Elections have not been called in Israel, but there is no longer any doubt – Israel’s politicians are in full campaign mode.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made little secret of his plan to remain in office after the war. Since the October 7 attacks, he has refused to take responsibility even when the country’s top security chiefs did, and more recently, he has launched what appears to be his party’s planned platform – that only he can stop another Oslo process.
To many, it was reminiscent of his campaign from 1996 when he was first elected prime minister and famously claimed that “[Shimon] Peres will divide Jerusalem,” a slogan largely credited with helping him win the vote. It didn’t matter that just a few months later, after he was safely in the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu promised to honor the Oslo Accords and said that he would do his “utmost” to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
This time, Netanyahu knows that the October 7 attacks dealt his image as the powerful leader of the Right a critical blow. As a result, he is trying to use a time machine to go back 30 years and resurrect the Oslo Accords – the process from the 1990s that was meant to lead to Palestinian statehood – to rally the Right behind him. The fact that US President Joe Biden is publicly calling for a two-state solution – the ultimate objective under the Oslo process – helps Netanyahu make his case.
He hopes that positioning Oslo as the adversary will give the Right something to rally around and that the voters who ditched him will return understanding that if they vote for someone like Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett or Yossi Cohen they will get another Oslo. Only he, Netanyahu will claim, will be able to stand up to the Americans and stop this from happening.
There are two fundamental problems. The first, and most obvious, is that Netanyahu and other politicians are using the war in Gaza and the Hamas massacre on October 7 for political gain. While Netanyahu appears to mostly be handling the war well under the circumstances, any politicking while troops are fighting in Gaza should be deemed inappropriate.
On the other hand, his rivals are not that much different. Bennett is also in full campaign mode. The interviews he does on cable TV are not meant to improve Israel’s image overseas but rather to make him look tough in the eyes of Israelis. That is why, for example, he almost always fights with interviewers, a tactic you won’t see used by any of Israel’s spokespeople to the foreign media.
Cohen, the former Mossad chief, also saw the war as an opportunity not to be missed. In the beginning, he tried to push himself into the hostage negotiations, leading his successor, David Barnea, to put out a rare statement explaining that Cohen, his former boss, was acting independently and has no formal role.
On the other hand, Cohen is being embraced by the media. When he was on Channel 12 recently, he received the royal treatment, getting an almost 20-minute one-on-one interview on prime-time TV without a single tough question. This embrace is because Cohen is the only candidate who seems to be able to move votes away from the Likud to another right-wing party. While Bennett is also up in the polls, his votes are coming mostly from Gantz. Moving votes between blocs is much harder.
The second problem that playing politics during a war creates is that it could lead to a crisis with the Americans at a time when Israel needs Biden on its side. Netanyahu is not necessarily against having a greater crisis with the president since when the war ends, Netanyahu will need another external danger to explain why he needs to remain in office. The first is Oslo; and the second will be standing up to the president of the United States.
Netanyahu will claim that only he can stop both. Gantz, Cohen, Bennett and Lapid, he will say, are incapable.
While some people are convinced that there is no way Netanyahu remains in office after the war, that might be wishful thinking on their part. If he will not go willingly – and all indications are that he won’t – then something else will be needed to bring down the government.
What will it take to bring down Netanyahu's government?
There are two options: the first is that five MKs from the 64-member coalition partner with the opposition and vote to disperse the Knesset, bringing down the government and initiating a new election. The second option is that a larger group of MKs defect from the coalition, partner with most of the opposition, hold a constructive no-confidence motion, bring down the existing government and replace it with a new one.
Here are the challenges. For the first option to happen, five MKs will need to come forward with an understanding that this move will likely be the end of their political career. If these MKs are members of Likud Party they will not find themselves in the Likud in the next election and while they might be enticed by promises from other parties, those should always be viewed with a measure of caution.
The second option is even more unlikely. A constructive no-confidence motion would require a Likud MK to bring with him or her at least 15 MKs to join with the opposition minus the 10 seats from the Arab parties to form a new government. To covertly recruit 15 MKs and get them to rebel against a sitting prime minister is a herculean feat on a good day, let alone against a politician like Netanyahu.
This does not mean that both options are impossible. In the case of simply bringing down the government, we cannot rule out the possibility that Itamar Ben-Gvir will ultimately be the one to pull out of the coalition and try to overtake Netanyahu and anyone else on the Right. When it comes to the second option, while it is hard to see it happening, there is no doubt that many Likud MKs read the polls, fear that the party is going to be cut in half in a new election and would prefer a way to stay in office for at least another year or two. The no-confidence motion gives them that.
But there is also the third option, which seems the most likely for now and based on the Oslo campaign.
Netanyahu is not planning to go anywhere; he plans to fight to remain in office; and will turn the aftermath of the war into a question about two main issues – Oslo (and whatever that means to different constituents) and himself, since, until now, whenever the question has been “yes, Bibi or no Bibi” he has almost always emerged with the upper hand.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.