As Netanyahu looks at the fifth election, does he lead Bennett into the arms of Lapid?

There are twelve days left until Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as president to form a government, and everything is really blocked.

The Knesset is frozen after Netanyahu lost the plenary vote on Monday that denied Likud a majority in parliament’s parliamentary committee and led committee chairman Likud MK Miki Zohar to refuse to convene it.

It is a technical, procedural matter, but it has far-reaching implications for the prime minister. Without the arrangements committee, no other committees can be set up, which makes it impossible for parliament to do its job.

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For Netanyahu, the loss of the committee means that he cannot change the electoral system to allow the single race of the prime minister he is calling for, which he claims will ultimately determine who will be Israel’s next prime minister after four undecided elections.

Except for a dramatic political surprise (always a possibility for Netanyahu), the next 12 days may pass without a functioning Knesset.

In the last three days. the parliament building was shrouded in a strange silence, but for Netanyahu, this did not stop the will to continue the fight. He has launched the next phase in his fight for a decisive victory and is preparing for the fifth election.

The inexplicable attack on Naftali Bennett

“Contrary to what you claim, Naftali, you are doing your best to torpedo a right-wing government,” Netanyahu told chambers on Wednesday in comments to all major television stations.

There have been repeated abstentions in recent days by Likud officials and Netanyahu himself. Bennett is “demolishing the right,” preventing a right-wing coalition, and, as Netanyahu said, preparing to lead a left-wing [Yair] Lapid, Meretz and the labor force supported by the Common List … While we have the mandate, you have reached an agreement with Lapid on a left and far left government.

“You said, ‘Bring it [Betzalel] Smotrich and Gideon [Sa’ar]Netanyahu said to Bennett, “but there is a solution that does not depend on them, a solution in which the public decides who the prime minister is, and that solution depends only on you.”

Netanyahu’s accusation is a strange one. Mathematically, this is not true: Netanyahu’s right-wing religious coalition, including Bennett’s Yamina, has only 59 seats, two of the fewest of which Netanyahu has to form a government.

Netanyahu’s intense efforts to bring either Ra’am or New Hope to his side failed miserably, but none of the failures was Bennett’s fault. The leader of religious Zionism Smotrich removed the agreement of Ra’am and his own Sa’ar of New Hope who told Netanyahu not to bother trying to remove him from Lapid. Meanwhile, Bennett announced last week that he would support a Netanyahu-led government when it could be found. He then voted with Likud on the Arrangement Committee bill.

Bennett expressed doubts about the draft law on direct elections, which he believes would unjustifiably empower the prime minister at the expense of parliament, and marked a fundamental change in the rules of the game in the middle of the game. He came out against her on Wednesday. But Netanyahu would have missed the vote to pass the measure even if Bennett had supported it.

Netanyahu is right that Bennett covered his bets, refused during the campaign to engage in a Netanyahu-led government, and has at least one obvious reason to prefer a government with Lapid instead of a Likud (a first round). minister). But none of this changes the painful fact that Bennett was not the cause of Netanyahu’s electoral problems. At every step – at least until Wednesday – Bennett voted with Netanyahu.

Why, then, is Bennett the only target of his anger? Why did Netanyahu leave him as a right-wing “pine head” at the head of a left-wing government or mockingly suggested that he would consider letting Bennett spend a weekend at the prime minister’s residence to pass on his “lust for power?

The fifth choice

The answer is simple: he decided to go to the fifth election.

To get there, Netanyahu must first make sure that Lapid fails to form a coalition after it fails.

When Netanyahu’s term ends in 12 days, President Reuven Rivlin will have several options available by law, including extending Netanyahu’s term by another 14 days; giving Lapid the mandate of leader of the largest party, giving him 28 days to try to form his own coalition; or throwing the baton to the Knesset as a whole, triggering a 21-day period in which any MK who can win a support vote of 61 MK can become prime minister. At the end of the last 21-day period, if no one has succeeded in forming a government, the Knesset will automatically dissolve and call new elections.

This sequence is vital to understanding Netanyahu’s plan and Lapid’s impending challenge: Netanyahu, then (if the president chooses) Lapid, then the entire Knesset has a chance.

Netanyahu seems resigned to the fact that he will not get a majority for the formation of a government or the re-election of the March 23 race by a direct vote for prime minister.

Now he must stop Lapid from succeeding where he is sure he will fail.

The campaign against Bennett has only one goal: to scare him into a coalition with Lapid. It’s a taste of Likud’s upcoming campaign against Yamina, which Bennett knows could decimate his party at the polls.

Netanyahu seems to believe that portraying Bennett as an enemy of the “power-hungry” right will scare leader Yamina away from a stoned left-wing government. He seems to believe that mentioning the common list of the Arab majority will hurt Bennett, even after Likud’s heavy run of the Islamist Ra’am party in the past two weeks – and even after Netanyahu’s call for Ra’am’s leader, Mansour Abbas, who is seeking support for the direct election bill shortly before his speech on Wednesday, is beating Bennett.

Critical point

Netanyahu’s strategy is a smart one. Bennett and Sa’ar (and Smotrich) have far more reason to fear a new election than Netanyahu. Each could be deleted from the Knesset in the next vote. It is logical, therefore, to try to scare them with this possibility, to do everything possible to pull them without a coalition to the abyss and see if they do not come. In the worst case, Likud can focus his campaign in the next race on decimating the two right-wing competitors.

But there is a tipping point that Netanyahu does not see. He is so accustomed to playing the game to the most unscrupulous and predatory that he cannot realize when he has crossed the line that reverses the effect of his slander campaign. As tyrants and aggressors often learn their suffering, a small amount of pressure can ensure listening, but too much pressure can trigger a sudden and overwhelming comeback.

Netanyahu’s anti-Bennett campaign may have gotten past this point.

The attacks by Netanyahu and other Likud politicians and media surrogates “do not impress me,” Bennett said Wednesday. He says, “If I don’t have a government, no one will have a government; we will have choices – 5 and 6 and 7…. This cannot continue. Israel cannot be held hostage by politicians … While the country wants a government, Netanyahu prefers other elections. I will not let this happen. “

Instead of convincing Bennett that it would be better for Likud than for Lapid, Netanyahu convinced him that he would have to deal with Likud’s anger, in any case, that Netanyahu would try to wipe him out in the next election, regardless of the path he will take now.

This knowledge only makes a coalition with Lapid more attractive. Bennett would have a real chance of winning the prime minister, could get a loan to stabilize the political system and end the cycle of repeated elections, and based on his demands in previous talks with Lapid about a “government of national unity,” he could maintain successfully line up against leftist policies.

It’s a gamble, for sure. But all political coalitions are a gamble, as evidenced by Netanyahu’s own experience with some unstable coalitions in the last decade. If the fire process is to come anyway, he could just as well be in the driver’s seat when it takes place.