How not to manipulate the presidency

The presidential race raised questions about the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By LESLIE SUSSER
Before the fall: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (right) presents his candidacy for the presidency to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on May 27 (photo credit: FLASH 90)
Before the fall: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (right) presents his candidacy for the presidency to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on May 27
(photo credit: FLASH 90)
THE STORMY, early summer race for president raised questions about money and politics, the vetting of candidates, the voting mechanism; and even whether the largely symbolic office is actually necessary.
But, more significantly, the election raised questions about the judgment of the man who really wields power in the system: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
For reasons that are not yet crystal clear, Netanyahu decided he did not want to see the Likud’s ostensibly shoo-in candidate former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin in the president’s residence and bent over backwards to stop him.
Netanyahu reportedly feared that even if he won the next Knesset election, Rivlin might use his presidential prerogative to ask someone else to form the government.
That does not hold water, however. The president does not have wide discretionary powers, but is bound to choose the Knesset Member “with the best chance of forming a government,” based on the recommendations of the other 119 newly elected or reelected legislators.
Another theory making the rounds was that Rivlin was nixed by Netanyahu’s wife Sara because of a perceived slight. If true, it would be another indication of the undue influence critics claim the unelected Sara Netanyahu wields in senior primeministerial appointments and even affairs of state.
Netanyahu’s first move to block Rivlin was to try to get incumbent President Shimon Peres to extend his term. When that didn’t work, he mulled cancelling the presidency altogether or changing the electoral system to make the leader of the largest party in an election automatically prime minister – taking even the symbolic act of designation out of the president’s hands.
When these bizarre non-starters fell through, Netanyahu began to cast about for potential rival candidates: former justice minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, Infrastructures Minister Silvan Shalom, and former foreign minister David Levy all fleetingly entered the frame only to find the prime minister unable to galvanize enough support for them or to have him change his mind overnight and withdraw his backing.
With the deadline for candidacy submissions about to close, a desperate Netanyahu turned to Nobel Peace Prize laureate, American Jewish author Elie Wiesel – who has not lived in Israel and is not an Israeli citizen. Netanyahu apparently told Wiesel he had lined up enough backing to make him president and that Wiesel had agreed to run. Neither statement was true.
Like Netanyahu’s other efforts, the brief Wiesel chapter ended as an embarrassing farce. The following day, the prime minister phoned Rivlin to tell him he would back him after all.
In analyzing Netanyahu’s obsessive handling of the presidential stakes, commentators across the board questioned his priorities, his judgment, his fears bordering on paranoia, his wife’s undue influence, and his advisers’ competence.
If this was any indication of his modus operandi, what did it say about his handling of the big issues – Iran, peace with the Palestinians, relations with America? Netanyahu’s shilly shallying on the presidency issue could prove a turning point in his hold on the premiership. His reluctance to back the party candidate and subsequent display of ineptitude and inconsistency cost him points in the Likud. In publicly defying him on the proposed electoral amendments, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar signaled readiness to challenge Netanyahu for the party leadership. If he does, he will not be alone.
Worse for Netanyahu, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman detected weakness. He had agreed not to back Rivlin and to support any alternative candidate Netanyahu produced. When in the end Netanyahu nevertheless stumped for Rivlin, a pumped-up Liberman publicly chastised him for his vacillation and lack of credibility – a prelude perhaps to Yisrael Beytenu breaking away from Likud and Liberman mounting a challenge for prime minister.
At the same time, Netanyahu was further weakened by the collapse of his Palestinian strategy. In a revealing interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, his former political adviser Orit Galili-Zucker confirmed what many have long suspected – that the prime minister never intended to advance the twostate solution. She depicted Netanyahu as a leader obsessed with his own political survival rather than the national good and averse to making sweeping peace moves that might fail and cost him his job.
According to Galili-Zucker, to palliate his strong right wing, Netanyahu had planned all along to stall and, by insisting on Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people (a condition he knew they could not accept), have them blamed for the failure to move forward. But international readiness to work with the new Palestinian Fatah-Hamas supported government and America largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the peace effort left him diplomatically high and dry.
That, in turn, severely dented his domestic image as a major league international mover and shaker. With his new administration just over a year old, the prime minister finds himself with little international influence on Iran and isolated on the Palestinian track.
Under pressure from all quarters, Netanyahu veered sharply to the right in an effort to shore up his political base. He backed the announcement of new building plans in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and promised to initiate legislation affirming Israel’s Jewish character. This, however, could exacerbate cracks in the coalition and lead Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua and/or Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid to bolt, triggering new elections.
Ironically, as Peres prepared to step down as president, the countdown to the end of Netanyahu’s premiership may have begun.
AS PRESIDENT, Peres restored the prestige of an institution totally discredited after his predecessor Moshe Katsav’s conviction and imprisonment on rape charges. Katsav also had come to office at a low point in the presidency after Ezer Weizman’s forced resignation for failing to disclose funds he received from a businessman friend.
After rebuilding confidence in the institution, Peres used his personal standing to play roving peace ambassador for Netanyahu, trying to convince world leaders that the prime minister was serious about accommodating the Palestinians.
Peres made a genuine effort to work with Netanyahu; the two men held regular meetings, most of which also were attended by Sara Netanyahu.
Peres, however, on the understanding that Netanyahu wanted to take the process forward, also made peace moves of his own.
In 2010-2011, he held four secret meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and, in July 2011, was on his way to Amman to sign a framework agreement with Abbas when Netanyahu ordered him to turn back.
Peres, it seems, is one of a long line of politicians, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, with good reason to feel duped by Netanyahu on the peace issue. The big political question is will Peres, no longer constrained by office, use his domestic standing to help unify the center-left against Netanyahu.
Peres leaves a presidency in very good shape. In a 2013 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, it had a public confidence rating of 78.7 percent, (second only to the IDF), compared to 57.9 percent for the government and 36.7 percent for the political parties.
But the stormy race has cast a shadow.
One potential candidate, Silvan Shalom, was dogged by sexual harassment claims that were never pressed. Another, Meir Sheetrit had to contend with rumors of hush money paid to a maid, while Labor’s Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was forced to withdraw at the eleventh hour over large sums he received from a tycoon to buy a luxury apartment.
The sleaze attached to the race could add weight to calls for the abolition of the office.
A bill to this effect is already attracting attention. Tabled by Knesset Member Zvulun Kalfa of Bayit Yehudi, it argues that at around $17 million a year the presidency costs too much for a mere symbol. Moreover, Kalfa complains that presidents are often tempted to exceed their non-partisan mandate and interfere in political affairs – the way Peres did on the peace process.
But Kalfa’s bill is unlikely to pass. There is a general consensus that the presidency is important in helping to create a sense of national identity and unity, especially in a society as fissured as Israel’s. Moreover, the president can serve as a moral authority, an ambassador of goodwill at home and abroad, and a catalyst for significant social and political change.
For example, president Yitzhak Navon forced the government to establish a commission of inquiry into the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon War; Weizman anchored the tradition of presidential visits to bereaved families; Katsav set up a panel to consider electoral reform. In other words, the president is free to make a positive impact in the area or areas of his or her choice.
There could be amendments to the rules for election such as who qualifies as a candidate and whether the Knesset, a wider group, or the people, as a whole, constitute the electoral body. But the institution itself is likely to remain, unless there is a comprehensive change in the system of government as a whole.
More important in the immediate future will be the struggle for power where it really counts – in government. Will Netanyahu be able to brush off his losses in the presidential stakes and the diplomatic arena or will Israel soon find itself in the midst of a crucial general election? What should have been an innocuous presidential election may have helped set in train a process toward real leadership change.