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subscribersIn making an electoral pact with Avigdor Liberman’s far right Yisrael Beiteinu,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking a huge, possibly game-changing
risk.
The neo-conservative Likud leader’s gamble could boomerang in two
ways: Instead of Likud-Beiteinu throwing the center-left into disarray, it could
reinvigorate it; and the price for using Liberman to maximize Likudcontrolled
Knesset seats could be Liberman using the Likud to supplant Netanyahu as leader
of the Israeli right. To put it bluntly: What the prime minister took on board
as an election-winning master stroke could turn out to be a major political
blunder.
In the run-up to the January 22 election, American political
guru Arthur Finkelstein, who once worked with Netanyahu but now advises
Liberman, convinced the prime minister that as head of a large right-wing
alliance he would be able to kill two birds with one stone. He would be sure to
form the next administration and get a mandate for strong, decisive government,
including possible action against Iran, digging in on the Palestinian question
and changing the electoral system. But Finkelstein now works for Liberman. And
where for Netanyahu the pact has risks, for Liberman it is all win-win. It gives
the radical right-winger an added measure of mainstream legitimacy and a
launching pad for a future run for prime minister.
On paper the deal
looks promising for Netanyahu, too. But it lays him open to a strong challenge
from the center left for making a pact with the radical right that could put
Israel’s brittle democracy at risk, further hurt the weaker classes and strain
relations with the outside world.
Worse for Netanyahu: The pact with the
secular, largely Russian immigrant party jeopardizes the support of observant,
blue-collar Sephardi voters, who make up the Likud’s core constituency. Indeed,
Netanyahu could suffer a double whammy from his erstwhile strategic ally, the
ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas, which will almost certainly pick up disaffected
blue-collar Likud voters and might also prefer a coalition with the center left
to a government dominated by Netanyahu’s neo-con economics and Liberman’s
Russian-immigrant, secular agenda.
There is also the question of
Liberman’s leadership aspirations. There are historical precedents for radical
right-wing movements sweeping to power on the backs of the more conservative
right. And, although for now the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu alliance is only an
electoral pact, the Likud, with its heady brew of far-right Knesset members and
“Feiglinites,” the extremist settler group led by Moshe Feiglin, could be ready
for Liberman.
So why did the normally circumspect Netanyahu agree to
gamble? Initially, he was concerned by rumors that the 89-year-old Shimon Peres
was being cajoled into leaving the presidency to lead a unified center-left
“stop Bibi” campaign. Then the talk was that former prime minister Ehud Olmert
would do it. Netanyahu’s move is designed to minimize the electoral impact of
either scenario by creating the perception of an invincible unified right. He
also hopes the Likud-Beiteinu alliance will enable him to win the election as
head of by far and away the largest party, denying the president any discretion
in deciding who should form the next government.
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