Gov’t corona decisions may stave off another election, after all

However, Sunday’s cabinet meeting sent a signal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz.

By LAHAV HARKOV
NOT LOOKING so good. Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as Benny Gantz speaks at a recent cabinet meeting. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
NOT LOOKING so good. Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as Benny Gantz speaks at a recent cabinet meeting.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Last week ended under a cloud of political dysfunction. There were more and more calls for elections and laments that the coalition cannot stay together with so much infighting.
There were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering not bringing any budget proposal to a vote so that an election would automatically be called for November.
However, Sunday’s cabinet meeting sent a signal that Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz are at least going to try to keep it together.
For example, there was Netanyahu’s announcement that “the IDF will have a significant role in the important mission.” Setting aside the medical significance, this is politically meaningful.
From the time the coronavirus outbreak began and Israel snapped into action in late February, then-defense minister Naftali Bennett called for the IDF to play a greater role in the response. Netanyahu, who is known to despise Bennett, mostly ignored him.
Gantz, who is now also defense minister, called for the IDF to take a larger part in the pandemic-busting efforts as well.
“The Home Front Command is a system that was born to act in events such as the one we are in,” Gantz said in a coronavirus cabinet meeting on July 2. “The whole operation needs to go to the Home Front Command and the Defense Ministry. We have to move to a model of action in which the political decisions are made in the cabinet, the Health Ministry decides the regulations, and the Defense Ministry is the executive factor.”
But he was met with opposition. For example, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein tweeted on July 2: “The Home Front Command and IDF officers and soldiers are our dear partners. But when I see the message on the need to transfer authority from the Health Ministry, in my lexicon that is not called helping carry the burden. It’s called politics at the expense of Israeli citizens.”
Netanyahu also seemed to have trouble letting go. In the first wave of coronavirus, he was prime minister of a caretaker government without a functioning Knesset. He was able to make sweeping decisions with little oversight. With all the frustration – which he shares with the health minister and others in the cabinet – over the Knesset overturning government policies, he would not want to hand the authority over enacting them to his political rival.
But that, of course, highlights the difficulties inherent to a unity government. For it to work, a unity government requires political rivals to put aside their differences and work together for the greater good. We’ve seen very few such occurrences in the 10 weeks since the government was sworn in.
Last week’s appointment of Ichilov Hospital director-general Prof. Ronni Gamzu as Israel’s coronavirus “czar” – or “project manager,” as he is known in Hebrew – to oversee the efforts to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections in Israel could have been one of those moments.
Instead, Netanyahu and Edelstein announced his appointment in the middle of the night without informing Gantz in advance, several hours after the major coalition blowup in the Knesset and subsequent doomsday predictions about the coalition’s impending implosion.
Still, just the fact that there is now someone to coordinate all the different parts of the government working on its coronavirus response, and it not being a political figure, demands some humility from the ministers, and that seems to have had an instant effect.
For Netanyahu to play up the IDF’s role as the first detail made public of Gamzu’s plans is a significant step, because he is willing to give Gantz a greater part in this effort.
And at the same time, the cabinet approved Netanyahu’s stimulus plan, which Blue and White opposed and held up for a week. Slight changes were made so that the wealthiest people will receive the extra funds and the neediest will get more, which were among Gantz’s demands.
Each side got a win.
That does not mean things are perfect. The makeup of the new, smaller coronavirus cabinet instantly proved to be controversial. There are no women on the panel, and Education Minister Yoav Gallant was disappointed to find he is not on it, despite schools being a major factor in decisions. Housing and Construction Minister Ya’acov Litzman was furious to be excluded, as a former health minister and also a representative of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community that has been disproportionately impacted – though Interior Minister Arye Deri is haredi and on the committee.
At the same time, the committee sticks to the parity model on which the government was formed; the number of ministers who supported Netanyahu as prime minister is equal to those who backed Gantz.
Coalition Chairman Miki Zohar – not someone known to be conflict-averse – tried to reduce tensions on Friday, telling Netanyahu that he and Gantz have to be personally involved if they want the coalition to function.
And now, on Sunday, there were some signs that things are calming down, politically, giving some hope to the many Israeli citizens who do not want Israel to be thrown into yet another election cycle so soon after the last.