The past two weeks have breathed new wind into the prime minister's sails. Since the formation of his sixth government, he has not received as much satisfaction as in the past 14 days. Netanyahu has returned to familiar and good territory. The place where he leads and reaps the glory, while his rivals wallow in the dull medium of mediocrity, is their natural place in his opinion. For months, Netanyahu has been dreaming of returning to this field, where not only does he have no competitors, but he is actually the only player. There is no opposition and no media. They all fade away with their black and biased predictions, and evaporate in the face of the reality he creates with his own hands, including the wings of history and all the pyrotechnics that go with it.
Upon his return from New York, Netanyahu spoke with his people and with several Likud ministers, and updated them on developments. The prime minister spoke with his eyes shining, they testified. Finally, not the reform and political quagmire of the coalition and the senseless dialogue with the opposition, but big things. The kind of thing that has led him time and time again to want to conquer the premiership without getting tired. Things that only he, in his opinion, can do at this time.
Ariel Kahane
Peace with Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu said in those talks, is a world-class gamechanger. In contrast to those who try to minimize the achievement, to say that this is an American and Saudi move in which Israel is only a side dish, this agreement, he says, will change the rules of the international game for generations to come. This is not only a peace agreement with the largest and most important Arab country in the world, with which, according to him, the agreement with Egypt is much more important than the agreement with Egypt – partly because Egypt was left alone in the campaign for more than a decade until Jordan also joined the circle of recognition of Israel – the agreement with Saudi Arabia will immediately bring about six more Arab countries to sign a similar agreement with Israel. And not only that Saudi Arabia will declare in the wake of the agreement that the Israeli-Arab conflict is over, which will urge all other Muslim countries and groups in the region to decide which side they stand, Sunnis or Iranian-led extremists. This also includes the Arabs of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
The agreement and its accompanying grandiose projects will place Israel at the center of the global map, as a central hub through which goods will pass through the planned intercontinental railway line, communications data via the data transmission cable that will be deployed, and energy, gas and oil pipelines that will be transferred from Arab and Gulf countries to Europe. The dependence on Israel will be unprecedented – not only because of the existing natural gas sources that many countries such as Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are courting, but also because of other energy sources, such as Saudi oil. Everything will pass through Israel.
Netanyahu explains the advantages of the moves he is promoting, telling his listeners that he has always talked about turning Israel into a regional power. This time it's a world power. There is no European country that will not need Israel. Nor is it an Arab or Gulf country, or even Asian and African. Countries will think twice before voting against Israel at the UN or taking steps against it or trying to restrict its steps in international institutions. Of course, the economic potential is enormous. Everything that passes through it – oil, gas, communications data and commodities – will bring billions and billions of dollars into the country. The entire economy of the country will grow. While there will be no Netanyahu who will reap the rewards, he is the one who is now laying the foundations.
From here, the prime minister moves on to an unconcealed mockery of his opponents - members of the opposition, protest leaders, journalists. Until last week, everyone was speaking in one chorus. Israel has become an allotted in the world. First because of the coalition – a full-fledged right with extremist elements and senior ministers who are boycotted abroad; And later because of the protests against the reform, which threatened to destroy the economy and the alliance between the countries, based on democratic values that were supposedly nullified with the passage of the Reduction of Reasonableness Law.
These forecasts are not intended to warn, Netanyahu says, but to cause damage. Stop the reform even at the cost of burning the country. On the economic level, in military cohesion and in the international arena. But according to him, all their theories collapsed. The economy is growing, all the rating agencies have left the credit rating intact, investors are not fleeing, and now it turns out that in the world as well, we are not only not allocated – but are even being recycled as never before. And it's horrific to them. When they were in power, they couldn't add a single country to the circle of countries that signed the Abraham Accords with us. We, Netanyahu says, brought four. And now we will bring Saudi Arabia and six other countries.
To make matters worse, these events are catching the opposition in its weakest hour since losing an election more than a decade ago. Last week, they watched Netanyahu be received with great respect by US President Joe Biden, including another invitation to the White House by the end of the year. This week they revealed their complete surrender to the protesters. The wild and uninhibited demonstration in front of the worshippers in Dizengoff Square – the vast majority of whom are not religious at all, some of whom are clear supporters of the protest against the reform and visit Kaplan regularly – did not succeed in extracting from them a single word of condemnation against the rioters, or any empathy for the masses whose only sin was that they wanted to come and pray on the holy day.
Both Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz issued statements after Yom Kippur, which consisted mainly of a bunch of sentences that are difficult to connect to a coherent sentence and numerous attacks against Netanyahu, as if he had initiated the prayer event in the square. The reality in which the leaders of these parties are led by a handful of inciters is nothing short of embarrassing. Several Knesset members from these parties were forced for the first time to attack their leaders, in light of the farce. Among them, for example, Gideon Sa'ar, who attacked Lapid. After all, Gantz, the head of his party, cannot be attacked.
Local elections are tearing up the opposition parties, with many municipalities, usually municipalities with high rates of support for center-left parties in the general elections, facing off against each other lists from Yesh Atid and the state camp, with almost no cooperation. A local head-to-head that permeates the relations between delegates at the national level. If at the beginning of the term, and especially after the launch of the legal reform, Yesh Atid and the state camp coordinated measures and even issued joint statements to the media from time to time, today this reality seems like a distant dream.
It is also allowed to praise
With the US authorities' official announcement that Israel had entered the visa waiver program, Netanyahu released a special video praising and praising, especially his government. Efforts to include Israel in the exemption program began in 2017, during Netanyahu's government. The prime minister skipped lightly over the fact that the person who boldly promoted this under his government was then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. She and UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, then interior minister, were the driving force. The same was true of Shaked's term as interior minister during the previous government.
Netanyahu "forgot" to mention Shaked in the visa exemption, just as Naftali Bennett "forgot" to mention Netanyahu's role in the Abraham Accords. This is how they cut ribbons, remembering to give credit only when there is a political need to do so
The person who pushed hard for the final stretch to reach the finish line was National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi. Netanyahu "forgot" to mention Shaked, just as Naftali Bennett "forgot" to mention Netanyahu for his part in the Abraham Accords. That's how the ribbon cutters are – remembering to give credit only when there is a political need to do so.
The problem child
Despite the opposition's dismal situation, the coalition cannot rest on its laurels either. In two weeks, the Knesset session will resume, and with it the troubles will resume: the legal reform, which currently does not have a coalition majority, and the draft law, which will also not exactly fill Likud officials when they are forced to support it.
In the midst of all this, Itamar Ben-Gvir is marked as the weak link. The one who will resign prematurely for political reasons, the constant troublemaker in it. Senior coalition officials accuse Ben-Gvir of uncollegial behavior. It is said that he does not consider political or political constraints, and continues to try to push his agenda by force, often with an unnecessary finger in the eye of his opponents. When Ben-Gvir announced the protest prayer in Dizengoff Square in response to the Yom Kippur riots, his friends in Religious Zionism, the party that ran with him in the last elections, also spoke out against him. Ben-Gvir may have dropped this initiative, but his labeling as the most provocative of the group still stands.
Ben-Gvir sees criticism of him as his obvious advantage vis-à-vis his friends. They come to want and give up, and he comes to impose the agenda for which he was elected. On the conditions of security prisoners, for example, he is not willing to give up under any circumstances, even though everyone is against him. When he demanded assassinations in Judea and Samaria, Netanyahu told him it was not his business, but Yoav Galant's. The same was true when he demanded other things in the field of security. Now, with regard to prisoners, this is his exclusive field. And suddenly they demand that it be discussed in the cabinet. Postpone it because of Passover. After that because of Ramadan, and now because of the holidays. What's next? Postpone because of Hanukkah and the Children's Festival? Not going to happen, as far as he's concerned. He will not allow further rejection. He will not finish his term as national security minister without significantly worsening the conditions of terrorists. Their exclusionary conditions encourage terrorism. A significant proportion of those who visit their relatives in prison become terrorists themselves. They see that prison is not so bad, and sometimes even better than home.
Convinced that he is taking the fire instead of the police commissioner. Ben-Gvir, Photo: Gideon Markowitz
Ben-Gvir has a full stomach not only for the prime minister, but also for his former partners in religious Zionism. Also about their conduct around the promotion of legal reform. Constantly surrender, soften, dialogue endlessly. This way is unacceptable to him. That's not what he's in government for.
Shortly after taking office, in one of his meetings with the police commissioner, Ben-Gvir whispered to him that the greatest luck he had for Shabtai was that he, Ben-Gvir, was the minister in charge. I'm your bulletproof vest, he told him. They are looking for me, not you. I'll be attacked all day and all night, and you'll be let go.
In an interview given by the police commissioner, in which he attacked Ben-Gvir head-on, it seems that Kobi Shabtai internalized the message. The media is so mobilized and biased that no harm will come to him if he attacks the minister in charge of him, and he will not have to pay any price for it. The attack on Ben-Gvir came after he finally and completely understood that he would not receive a fourth year, despite his tremendous efforts to achieve it.
At the outset, Ben-Gvir told him that the key to a fourth year in office lies in advancing the minister's policy. Before Shabtai took office, the police commissioner was not very respected, and after his appointment he was embroiled in the Meron disaster. So far, Shabtai has testified twice before the State Commission of Inquiry. About a year ago, senior police officials accused the police commissioner of taking revenge on all the officers who testified against him and preventing their promotion. Those close to Ben-Gvir believe that the police commissioner's advisers advised him to "give Ben-Gvir's head" to the media in order to escape the committee's terror.
Just two weeks ago, the police commissioner initiated a new salute procedure in the Israel Police, according to which the only minister to whom police officers will have to salute is the minister of national security. This was probably the last act of flattery. When he saw that it wasn't working, he went on the offensive in the media.
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