The consummate campaigner

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress could turn out to be one mistake too many or a brilliant electoral ploy.

By LESLIE SUSSER
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to US Congress on March 3, 2015, with US Speaker of the House John Boehner and President pro tempore of the US Senate Orrin Hatch applauding behind him (photo credit: REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech to US Congress on March 3, 2015, with US Speaker of the House John Boehner and President pro tempore of the US Senate Orrin Hatch applauding behind him
(photo credit: REUTERS)
ELECTIONS ARE for incumbents to lose and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done just about everything conceivable to secure defeat on March 17: Muddled public and private funds, failed to address soaring housing prices, made Israel the odd man out on Iran’s nuclear program, soured ties with the country’s great power ally and failed to provide leadership or a future vision on the key issue of Israel and Palestine.
Along the way he has antagonized key players in his own Likud party and alienated many of the party faithful. Former interior minister Gidon Sa’ar is sitting out the election; President Reuven Rivlin, who decides who gets to form the next government, is no fan; and ex-Likudnik Moshe Kahlon, whose rival party, Kulanu, seems likely to hold the balance of power, could well deliver the coup de grâce.
But, despite everything, Netanyahu is still very much in the race. And with two weeks to go, the election is wide open. A last minute surge of undecided voters one way or the other will probably decide the outcome.
In other places and other times, the personal conduct of the prime minister and his highly-strung first lady might have been enough to bring him down.
Stories of Sara Netanyahu’s tantrums, penny-pinching meanness and abusive treatment of household employees abound.
And in mid-February when the State Comptroller published a scathing report on overspending of public funds in the prime minister’s Jerusalem and Caesarea households, the Netanyahu campaign made a huge gaffe. They tried to pin the blame for splurges on food, housecleaning, hairdressing, make-up, electric repairs and water on Meni Naftali, a former official residence caretaker with limited responsibilities, already involved in legal proceedings against the Netanyahus for violation of his worker’s rights. Not only did this look like the privileged high and mighty picking on a seemingly guiltless and relatively defenseless everyman Israeli, it drove Naftali to sue for libel and lodge further complaints with the police on criminal wrongdoing in the Netanyahu household.
The comptroller had already alluded to ostensibly fictitious receipts for work in Caesarea by an electrician to whom the Netanyahus owed private money; to this Naftali added allegations that Sara Netanyahu had asked for and received a budget for bedroom repairs, which she used instead to build a private hairdressing salon.
ALL THIS is relatively small potatoes. Initially it seemed to help rally grass-roots Likud support around a “victimized” Netanyahu.
But there could be a cumulative aftereffect, a critical mass of unseemly personal conduct that could influence final voting patterns, especially among the undecided.
In late February, the State Comptroller published a second pre-election report, slamming three successive governments, two led by Netanyahu, for inept handling of a major housing crisis. Netanyahu came in for particularly harsh criticism. He had taken too long to identify the problem, only set up a special ministerial committee on housing after four years in office, failed to address short-term needs or formulate a coherent long-term strategy and neglected to make sure government decisions were implemented.
Under Netanyahu, housing prices have risen by around 60 percent, leaving hundreds of thousands of young Israelis unable to buy and groaning under the yoke of heavy rental costs. Netanyahu showed little empathy for their plight and, as he invariably does, blamed everybody but himself. He responded to the State Comptroller’s criticism with a few clipped sentences, quickly turning to the Iranian nuclear threat. His political opponents lost no time in juxtaposing the Netanyahu’s two private residences and high-flying lifestyle, much of it at the public’s expense, with the growing number of average Israelis unable to afford a home of their own.
Worse for Netanyahu, his biggest failing in his last term has been where he is generally considered strongest – foreign policy. His open clash with the American administration over the Iranian nuclear program and his failure to move on the Palestinian track are putting Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state in good international standing at risk. Ever since the 1967 Six Day War, the cornerstone of Israeli foreign policy has been American support. Not only is the US Israel’s major arms supplier, its diplomatic umbrella shields Israel at the UN and affiliate bodies and, perhaps even more importantly, gives other countries a positive cue for ties and trade with Israel despite the occupation.
Now to help win reelection, Netanyahu has shown a readiness to compromise the intimacy of the relationship with Washington.
He claims his Congressional address is designed to preempt a “bad deal” with Iran. But it is more a case of playing to the gallery at home two weeks before polling day. For a foreign leader to come to America and use Congress as a stage to tilt against the American president for electoral gain defies belief. Netanyahu sees it as the winning electoral stratagem, casting him as the grand Churchillian leader single-handedly saving Israel and the Western world from existential danger. Likud strategists hope it will win the prime minister at least two or three additional seats and decide the election in his favor. But it is a desperate gamble that could backfire.
To influence the deal with Iran, Netanyahu would have been better advised to stay in the loop with the negotiating powers, injecting Israeli concerns; and, at this late stage, he could have met and briefed congressmen on both sides of the aisle behind closed doors, forcefully putting the Israeli case. But by accepting a Republican invitation, without informing President Barack Obama’s White House, to speak out publicly against Obama’s Iran policy, Netanyahu, already tarred with a pro-Republican brush, seemed to be playing partisan politics.
Democratic senators who had backed a new bipartisan-led Iran sanctions bill that could have scuttled the emerging deal with Iran immediately announced they would withhold support for it until after the March 24 deadline for a framework agreement.
Democratic friends of Israel in the Senate warned Netanyahu that his seemingly partisan approach could have “lasting repercussions.”
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice used particularly strong language. The partisanship shown by Netanyahu, she warned, was “destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”
The Likud put out a campaign ad arguing that at crucial junctures in Israeli history strong leaders had had the courage to act against American policy. For example David Ben-Gurion had declared statehood in May 1948 even though the State Department was opposed.
This, however, was highly misleading.
Unlike in the Iranian case, Ben-Gurion had strong American presidential backing.
Chaim Weizmann, who was to become Israel’s first president, had earlier met with US president Harry Truman to ensure his support. The upshot was that the US was actually the first country to recognize Ben-Gurion’s declaration of statehood, just 11 minutes after the British mandate expired.
Netanyahu’s perceived intervention in US affairs also sparked angry displays of partisanship among American Jews.
Liberal, Democrat-supporting Jews, like Tikkun magazine editor Michael Lerner, attacked Netanyahu, arguing that he did not speak for them and accusing him of trying to drag America into war with Iran; and an extreme right-wing Republican- supporting group took out a full-page ad in The New York Times accusing Rice of “blindness to genocide.” None of this helped Israel’s standing in Washington.
The American-led deal with Iran is based on the following premises: Iran will be a nuclear threshold state, a year away from being able to produce a bomb; in return for a progressive easing of economic sanctions, it will enrich uranium only to low-grade non-military levels and open its nuclear facilities to close international inspection; the agreement will freeze the threshold but non-nuclear situation for 15 years.
ISRAEL’S CONCERN is that the Iranians at any time will be able to clandestinely upgrade enough uranium for a bomb.
Therefore it argues Iran should not be allowed to enrich at all and should get the uranium it needs for its civilian program from abroad. If it rejects this formula, as it most certainly would, economic sanctions should be increased until such time as it agrees to cut a more foolproof deal.
Netanyahu, however, is playing with fire. His hard-line approach, senior American officials warn, could lead to war. If he gets his way and more sanctions are imposed, the interim agreement of November 2013 would be rendered null and void, and Iran, free of the verification procedures it entailed and pushed into a corner, might well decide to build a bomb. And that would mean either accepting Iran as a nuclear power – or going to war – a war for which Israel might be blamed for not helping to avert, and in which Israel could find itself under intensive Hezbollah rocket attack with limited international sympathy.
If Netanyahu is reelected, his partisan and provocative use of Congress to challenge the president will have repercussions.
Not only will it further exacerbate ties with the Obama White House, it will likely leave liberal Democrats and left-leaning Jews less automatically in Israel’s court. This could impact on the quality of Israel’s ties with the US and its standing in the world.
What makes the looming situation even more precarious is the fact that Netanyahu has gone back on his commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
A year ago, before the collapse of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace mission, Netanyahu claimed to be in favor of a Palestinian state and ready to make “very generous” territorial compromises.
Now, in election appearances he repeatedly argues against Palestinian statehood on the grounds that “any Palestinian territory vacated by Israel would be taken over by radical Islam.”
This could be seen as electioneering, trying to win votes from the far right Bayit Yehudi. But it will not be easy for Netanyahu to simply shrug it off, especially since the overwhelming majority in his Likud party are adamantly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
The implication is that Israel under a reelected Netanyahu would find itself hurtling toward a one-state solution, with its Jewish and democratic character at risk.
The result could be growing international isolation, accelerated Palestinian lawfare, and heightened Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) moves and constraints on Israeli trade. Worse, this could happen with an angry White House on Netanyahu’s back – especially after his performance in Congress and also because it sees him as mainly responsible for the collapse of the Kerry mission. Indeed, Netanyahu could find himself under intense White House pressure to act on the Palestinian track, and constrained by the administration with regard to action against Iran.
So far, the main opposition Zionist Union campaign has not honed in on this potentially bleak future. It has focused more on Netanyahu “the failed leader” – “six years of nothing,” his failure to shape a political exit strategy after the war in Gaza last summer, his responsibility for rising housing prices, his failure to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state, his responsibility for the strains in relations with America.
It has, however, tread softly on the implications of Netanyahu’s failure to advance a two-state solution with the Palestinians, apparently not to frighten away soft-right voters who might otherwise support Kahlon’s Kulanu or Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid. This, though, is the key to Israel’s future: it impinges on all the main issues – Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, its international standing, the strength of its economy, its ability to handle major socioeconomic challenges. Only late in the campaign did Yitzhak Herzog, the party’s candidate for prime minister, declare that he was ready to address the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah and outline a fair solution for both sides.
SIGNS ARE that immediately after a new government is formed, the Palestinian issue will again come to the fore. According to Martin Indyk, the special US envoy in last year’s failed talks, if the post-election government fails to launch an initiative on the Palestinian track or if it opposes a Palestinian state, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the US, will propose a resolution laying out the principles of a two-state solution, paving the way for intense international pressure on a recalcitrant Israeli leadership.
But there is another way. A government that genuinely pursues a two-state solution could coordinate a new initiative with the US, bring in Egypt and Jordan as central players, and accept the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API) as a basis for negotiation.
The wider Arab framework has several advantages. It could give the Palestinians cover to compromise on sensitive issues, accord Israel the prize of normalization with the entire Muslim world and help pave the way for a solution in Gaza based on reconstruction for demilitarization.
According to Indyk, the new initiative could start with a “freeze for a freeze,” Israel freezing settlement building, the Palestinians freezing legal and other steps against Israel in international forums.
Under Herzog there could be a new beginning; under Netanyahu, a closing in of inimical forces.
Yet although the prime minister is under attack from all quarters, for past failures, present blunders and the bleak future he offers, his resilience as a campaigner is unmatched. His speech to Congress could turn out to be one mistake too many or a brilliant electoral ploy. His last throw of the political dice, it could determine the final voter surge that decides the election outcome.