponents will agree on one thing: this is a man who is loyal to his ideology, and everyone can be sure that he will not surprise his voters.
And what about Netanyahu and Bennett?
Both promised, and broke their promises.
They both signed pledges and threw them in the trash.
Both of them taught us their worldview in depth, and acted contrary to it.
It is impossible to criticize Bennett for choosing to sit with the left - and such criticism has been heaped upon him here, in this column, in the last year and a half - and to ignore Netanyahu's decisions to entrust the justice file and the management of negotiations with the Palestinians to Tzipi Livni, and to give the file The security for Ehud Barak, and to put in the hands of Moshe Kahlon the right of veto on any correction in the judicial system.
Netanyahu was an excellent teacher.
Naftali Bennett (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Netanyahu was an excellent teacher for Bennett.
In every government he established, the first thing he did was look for leftists to sit with him - and give them the keys to torpedo all the decisions that are important to the right.
And yes, there is quite a point of departure between those who are now furiously attacking Smotrich and those who attacked him when he did not agree to cooperate with Netanyahu's plan to form a government that would be based on Ra'am.
And something more needs to be said about the childish behavior of Netanyahu's supporters - some on the radio and television channels affiliated with him, and some on the Internet - as if the members of the religious Zionist party are trying to steal something.
First, after Netanyahu gave the position of Minister of Defense to Naftali Bennett when it was with three mandates, and to Avigdor Lieberman when it was with five mandates, he himself stated that this was a legitimate demand.
Second, we all know very well that if Netanyahu had succeeded in plucking some members of the Knesset from the "state camp" in order to add them to his coalition, he would have given them half the kingdom with the promise of serving as the alternate president of the country, and none of the shouters would have compensated here.
Beyond that, Netanyahu also knows that with all due respect to the emotions of his fans in regards to the criticism of Smotritz's "lack of modesty", in coalition negotiations there is no "deserving" and "not deserving".
A coalition negotiation is like a negotiation between a buyer and a seller in a bunch of tomatoes in the market.
The tomato is sold for four shekels per kilo, not because that is what it is worth.
It is sold for four shekels because the seller wanted to get more for it and the buyer wanted to pay less for it, and they met somewhere in the middle.
Everyone knows the rules of the game.
And as mentioned, given Netanyahu's history and the ambiguity he maintains regarding his plans for the emerging government, it is understandable that anyone who cares about promoting something, makes sure to have as many hands on the wheel as possible to make sure things actually happen.
The insistence on keeping him was costly.
Netanyahu during the swearing in of the 25th Knesset (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Last week, following the column in which I wrote that the next coalition will have to fulfill, without excuses, everything that the various parties promised to the voter, I came across several responses that deserve an answer.
In one of them, loyal reader Yair Netanyahu asked me, referring to my previous call for his father to retire: "Second, so Netanyahu should not retire in your opinion?".
And since this is an important question, I will answer it seriously.
I thought and even wrote in the past that Benjamin Netanyahu would do well if he stepped aside.
Why did I think so?
Due to several issues, the main one was that time after time he failed to turn the right-wing majority in the public into something that could be exercised in favor of forming a government.
So it's true, it was Gideon Sa'ar and Avigdor Lieberman who chose to boycott it, and I don't have a good word to say about which of them in this context, but the bottom line is that what happened was that the national camp was thrown into the opposition.
I thought that when faced with Netanyahu, a great Israeli patriot, two options: a left-wing government, and a right-wing government led by a Likud person - Netanyahu should have preferred the second option.
The price of Netanyahu's insistence to stay and of the Likud public to keep him cost us dearly, especially during the bad term of the previous government.
So yes, the Likud is a democratic party, it has the right to choose whoever it wants for its leadership, and I have the right to think that the price we paid for that was heavy.
Be that as it may, I am far from being a member of the RLB group (just not Bibi). For evidence, despite all my criticism of Netanyahu, when I went to the elections three weeks ago I knew that when I cast the ballot of religious Zionism I was also choosing Netanyahu for Prime Minister.
Ideas, not people
I've written here before and I repeat it again: I'm not interested in people, I'm interested in promoting ideas.
In this sense, I don't really care if the Prime Minister is called Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich or Osnat Hila Mark.
If Netanyahu is able to promote the ideas of the national camp - I am with him.
I have severe criticism of his various moves in the past, but if now he will make moves to correct the justice system, and build in the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, and stop the Palestinian takeover of the Palestinian Territories, and stop the custom of paying tribute to every two caravans of Jews while across the road Palestinians build whatever comes To them and as much as they want, and he will allow them to continue studying Torah in the fifth year, and he will build Avitar after Bennett, Lapid and Gantz broke their commitment to do it - I applaud him.
As mentioned, everything according to the policy and practice.
So much for the answer to Yair Netanyahu.
And one more small thing.
Several tweeters asked me after the election if I still suggested that Netanyahu go for a plea deal.
Well, I previously wrote my opinion about the Netanyahu cases, and especially about the 2,000 and 4,000 cases which, in my opinion, should never have happened.
And yet, it doesn't matter what I thought about a plea deal, the fact that Netanyahu himself turned to Aharon Barak to help him reach such a deal, shows that he didn't think it was such a bad idea.
It seems to me that Netanyahu also understands that if the worst for him happens, and the legal proceedings against him end in actual prison terms, he will find himself alone in a cell for his actions, while the Twitter warriors who shouted at him to "fight, fight" will continue to tweet under the warm duvet in their bedroom.
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