Some Political Spats That Bear Watching

November 2, 2012 § Leave a comment

Today’s post is not a straight Friday gallimaufry, but does deal with disparate topics that all have a connecting theme. There are a couple of political relationships under serious stress that were in the news this week, and you should be keeping an eye on them in the months ahead because how the tensions are resolved will majorly impact politics in both Turkey and Israel.

The first pair is Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül. I’ve been predicting a clash between these two for awhile, and this week brought new tensions over their conflicting approaches to the Kemalist Republic Day rallies. After the governor of Ankara, presumably on Erdoğan’s orders, had banned a separate CHP-led rally outside the old Grand National Assembly building that was to coincide with the official government military parade, Gül told the governor to ignore the ban and remove police barriers from the site. This information prompted Erdoğan to strongly criticize Gül indirectly by denouncing “double-headed rule” and saying that if people want a strong presidential system, he is happy to oblige. Gül then fired back, stating that the president should make sure that government officials and police are allowing people to celebrate Republic Day in whatever manner they see fit and that there is no double-headed rule in Turkey. This fight is about more than just who ordered what with regard to Republic Day, and rather is the latest proxy battle over who is going to be Turkey’s next president. Once the new constitution creating an empowered president is in place, Erdoğan fully intends to be the first directly elected president in a presidential system and wants to push Gül out early. Naturally, Gül has no intention of leaving without a fight, and so this is the latest salvo in the fight that will determine both men’s political futures. As I’ve written before, expect to see lots more of this type of stuff going forward, and should the skirmishes get nastier, this has the potential to grind Turkey’s politics to a halt and rip the AKP apart.

The second pair in the news this week is Likud minister Moshe Kahlon and his long-time political home. Kahlon, who is Minister of Communications and Minister of Social Welfare and the most prominent Sephardi member of Likud, announced a few weeks that he would be stepping down from his post and not running in the Knesset elections in January. Kahlon is wildly popular for  reducing fees on all sorts of things from cell phones to bank transactions to electricity bills, not to mention he is the face of Likud’s Sephardi base, and so his announcement was bad news for Likud. Now it turns out that Kahlon might not be leaving politics after all, but is flirting with the idea of creating a new party, which is even worse news for the new Likud Beiteinu list. In many ways this makes sense, since Kahlon’s socioeconomic views clash with much of the official Likud party line, and his views on security issues and the Palestinians don’t exactly make him a Laborite. Bibi Netanyahu, realizing the threat that Kahlon poses, is now racing to keep him in Likud while a poll commissioned by Labor that shows it winning the most Knesset seats should Kahlon join the party means that Shelley Yachimovich is after him too. I don’t see Kahlon going to Labor, and my hunch is that he is not going to form his own party but is rather using the polls showing him damaging Likud Beiteinu should he run alone as leverage to return to Likud in a more powerful position. In any event, the Kahlon-Likud dance also has the possibility to alter the trajectory of Israeli politics depending on the outcome, so keep a close eye on how it is resolved.

Finally, there is the domestic dispute between San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins and his brain, which apparently decided to leave Jenkins’ body and take with it any cognitive capacity for logic and reasoning that Jenkins had. That is the obvious conclusion to be drawn after reading this brilliant paean to ignorance in which Jenkins claims that the world champion San Francisco Giants won the World Series because the members of the Giants front office “look at the face, the demeanor, the background, the ability to play one’s best under suffocating pressure” rather than even take a glance at players’ statistics – otherwise known as the way one actually measures whether a player is good or not – and that “if you throw a binder full of numbers on their desk, they don’t quite get the point.” I know I have made this plea before, but Michael Schur (aka Ken Tremendous) and crew really need to come out of retirement and start up Fire Joe Morgan again. Where does one even begin with this mind-blowing example of  imbecilic dreck that would have been more believable had it appeared in the Onion? Yes Bruce Jenkins, I am sure that the team that drafted and developed such classic physical specimens as Buster Posey and Tim Lincecum relies only on scouting reports and never looks at stats. The way to win two World Series in three seasons is to completely ignore a huge resource of evidence and to just rely on your gut. Yup, that must be how it was done, since there is no way that Brian Sabean even knows how to do long division, let alone figure out what VORP stands for. There are two possibilities here. The first is that Jenkins is seriously delusional to the point that he is becoming a danger to the people around him. The second is that he is perpetrating an elaborate Joaquin Phoenix piece of performance art. Irrespective of which of these two options is the correct answer, Bruce Jenkins’ family might want to get him to a mental health professional as soon as possible.

 

Did Bibi Make A Mistake?

October 31, 2012 § Leave a comment

Like I said yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Likud Beiteinu deal and whether it is actually going to accomplish what Netanyahu and Lieberman are hoping. I expanded on my thoughts from yesterday for Foreign Policy, and looked at whether Likud Beiteinu is going to add to the vote share that the two parties have separately and what the whole thing means for the U.S. You can read the original article on FP’s website here, and I have reproduced it below for convenience sake.

In an announcement last Thursday that shocked the Israeli political establishment, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated their intention to merge Netanyahu’s Likud Party with Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Despite the contention made by some — notably Haaretz editor Aluf Benn — that this move creates a war cabinet that will make it easier for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s more likely the two men had domestic politics at the forefront of their minds. In birthing the new Likud Beiteinu, Netanyahu and Lieberman are hoping to create a monolith that will dominate Israeli politics for years to come.

Creating a workable majority in the 120-seat Knesset has proven to be difficult, and always requires a coalition of larger and smaller parties. In the current Knesset, Kadima has the most seats with 28, and Likud comes in second with 27, but these numbers are historically low for the top vote-getters. Two decades ago, Labor won the 1992 Knesset elections after garnering 44 seats and Likud came in second with 32 seats, while the previous election in 1988 had yielded 40 seats for Likud and 39 for Labor’s leftwing bloc. Netanyahu and Lieberman are gambling that their new Likud Beiteinu party will be an electorally dominant rightwing giant by combining the strength of their two parties while also picking up former Likud voters who have voted for Kadima in the past two elections. The hope is that a bigger party will have the strength to withstand hostage-taking demands from smaller parties and be able to push its agenda through the Knesset with a minimum of haggling and horse trading. That agenda is likely to include a renewed push for Haredi military service, more building in the West Bank, and a neoliberal economic policy — and Netanyahu wants to be able to carry his policies out with a minimum of resistance.

While this is nice in theory, it is unlikely to play out in the way that Netanyahu and Lieberman hope. To begin with, the current polls are not looking too promising and show Likud Beiteinu either slipping from its current combination of 42 seats or maintaining the exact same share of the Knesset that it holds now. Controlling 42 seats as a single party would give Netanyahu a lot of power and flexibility, and there is certainly plenty of time between now and the election for Likud Beiteinu to surge in the polls. There are, however, good reasons to believe that the new party is not going to surge, but is actually going to slip.

To begin with, Likud Beiteinu might have a real problem with the Russian voters who make up Yisrael Beiteinu’s base. A poll commissioned for Channel 99 showed only 59 percent of 2009 Yisrael Beiteinu voters casting their ballot for the new mega-party in 2013, with 22 percent undecided. It is very possible that Russian voters who voted for Yisrael Beiteinu because it served as a patronage party bringing benefits to Russian immigrants are rightfully wary that Likud Beiteinu will have the same focus, and are casting around for another party to fill that void.

Within Likud, there is a mirror-image problem of the party’s base of Mizrahi (Jews primarily from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) voters being turned off by the elevation of the Russian Lieberman to the second-most powerful person in Likud. The party has long struggled with the problem of having a Sephardi grassroots and an Ashkenazi leadership, and the inclusion of Lieberman along with the concurrent exit of Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon, who is of Libyan descent, might very well drive some Likud voters into the arms of Shas, which represents ultra-Orthodox Sephardi voters.

Another reason to suspect that this new arrangement is not going to yield as strong a party as Netanyahu hopes is that it rests on an odd and somewhat counterintuitive theory of party strengthening. As a general rule, the best ways to create a newly large and powerful party are to co-opt the opposition and to create a big tent that welcomes many different factions. The Likud-Kadima coalition agreement in May — despite its quick demise — was actually a successful attempt at such a maneuver since it eliminated Likud’s largest opponent and built bridges between a rightwing party and a more centrist party. The merger deal with Yisrael Beiteinu, however, will not be successful at co-opting smaller centrist parties and it will not create a big tent, as both Likud and YB reside on the right side of the political spectrum.

What this means in practice is that we are likely to see Likud Beiteinu get the largest share of seats in the Knesset but with nothing approaching a mandate for action. Rather than smooth sailing for the ruling party, there will be the usual political gridlock and unstable coalition as the smaller parties extort Likud Beiteinu to fund their pet projects as a condition of joining the government. Lieberman is also an unusually polarizing figure, and his presence at the top will make it harder for a party like Labor to even contemplate joining up in a unity government.

There are also some real implications here for the new U.S. administration, whomever the next president might be. The fact that Netanyahu is not going to be in as strong a position as he anticipates means that he will not be able to afford alienating his settler base or risk an insurrection from Moshe Feiglin, Danny Danon, and the more revanchist wing of Likud. Lieberman, himself a settler, takes an extremely hard-line positions on settlements as well, and thus the new Likud Beiteinu is likely to frustrate any desires on the part of the United States for the Israeli government to either freeze settlement building or to make concessions to the Palestinians, who have been immovably intransigent. The formation of Likud Beiteinu might even deal the final fatal blow to the Palestinian Authority, as Lieberman has been waging a months-long campaign to discredit Mahmoud Abbas by calling him a diplomatic terrorist and is unlikely in his newly powerful position to agree to keep on bolstering the PA. This will create all sorts of headaches for the United States and means that any remaining optimism surrounding the peace process is misplaced.

Netanyahu and Lieberman are banking that their new party will be greater than the sum of its parts, but there is an excellent chance that it will actually be the opposite. Should that turn out to be the case, expect to see a continuation of the congestion that has marked Israeli politics and frustrated its diplomacy over the last decade.

Will The Israeli Elections Have Any Policy Effect?

October 10, 2012 § Leave a comment

I wrote a piece for Open Zion about Bibi Netanyahu’s call for elections to be held within three months, and I argue that the effect on Israel’s foreign policy will be pretty close to nothing. My essay went up a couple of hours ago and can be found in its original form here, but if you haven’t already seen it on Open Zion it is reprinted below for convenience sake.

As was widely expected, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that Knesset elections are going to take place within three months. The ostensible reason that Netanyahu provided was deadlock over the budget, but this was an obvious move on Netanyahu’s part given the political situation in Israel. The J14 social protests this past summer were a shadow of their previous incarnation, the situation on the southern border with Egypt appears relatively quiet for now, and Iran has been put on hold. Netanyahu’s Likud party is on top of the polls and the parties that make up the rest of his right-wing coalition bloc are all poised to do reasonably well.

More importantly though, Netanyahu’s opponents don’t appear to present much of a threat at the moment. Kadima’s erstwhile leader Tzipi Livni, who led the party to the most seats in the 2009 election, is now without a political home and has been reduced to communicating to the public through her Facebook page, and current Kadima head Shaul Mofaz is busily running the party into the ground. Labor will almost certainly do better this time than it did in 2009, but the consensus is that Shelley Yachimovich is not quite ready for prime time and needs some more seasoning before presenting a real threat to Netanyahu. While there are some plausible but remote scenarios in which Netanyahu is cast out of the prime minister’s residence, the overwhelming likelihood is that three months from now Netanyahu will remain exactly where he is.

The reason Netanyahu is calling for new elections now is primarily because the domestic political scene is so favorable for him. Much like when he engineered the unity government deal with Mofaz and Kadima last spring, there will undoubtedly be speculation that the timing of the vote is related to Iran or to the peace process, but as was the case back in May, this is not being done with foreign policy considerations in mind. Thinking about what this abbreviated election campaign will look like and what constraints will be in place when it is over yields some insights as to why this is so.

On Iran, there should be little question left that the elections are the final toss of dirt on top of what I have argued is the long-buried coffin of a strike on Iran in the next six months. Even if Netanyahu were able to give the order to launch a strike, he is historically extremely risk-averse, and would not do so with an election coming up so soon and potentially endanger his strong political position. That does not, however, mean that Iran is not going to be an issue in the campaign. Mofaz is likely to bring up what he calls Netanyahu’s “warmongering” again and again, and I expect we will hear mentions of Netanyahu’s recklessness on Iran and his related precarious management of the U.S.-Israel relationship from Yachimovich as well.

The reason for this is that a unilateral strike on Iran remains deeply unpopular with the Israeli public, and that will still be the case once the campaign is over. If things go as expected, Netanyahu will remain in office with the same coalition partners and the same security cabinet, where he will still not have the votes for a strike on Iran. The upper echelons of the IDF will still be against a unilateral strike, and there will still be enormous pressure from the U.S.—assuming that President Obama is reelected—to hold off. In short, if Likud picks up an additional seat or two and the coalition grows by 2 to 5 seats, which is what the current polls indicate will happen, the structural constraints that are in place now and that have prevented a strike from happening will have not changed at all. The idea that Netanyahu will be newly empowered when it comes to Iran after this election seems to me to be highly dubious.

A similar static dynamic is at work when it comes to the peace process. Raphael Ahren argues in the Times of Israel that one of Netanyahu’s aims in scheduling an early vote is to avoid pressure from the U.S. on negotiating with the Palestinians. But irrespective of whether Obama is a lame duck come November or is gearing up for a second term, no such pressure will be forthcoming. Obama was burned during his first term by his attempt at creating an environment in which serious negotiations could resume, and between the massive uncertainty created by Iran’s nuclear program, the civil war in Syria, and the continuing reverberations from the Arab Spring, not to mention the administration’s Asian pivot, the peace process is not going to be chief among Obama’s second term priorities. If Romney wins in November, Obama is neither going to have enough time left nor sufficient political capital in his arsenal to push Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue.

Leaving the American dynamic aside, the early Israeli elections do not signal any change coming down the road on the peace process. Before the formation of the brief-lived unity government in May, the Israeli campaign season had begun to gear up, yet there was virtually no mention of the Palestinians or the peace process by anyone, including the left-wing parties that historically have used the peace process as a campaign issue. Social and economic issues dominated the Labor and Meretz discourse, and the current election campaign is going to be fought on similar grounds. The Israeli peace camp has basically disappeared in the aftermath of the second intifada and rockets from Gaza, and elections will not change that. Should Netanyahu remain prime minister, there will be little reason for him to suddenly deal with an inept Palestinian Authority or a violent and intransigent Hamas.

It is tempting to think that Netanyahu has some big grandiose plan in mind when it comes to Iran or the Palestinians and that he is calling early elections so that he can secure a mandate for some major foreign policy moves. The reality of the situation, however, is that Netanyahu is simply trying to capitalize on his current popularity at a time when the opposition is weak and fractured, and the effect that this election will have on Israel’s foreign policy is as slight as it could possibly be.

Thinking About Likud’s Future

May 9, 2012 § 4 Comments

One of the benefits of the unity coalition deal that Bibi Netanyahu struck with Shaul Mofaz and Kadima is that it strengthens Likud. Kadima’s dropping poll numbers and its new participation in the coalition mean that it will likely merge back with Likud before the next elections, which sets up Likud to gain more seats in October 2013 than it would have in September 2012. From an electoral standpoint, Likud is poised to come close to its 1981 highwater mark of 48 seats if Kadima dissolves and it is in an extremely strong position.

From a structural standpoint, however, Likud is not doing so well. Netanyahu presides over a fractious party that contains a serious split between the older generation of Likud princes and the younger generation of hardliners. Bradley Burston noted the sharp change in tone from previous Likud conventions, in which the head of the party was treated like a king, to Sunday’s Likud convention packed with mutineers who excoriated Netanyahu for not being sufficiently rightwing. Bibi was unable to even secure the position of convention chairman, and it must be a haunting irony for him that he strides the Israeli world like a colossus but cannot manage to impose the same iron will over his own party. Potential challengers like Moshe Feiglin and Danny Danon attack him on his right flank and make all sorts of veiled threats over perceived insufficient support for settlements, keeping Barak in the cabinet, and other issues on which Netanyahu is believed to be wobbly and not fully trusted. It is a maxim of Israeli politics that it is the right that brings down the right, and surely this is a fate that Netanyahu does not want to suffer, explaining his current flirtation with a bill that would override the High Court’s order to demolish Ulpana. Part of bringing Kadima into the government is that Netanyahu will have some space to maneuver should he want to tack to the center on selective issues.

Ultimately though, Netanyahu is going to face a choice over how far to go to placate his hardliners, and that may come sooner rather than later as the High Court’s Migron and Ulpana orders come to call. In light of all this, I will not be shocked if at some point before the 2013 elections we see Netanyahu move to kill off his own party and form a new one. This move is of course not without precedent in Israeli political history; Ben Gurion did it when he felt he had insufficient support from his Mapai colleagues leading to the creation of Rafi and then Labor, and more recently Ariel Sharon did it when he broke away from Likud to form Kadima in order to carry out the Gaza disengagement. Netanyahu is in a similar situation to Ben Gurion in that he clearly does not have an ideal level of support within the Likud ranks, and if he decides that he wants to make a serious move toward peace with the Palestinians he will find himself facing Sharon’s dilemma as well. Netanyahu is also now perfectly poised to form a new party from a position of strength since he would take all of the Kadima members with him should he bolt Likud to form a new party and would take more than half of the Likud MKs as well.

I don’t think this is something that anyone should expect to occur as it would be a huge gamble, and Netanyahu is historically not a gambler. The deal with Kadima though demonstrates a newfound propensity toward bold moves, and creating a new party would eliminate the various Likud thorns in Netanyahu’s side. I think the salient question on this issue is how serious Netanyahu is about making real strides on a Palestinian state. As I have noted before, Netanyahu is in many ways a prisoner of his party and his coalition. He has now solved the latter problem, but has not solved the former one. If Netanyahu does indeed have some more moderate inclinations aching to escape, then cutting off his rightwing flank and forming a new party is the obvious, and maybe only, move to make. Again, this is all theoretical at best and a little too pie-in-the-sky to probably occur, but given the utter surprise that greeted all analysts of Israeli politics on over the past two days, nothing can or should be ruled out anymore.

The Likud-Kadima Deal Is Not About Iran

May 8, 2012 § 10 Comments

Last night right after the news broke that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima were joining Bibi Netanyahu’s governing coalition and that the early elections that had been announced for September 4 are now off, I wrote this post on the implications of the deal for Israeli domestic politics. On the morning after, I have a few more thoughts pertaining to how the new unity government will affect changes in Israeli foreign policy. The short version is, it won’t.

The area in which some people are expecting Israeli policy to shift with the new government is Iran. Jeffrey Goldberg thinks that the larger coalition and unity government might make it easier for Netanyahu to strike Iranian nuclear sites should he be so inclined. I think it is true that it makes doing so easier since the new coalition comprises 93 out of 120 MKs, and a unity government deciding to launch an attack takes some of the bite out of the recent cascade of criticism coming from former defense and intelligence leaders. Kadima joining the coalition, however, does not alter the basic realities that were preventing Netanyahu and Barak from carrying out a strike months ago. Israeli public opinion is still ambivalent on a unilateral Israeli strike, U.S. and world pressure to wait and give sanctions more time has not disappeared, four out of the eight Shminiya (Octet) members are still opposed, and the security and intelligence establishment have raised legitimate concerns that cannot be waved away just because Kadima joined the government. Add to all this the fact that Israel has serious renewed security concerns on its southern border with Egypt and is keeping an eye on its northern border following reports that Scud missile installations being moved closer to the border in Syria, and attacking Iran appears to be a dicey proposition.

There is also the Mofaz factor, which does not necessarily weigh in favor of a strike. Looking at Mofaz’s position on Iran, a little over a month ago he blasted Netanyahu for pushing for a strike that he deemed would be premature and ineffective, and said that he would stand with any PM who ordered an attack as the last resort but that Israel was not yet at that stage. Just yesterday, he accused Netanyahu of politicizing the issue of a strike and endangering the relationship with the U.S. Now, anything Mofaz said in the guise of campaigning must be taken with a grain of salt, but that he chose to hit Bibi hard on Iran cannot just be brushed aside so easily. It is also important to remember that Mofaz was not campaigning primarily on security or defense issues but rather donned the mantle of social justice, and was particularly targeting preferential treatment for Haredim. The deal with Likud gives Mofaz and Kadima the task of leading the committee charged with coming up with a Tal Law alternative, which is again not a security-related issue. It is easy to think that bringing a former defense minister and IDF chief of staff on board must mean that Netanyahu is seeking to add another buffer against criticism should he choose to attack Iran, but the details of Mofaz’s campaign and the particulars of the unity deal do not necessarily point to this conclusion. There are now three former chiefs of staff in the cabinet – Barak, Mofaz, and Yaalon – and based on what we know, only one of them is on board for an imminent unilateral strike on Iran. Just because the cabinet is full of generals does not mean that they are all gung ho to launch a new military adventure.

There is, however, one important way in which Israeli foreign policy might change with this unity deal, and that is the renewed empowerment of the foreign minister should Avigdor Lieberman be indicted, which I expect will happen in light of Zeev Ben Arie’s indictment and plea bargain last week. If Lieberman has to leave the government, it is safe to assume that Mofaz will take his place, and Israel will then once again have a foreign minister who is actually trusted to carry out the state’s diplomacy. This would undoubtedly be a good development should it occur, since Israel’s Foreign Ministry is too important to be left in incompetent hands.

When all is said and done, I do not think this deal is about Iran. I think it was done for domestic political considerations first and foremost. Let’s remember that while Netanyahu has faced no real challenges, Likud has not been on nearly as solid footing as its party leader. It is right now the second largest party in the Knesset – and that Kadima is the largest but is only getting one minister slot out of this deal tells you all you need to know about its long term prospects – but had been facing a new threat from Yesh Atid, a Labor bump following summer social justice protests, and a rightwing revolt within its own ranks led by Moshe Feiglin, Danny Danon, and others who do not find Netanyahu sufficiently committed to the settlement cause. The deal with Kadima eliminates these problems or gives Netanyahu more time to deal with them. By bringing Kadima and Mofaz into the coalition, it increases the chances that an increasingly unpopular Kadima (polls had it coming in fourth or fifth were elections to be held in September) will simply merge back with Likud before October 2013 and undo the rift that Ariel Sharon created in order to pull out of Gaza. It also cuts the legs out from under Yair Lapid and his new party before it can really get off the ground, and while Yesh Atid might stick around and build support, October 2013 is a long ways away for a party that has no seats in the Knesset. A newly stabilized government gives Netanyahu more time to quell the growing backbench rebellion within Likud as well, and he can expect Kadima to now back him full-tilt on settlements once he backs Mofaz’s Tal Law alternative. In sum, this is move to bring in Kadima and cancel the early elections is a no-brainer that eliminates potential rival parties, strengthens Likud internally, and probably increases its vote share over what it would have gotten in September. Does it make it easier to attack Iran? Sure – Mofaz might now become Netanyahu’s Colin Powell inasmuch as his known reticence about a strike and his presence in the cabinet make it more credible should Netanyahu decide to act. But I don’t think that is the correct prism through which to view yesterday’s political machinations.

P.S. Related to all of this, Brent Sasley has a great post over at Mideast Matrix that is well worth a read because it gets to the root causes of Israel’s political dysfunction. The casual observer familiar only with the American form of government looks at the fact that the Israeli prime minister just decided on a whim to cancel his own call for early elections and put them off for over a year as a gross violation of democracy, when in fact it is par for the course in a parliamentary system. That does not mean, however, that all is well with Israeli politics, and Brent makes a great counter-intuitive argument that yesterday’s events actually strengthen Israel democracy by temporarily papering over some of the immense structural problems that exist in the system.

Some Quick Initial Thoughts On The Israeli Political Bombshell

May 7, 2012 § 4 Comments

First of all, wow. The deal to form a Likud-Kadima government is a master stroke by Bibi Netanyahu, who now gets to avoid dealing with elections and having to make a bunch of imperfect choices in putting together a coalition, while also seizing on the fact that nearly 3/4 of Israelis want to see the Tal Law gone for good. He isn’t giving up anything, gets to cut Yair Lapid off at the knees, and strengthens his bid as the most dominant Israeli politician of his generation. This is an enormous win for him.

Another big winner, perhaps even more so than Bibi when thinking about relative gains, is Ehud Barak. I wrote last week that I was confident Barak and Atzmaut would get enough votes to be seated in the Knesset and remain in the coalition, but now Barak doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. He gets to remain as defense minister and doesn’t have to keep taking symbolic stands against settlements in an effort to rebuild his constituency. Barak also seems to genuinely hate Lapid, mocking him in the past week for using a teleprompter and comparing his Yesh Atid party charter to that of the Baath party in Syria, so the fact that Lapid now goes back to being a television host for the time being must make Barak happy.

The fact that Barak is staying as defense minister is even more remarkable when considering the that it is Mofaz who cut the deal with Netanyahu to join the government. Mofaz is a former IDF chief of staff and former defense minister, and you know that he must have wanted to take Barak’s seat but is instead joining the coalition as vie premier. Certainly not a bad gig by any means, but you have to think it is his second choice. What this says to me is just how badly Netanyahu wants and needs Barak by his side in order to provide credibility and instill confidence in the Israeli public should Israel move to strike Iranian nuclear sites. Netanyahu is clearly unwilling to give him up, which again reinforces the point I have been harping on about Barak being the critical decision maker and figure to watch on Iran.

Another winner here is Shelly Yachimovich and Labor. Yachimovich has been in major pander mode lately, saying that she would join the Netanyahu government under the right circumstances and even absurdly claiming to share a lot in common ideologically with Shas and UTJ. She knew that she was facing an uphill battle in an election with Mofaz trying to siphon off social justice voters, Yisrael Beiteinu seen as the face of the battle against Haredi military exemptions, and Yesh Atid going after Labor’s main demographic. Labor as of today had no ministerial posts and was not even the largest opposition party. Now, Labor instantly vaults over Kadima to be the primary opposition party and Yachimovich has a new position as opposition leader and a larger bully pulpit. Given that she had zero chance of replacing Netanyahu and becoming the next prime minister anyway, the Likud-Kadima deal benefits her in the end as well.

In hindsight, a deal between Likud and Kadima was inevitable given Mofaz and Kadima’s free-falling poll numbers. Mofaz harbored hopes of beating Netanyahu and becoming PM, but the polls made it clear that this was not going to happen. Things were looking so bad that there were even calls in the past few days for Mofaz to make up with Tzipi Livni and bring her back into the fold. As I’ve noted previously, Mofaz had no intention of orchestrating a leadership fight with Livni and taking control of Kadima to be just another powerless politician, and it was clear that he was going to move closer to Likud if he thought he couldn’t beat Netanyahu outright. But it never occurred to me that he and Bibi would forge a deal before the elections rather than after them. Good for Mofaz for leveraging his position when he was at his most powerful, and good for Bibi for recognizing a good opportunity staring him in the face.

Israeli Elections Kick Off Universal Pandering to Haredim

May 7, 2012 § 2 Comments

Were there any question at all about whether the unconstitutionality of the Tal Law is going to bring a wholesale change to Haredi military exemptions, this weekend’s events should put an end to any speculation that it will. First there was the refusal of Netanyahu and Likud to postpone the Knesset dissolution despite the fact that its largest coalition partner, Yisrael Beiteinu, has formally requested that it do so. Yisrael Beiteinu has wanted to introduce its Tal Law replacement bill that would require mandatory Haredi military or national service, but because there is a chance that the YB bill will have the support of the majority of the Knesset, Netanyahu and Likud were not willing to risk that happening. A few hours ago, the Yisrael Beiteinu bill and another similar bill proposed by Atzmaut MK Einat Wilf were surprisingly approved for submission by the Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs but then frozen by Shas minister Meshulam Nahari, which means that they will not be brought before the Knesset for a vote for the time being. This should put to rest the speculation being floated that Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu are going to run on a joint ticket since if that were to happen Likud would not now be placing so many hurdles in Yisrael Beiteinu’s path. The reason, of course, that the Knesset is being dissolved now before the bill can be introduced and passed, is because Netanyahu and Likud need to do everything in their power to keep the Haredi parties happy so as not to have them jump ship when it comes time to form the new coalition after the elections. Netanyahu needs them in the fold to form a government without Yisrael Beiteinu, and Likud governments have a long and happy history of relying on Shas and UTJ (and the NRP in the old days) to build coalitions since the Haredi parties generally have no demands outside of being able to control the religious affairs and interior ministries and are content to leave Likud alone on other issues. The end run around Yisrael Beiteinu is a concession to Likud’s Haredi partners, and no doubt Likud is now expecting them to fall in line after the elections in September. Bibi particularly needs Haredi support following the hardline revolt within Likud yesterday that temporarily denied him the presidency of his own Likud convention, since he now needs to get his own house in order and will not need any other outside distractions.

It is not only Likud, however, that is trying to buy Haredi support. Last week, Yair Lapid announced his proposal that would extend the blanket Haredi military exemption for another five years. This was quite the backtrack from his previous strident position that Shas and UTJ had the country and various ministries wrapped around their fingers and that the Tal Law should be completely revoked. Lapid has also recently announced his willingness to serve in a future Netanyahu coalition and is a newcomer to politics with his new Yesh Atid party, and since his raison d’etre seems to be his own political advancement it is perhaps unsurprising that does not want to make an enemy out of Netanyahu’s probable coalition partners.

More surprising is Shelly Yachimovich and Labor’s sudden turn toward the Haredim. Last night, the Labor party leader said that the Haredi parties would be good coalition partners for her were she to lead the government. In a fit of rhetorical mind bending, she also claimed that she and the Haredim are ideological bedfellows. This is the textbook definition of pandering, and it just reiterates that the Avigdor Lieberman era is over. It might be that the Knesset as it is currently configured would support a bill that makes Haredi military service mandatory, but now that election season is upon us, the Haredi agenda is outside the danger zone once again. When Lapid and Yachimovich are giving Shas a free pass and even making outrageous claims about the ideological compatibility of leftwing socialism and ultra-Orthodox religious fundamentalism, it means that the handwriting is on the wall as regards Netanyahu’s future coalition partners. With Netanyahu poised to coast to another term as prime minister, and Shas and UTJ all but guaranteed coalition spots, expect Mofaz as well to soon join the chorus of those reassuring Haredi voters that the Netzah Yehuda battalion is not slated to grow any time soon.

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