Had they filmed a thriller based on this week’s political events, I would have been proud to offer an ultimate title for this non-existent script and it is: “Lucky, Facing a Cunning Bar, Facing the Talent of the Political Genius.” Does not like spoilers, but in this case the end is already known, and the people sitting in Zion saw it live on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Luckily, until recently he was a regular companion of Bnei Gantz, this time he betrayed him on the battlefield, or rather, in the middle of the school that Gantz has not wanted to go to for some time. Gideon Saar, who even before Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the post of prime minister in 2009 had already won the title of “political genius”, once again proved his talents. And the biggest loser of all the characters in the plot, Prime Minister Netanyahu, saw, heard – and it is doubtful whether he managed to fully digest his loss in the campaign and the fact that for the second time in his long and brilliant political career, he was inevitably dragged into elections. And by an opponent who did not know how to properly assess his power.
Yariv Levin closes the 23rd Knesset (Photo: Knesset Channel)
Well, Benny Gantz is a known lucky one. Ask those who served with him in the IDF, those who accompanied him for years, even those who accompanied him recently in citizenship and politics. Much can be said about Ganz, but one fact is clear: the man knows to be at the right time and place, and in many cases the place And the right time knew how to find it, wherever it was.
More than once in his life things just worked out in his favor. Just two weeks ago, a blue-and-white chairman who was losing ground in a free fall faced a cruel dilemma: to lead the election and crash, or to bow to Netanyahu again, absorb a spit in the face and finally (soon) be dragged into the timing and situation his opponent will choose. Is much more interested in the election than in keeping the promise he made to Gantz.
Then it happened to him again, to the lucky Gantz. Gideon Saar stood up, left the Likud, formed a new party and recorded a good result in the polls. At that moment the weather in Balfour changed miraculously: suddenly Netanyahu became much more equal to reach an understanding with his alternate prime minister, suddenly everything became possible, suddenly Avi Nissenkorn became a sympathetic guy with whom things could be closed and not a horrible monster just trying to take over the justice system.
Suddenly, what a wonder, even the budget problem turns out to be no problem at all. We have been told for months that “a budget is a whole world, it is impossible to raise such a project in less than two or three months.” The finance minister published schedules and almost convinced himself that there was no budget for next year before March 2021. It seemed that Gideon Saar should have declared his political independence a few months earlier – then we might have been settled with a budget until 2022.
All of this was real for Netanyahu. The more he tried to convey to his surroundings a complete lack of interest in the storm, the more within him the fear of his rising power increased. “Bibi ignores Gideon, it’s delusional. Something is wrong with me,” one of the Likud ministers warned me a few days before the explosion. Likud members have managed to get used to standard attacks on standard rivals, and this time something seems to have gone wrong with the standard itself. The answer is clear. This time Netanyahu really feared – and also really acted.
The agreement with Ganz, which might have revived this crooked structure called the “Unity Government,” progressed nicely and was almost closed and ready for signatures. Gantz relented, the teams reported optimism, and this is exactly where Netanyahu failed and allowed himself to calm down. Dangerous complacency prevailed at the residence on Balfour Street – and soon brought the landlord to a glorious failure.
The women of the camp
Netanyahu failed to read the map, was too focused on the Gideon incident and was much less busy identifying his son. He was sure that Ganz was deep in his pocket, in part because he came from the premise that his replacement, like himself, would do anything to stay on the wheel, in the Ministry of Defense, in the government, in school. Netanyahu did not recognize the essential difference between the two and could not believe the message that Ganz repeated over and over again: “I will not stick to a chair, I am tired, I will go home and I will not cry about it.”
In Netanyahu’s view, it is not possible for a politician who is already hidden in a deer leather armchair to be willing to get up from it voluntarily. In this matter, Netanyahu is a loyal supporter of Ariel Sharon, who claimed at the time that “the most important thing is to stay on the wheel, the wheel is spinning, and if you are there, it will surely rise again.” Instead of understanding that the understandings with Ganz are still fragile and need to be strengthened and nurtured, Netanyahu saw the matter as finished and closed and moved on. Directly into the pit, as it turned out.
Another mistake of Netanyahu and his associates was the incorrect assessment of Saar’s abilities to influence what was happening in the Knesset while he was outside it. It’s hard to remember a Likud member who in the days after the formation of a new Tikva party did not sneer at “the reckless Gideon who lost it.” Miles of text messages were sent everywhere by center members, MKs and ministers, all repeating the same mantra: “Gideon made a mistake. You had to stay in the Likud, be patient, run in the primaries, get down to some tenth place, absorb, be silent and most of all wait like everyone else for the moment of truth. “Like Nir Barkat, Israel Katz and many others. Gideon has lost patience – and is now facing a crash.”
It is less important if all these internal commentators recited from the same page messages they received, or really believed in what they were trying to sell, because while praising the political talents of their former Likud member, the man acted and built his chess combination to the last detail. According to insiders, he set up a meeting with Ganz and succeeded in the task: he persuaded Ganz not to believe Netanyahu anymore, not to repeat the same mistake, not to be humiliated again. Although Saar knew how to manipulate Ganz, he did so in the most real way. Saar’s assertion that “Bibi does not want the rotation and will not give it to you” was well-founded and correct.
Anyone who took part in the drafting of the latest compromise agreement between the Likud and Blue and White knows one thing and central. Even in the emergency situation of the “Gideon event”, even out of the desire, which suddenly became real, to prevent elections and continue in his convenient partnership with the weakened Ganz, there is one thing Netanyahu was unable to do: say in a clear voice that he commits to rotation and handing over when the time comes. Precisely for this reason, in an agreement that crystallized nicely and talked about everything in great detail, a strange lacuna was created in the budget and rotation section. The authors of the agreement stuttered and often scattered fog. They said something about “Budget 21 to March, and then Ganz has to trust Bibi that the full budget will come, and that will end the talk of rotation.”
The Lotte trap in the fog awaited Gantz in the emerging compromise agreement. Someone else would have gone for it in spite of everything, but Ganz made up his mind and chose to believe the storm and anyone who warned him about another lie – and justice. Saar only had to neutralize the threat of a postponement of the end – and this was done through a calculated, brilliant and rather bastard operation by the “women of the Gideon camp” Michal Shir and Sharan Hashakel, who blocked efforts to prevent elections and cool Saar for another year or two in the icy desert outside the Knesset.
Dill heritage
The state is going to the polls, and they will be fundamentally different from the previous three systems. For the first time, a battle for prime minister awaits Netanyahu inside his camp. Within the right, and not in the classic format of the right that it is “he” versus the left that it is everyone who is “not he”. In the absence of a left in Israel, the entire political game will take place in the national camp only. This is going to be a brutal battle that will be decided by a handful of individual seats on the right.
To fully understand the picture, let’s take a moment to look at what’s happening at the construction site of the New Hope Party. Gideon Saar and his past and present friend, former Minister Zeev Elkin, got up and left their homes not because they are “traitors” and not because they are “disappointed with the distribution of cases,” as they are presented on the Likud’s message page.
Zeev Elkin (Photo: Yonatan Zindel, Flash 90)They both took the difficult step with great pain which was preceded by a dilemma, solely because they came to the same conclusion, each in his own way and time: there is no point in continuing to live “on hold”, to survive in the Likud becoming a more vociferous, much less diverse party. “Netanyahu will not go anywhere of his own free will,” a senior Likud official told me, specifically from those who remained in spite of everything. He, too, sounds rather pessimistic, though he takes care to emphasize that he has no intention of leaving his political home.
Maybe because he is not interested, maybe because there is so nowhere to go. “If Bibi loses the election, he will be the leader of the opposition, and that will continue for a few more years. Gideon and Zeev have decided they do not want to burn for a few more years, while the nature of the list is becoming more and more in the spirit and style of our third ten.”
Unlike the attempts of his predecessors, Saar did not leave Likud A to build Likud B. The party that Saar seeks to build is more of a Likud than a parallel universe: the original and rooted Likud that does not have and did not have a “Bibi era” or bibists of all kinds and types. Like in the movies, when the main protagonist flies back in the time machine to start from the key point and build a different future, better in his eyes.
In order to succeed in the ambitious task, Saar must be the opposite of Netanyahu. Take care to keep promises, keep his word, honor agreements. Even those obtained orally, alongside those signed on paper. Just like in the well-known tale of Yitzhak Shamir from the 1980s. Shamir, when asked by the young director of his bureau, Tzachi Hanegbi, “What do you do with someone, he was promised a certain position?”. Shamir made sure to “make sure the job was promised to someone orally or in writing?”. When Hanegbi replied “orally”, Shamir replied emphatically “Oh! If orally, it must be observed”.
So far, Saar has acted exactly in the spirit of the story in question. Even after Elkin joined, Yifat Shasha Bitton retained her original place on the party list. Anyone who has spoken to Saar in recent days claims that “Saar is committed to Shasha Bitton. He closed with her even before he set out and even before the polls began to predict electoral treasures for him. She is number 2, and so she will remain.”
Elkin, who as mentioned joined the storm on Wednesday this week after difficult and prolonged deliberations, may take third place. The man, who is considered a sharp political mind and in his spare time plays chess with great talent, will not object to dropping to fourth place on the list, if Gadi Izenkot, who has been in contact with Saar for some time, decides he is inside. Sources familiar with the current situation say Izenkot has not yet ruled, but it appears that if he enters politics, he will only join the storm.
The obstacle that stands in the way of the former chief of staff is mainly the cooling-off period for the position of minister in the government, which is three years according to the law. So if he runs for Knesset, Izenkot will have to wait another full year before he can be appointed minister. And not in the years, and the terms there have been dramatically shortened there, by the way, it is possible to change the law and shorten the cooling-off period, only it is very doubtful whether Izenkot will agree to start his way in this way, in personal legislation.
Two fronts
As for the well-known figures within the Likud, it is highly likely that Elkin will be the last Likud member to join Saar, who does not consider the Likud list members an attractive electoral asset, and prefers to build his list from figures unidentified with the current Likud faction. The political system claims that Avi Dichter (another senior official disappointed with the current situation of his party) started probing in order to examine the possibility of joining. He claims to have checked with Bennett as well, but the tests and probes ended in nothing.
Currently, the top ten on the new hope list is almost closed. Given that Saar is interested in presenting an egalitarian list of which half will be women, in the opening ten of the new party there are places left for two candidates whose identities have not yet been clarified and for only one candidate. The rest of the joiners will occupy places starting from the 11th row and below.
Polls continue to compliment a new hope and give it a decidedly significant electoral hope, but the big challenges still lie ahead. There will be an assault on two fronts in the campaign. One is the center-left voters, who today form the basis of the power of new hope. Most of them are blue-and-white voters, along with smaller groups of those who previously gave their vote to Yesh Atid and also to the Likud. Saar’s big goal in the opening election campaign is to convince the “just not Bibi” camp that only he can face Netanyahu for prime minister and also defeat him, while the rest of the left-wing leaders will take the votes to sit in opposition.
Saar’s second challenge is to get the votes of the right-wing public, to convince right-wing voters that they finally have a worthy alternative within the camp, that they can both maintain loyalty to values and vote for someone other than Netanyahu. If he succeeds on both fronts, the new hope will become a fait accompli, something that is beyond another fashion party. The Likud knows this well and is preparing for a brutal battle accordingly. The countdown began this week, and the finish line is still a long way off.