The Likud Bell Is Tolling For Bibi
June 27, 2013 § 8 Comments
A little over a year ago, the Likud party was going through a tug of war between the old Likud princes – Dan Meridor, Benny Begin, and their ilk – and a younger and more hardline group consisting of people like Danny Danon, Moshe Feiglin, Ze’ev Elkin, Yariv Levin, Tzipi Hotovely, and Miri Regev. At the time, the latter group were upstarts who were farther down on the party list – or in the case of Feiglin, not even an MKs – while the Likud princes were cabinet ministers. It was clear that the genuine fervor within the party lay with the hardliners but they did not yet control things, and so the party was exhibiting all kinds of strains while still holding together. The hardline group did not trust or even like Bibi Netanyahu at all, but he was the prime minister and his allies were in the top ranks of the party and so there was little they could do about it.
The came the Likud convention in May 2012, where Netanyahu was booed and subjected to rampant criticism, and unable to even secure the ceremonial post of convention chairman, which was deeply embarrassing. Next was the Likud primary in November, in which Danon came in 6th – ensuring that he would end up not only high in the Likud but as a deputy minister in the next government – and Feiglin made it into the Knesset, and Netanyahu allies Meridor and Begin lost their MK status entirely. Completing the trifecta, Danon won the chairmanship of the Likud convention this week with 85% of the vote after Netanyahu didn’t even try to challenge him for fear of being humiliated, and much more importantly is about to win the vote for chair of the Likud Central Committee, which is a powerful and consequential post. He has already stated his intentions to block Netanyahu’s plans to make the unity deal with Yisrael Beiteinu permanent and to subject any peace agreement to a Likud vote, which will never approve any deal with the Palestinians. Overall, things are looking bleaker for Netanyahu within Likud than they ever have before. He is presiding over an unruly caucus where his deputy ministers repeatedly undermine him, his old allies are gone from the scene, his party members do not respect him, and he is busy making plans to resume negotiations with the Palestinians while his own party warns him that it will not acquiesce to a deal under any circumstances.
Mati Tuchfeld today argues that the picture is not actually quite so bleak and that Netanyahu can retake Likud if he desires. His argument boils down to this:
Likud members venerate their prime ministers. Since Israel was established, there have been only four Likud prime ministers. If Netanyahu decides to return to the field, it’s safe to assume that everyone will again fall at his feet. If Netanyahu makes an effort, however small, to show that he wants another term as prime minister, the rebellious voices within Likud will likely die down at once. Unlike Livni, who fought tooth and nail to survive as Kadima leader and lost, or Barak, who was forced to leave Labor, all Netanyahu needs to do is make a decision — return to the field or retire. It’s likely that he’ll ultimately prefer the first option.
I think this is a bad misreading of the situation that does not take into account just how much things have changed. Likud members used to venerate their prime minister, but at last year’s Likud convention, Netanyahu was being disparaged left and right in a way that had never occurred before. In addition, much like the younger generation of Congressional Republicans here, folks like Danon have little desire to stand on tradition and do not venerate Netanyahu, and are not going to “fall at his feet” just because he wishes it. In fact, from their perspective, the sooner he is gone the better. Netanyahu has not made any attempts to court them, as opposed to other senior Likud members like Bogie Ya’alon, and while there is evidence that he is just now waking up to the problem he has within the grassroots of his party, it’s likely too little, too late. There is a new coterie of deputy ministers and up and coming backbenchers who not only do not like or trust Netanyahu, they don’t feel as if they owe him anything. He did not mentor them and they got to where they are now via the Likud primary, which Netanyahu now wants to get rid of, and so they are not going to back him just because he asks. And unlike a year ago, they are no longer revolutionaries and they speak for a larger percentage of the party.
So what are Netanyahu’s options? He appears to have three. First, he can finish him term as prime minister and retire. That is exceedingly unlikely, as by many accounts Netanyahu is more obsessed with being PM than he is with actually doing anything as PM, and even were that not the case, he has never given any indication that he is ready to be done. Second, he can start to fight a little to regain control of Likud and ultimately hope, as Shmuel Sandler argues in the last paragraph of this Jerusalem Post piece, that Likud members believe that they are incapable of winning an election without Netanyahu at the helm and so his position will always be safe. This is more plausible than the first option, but it’s a gamble since Netanyahu is currently caving to the enormous pressure being placed on him on settlements and the peace process, and any real initiatives on that front are going to bring a serious Likud backlash and a threat from Habayit Hayehudi to exit the coalition (which is why I argued back in January that the current government was doomed to fail). If Netanyahu assumes that his position in Likud will be safe after resuming negotiations with the Palestinians, irrespective of the outcome, I think he is fated to be surprised the next time around when Ya’alon or Gideon Sa’ar emerges to try and take his place.
That leaves option three, which is pulling an Arik Sharon and breaking away from Likud to form a new party. Netanyahu is historically risk-averse and is not operating from a position of strength at the moment, and unlike Ben Gurion breaking Mapai to ultimately form Labor, he is not immensely popular, nor does he have a single coalescing issue like Sharon. He also has a number of people, like Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, waiting in the wings to take him down. Nevertheless, Netanyahu is bleeding support within his own party every hour, and that is before he has even taken any real steps on the Israeli-Palestinian front. If he is actually serious about doing something and making sure that this is not his last term as prime minister, the only way around that is to form a new party. Formulating it around the idea of keeping all of the large blocs plus a multi-decade IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and selling it as a necessary security measure in the wake of Arab Spring upheaval in Egypt and Syria would attract enough support to make it a viable party, and would let Netanyahu shed the Likud thorns in his side. I wouldn’t bet on him actually going ahead and doing it, but it would be the smart move at this juncture. If he doesn’t, I am not nearly as sanguine as Tuchfeld on his future within his current political home.
The Clock Is Ticking For Likud
May 10, 2012 § 3 Comments
Dan Meridor, member of the Octet and the security cabinet, deputy prime minister, and one of the Likud princes, has given an interview in which he says that Israel should freeze all settlement construction beyond the large blocs like Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. Meridor stresses that he believes that the entire land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is historically Jewish but that it is foolish to think that Israel can hang on to all of it while remaining both Jewish and democratic. He says that building all over the place is the single most damaging thing that Israel is doing to itself, and that the policy should be to build up international support for a land swap that would let Israel keep the major settlement blocs. Meridor adds that the whole world is after Israel because of its settlement policy, and that while he would keep Israelis in the settlements until there is a negotiated deal, there is no sense in allowing the settlements to continue growing.
Make no mistake, this development is just as important as the Likud-Kadima unity agreement. Meridor is not a fringe figure and also not someone who is free to say anything he likes by virtue of no longer being in government (see: Ehud Olmert). This is a break with current government policy by a senior minister, and one who is a member of Likud no less. Plenty of people will downplay this, but it really shouldn’t be downplayed. What this is going to do is crystallize the rift in Likud even further and bring things to a head. Meridor and those who agree with him can no longer coexist in the same party with MKs like Danny Danon, Yariv Levin, and Likud’s other Young Guns who take a hardline maximalist position when it comes to settlements. It is not a side issue within the party, but the main issue within the party. As it is, the younger hardliners do not trust the older Likud generation – and this includes Netanyahu – when it comes to settlements, and Meridor’s very public statement that settlement growth needs to completely cease outside the areas that Israel is expected to keep in a deal is the kind of thing that can spark an intra-party civil war.
The pressing question here is whether Meridor is acting alone. On the one hand, Meridor is in some ways a Likud apostate, having left the party to form the Merkaz (Center) Party a little over a decade ago, and then taking his time to rejoin Likud once Merkaz folded. One of the reasons he left Likud originally was because he and Netanyahu did not get along, and he now may very well be providing the rope for Netanyahu to finally hang him with. On the other hand, Meridor is also the perfect person for Netanyahu to use in floating a trial balloon because he is an old-guard Likud member without any higher political ambitions at this point and because he still commands respect both at home and abroad. There’s no way to know what is actually going on, but the timing of this coming right after Netanyahu has built a coalition that can withstand Likud defections is suspicious to me. If it comes to a point where the party splits into factions and Netanyahu has to choose to go with the Meridor wing or the Danon wing, I find it difficult to see him choosing the latter. I wrote yesterday that I think a split within Likud is possibly imminent, and Meridor’s interview will only hasten that along.
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.
