What Is Shas Doing In Turkey? UPDATED
August 20, 2012 § 1 Comment
SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE
Over the weekend, the news emerged that an Israeli delegation of Shas MKs, European Haredi rabbis, and Bar-Ilan University professor of Arabic and Islam Moti Kedar made a secret visit to Turkey last week. According to the reports in the Israeli press, the group was led by Shas MK and deputy finance minister Yitzhak Cohen and had approval from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office, although it appears that the Foreign Ministry was not on board with the trip and even tried to sway Cohen from attending some of the meetings. It also appears as if the group was invited to Turkey by “local interfaith organizations” and met with Turkish parliamentarians, including some from the AKP.
There are a number of strange things going on here. First, I can’t find any mention of this secret visit in the Turkish press. As of last night there were zero references to it in either the English language Hürriyet Daily News or Today’s Zaman, or in the Turkish language Hürriyet, Zaman, or Radikal. The Turkish press might not be reporting the story because the government does not want it to get out that members of the AKP have been meeting with Israeli officials, or it might be that the Turkish press finds this to be a non-story, but it’s odd to me that nobody in Turkey has any original reporting on this and that the Turkish papers haven’t even picked up the story from the Israel press.
Second, I’d love to know the identity of the unnamed interfaith groups that invited the Israeli delegation to Turkey and presumably set up meetings for them with Turkish MPs. The first group that comes to mind, of course, is the Gülen movement, and Gülenists certainly have the sway to set up meetings between Cohen and AKP officials, but then we run into the problem that the Gülenist newspapers – Today’s Zaman and Zaman – have been completely silent about the trip. One would think that if the Gülenists had arranged the trip, their press outlets would be touting it. It’s also a strange mix of people that the unnamed interfaith groups invited, with its combination of Israeli Haredi Knesset members, non-Israeli European rabbis, and Moti Kedar, who is a rightwing academic known for his willingness to tangle with al-Jazeera hosts in Arabic but to my knowledge is not an expert on Turkey. The Shas MKs would certainly have a reason to talk to the AKP and try to improve official ties between Israel and Turkey, but the Europeans and Kedar have no purpose for being there in this regard, and so it almost looks like the point of the trip was indeed about some sort of interfaith dialogue and that any political meetings Cohen had were entire ancillary to the whole thing.
Third, the reported disagreement between Netanyahu’s office and the Foreign Ministry is intriguing. Avigdor Lieberman is a vocal hardliner when it comes to Turkey, and reiterated that Israel has no intention of apologizing to Turkey during his meetings with Turkish journalists in Israel last month. That the Foreign Ministry under Lieberman would not want Israeli MKs traveling to Turkey and meeting with the AKP with no strings attached and without embassy supervision is not at all surprising. This incident might signal a real split between Netanyahu and Lieberman over repairing the relationship with Turkey. In this light, the fact that Shas members are the ones who went to Turkey takes on greater significance, since there is outright hostility between Shas and Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, and between Lieberman and Shas head (and Interior Minister) Eli Yishai. If there is any party that would have no hesitation at all over crossing Lieberman and going against the wishes of the Foreign Ministry, it would be Shas. On the other hand, if this was a delegation explicitly sent by Netanyahu, it would strange to send Cohen and Nissim Zeev rather than Likud MKs or even one of Bibi’s personal advisers. Shas is not known for its expertise or even interest in foreign affairs, and using Shas MKs to act as diplomats would be highly unusual.
So in sum, something about this whole thing seems off to me. It doesn’t seem like it was orchestrated or initiated by Netanyahu even though he seems to have had no problem with it, and the veil of secrecy also makes little sense if it was not a delegation empowered to do much of anything. There would be no reason for the cloak and dagger routine over an attempt at interfaith dialogue, but there would also be no reason to have European rabbis and Kedar on the trip if it were anything but that. If the trip was actually planned as an interfaith dialogue but Cohen and Zeev were instructed to carry out a side mission of talking to the Turkish government, then the secrecy surrounding the trip was even more ill-conceived since once the story leaked it would ruin any efforts at plausible deniability. Basically, I can’t quite figure out what is going on here. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.
UPDATE:
Somehow I missed that Today’s Zaman ran a short piece yesterday quoting Ynet on the Shas visit to Turkey (thanks to Claire Berlinski for alerting me to that), but after I wrote this post last night, the Turkish language dailies this morning ran with the story of the Israeli delegation’s visit, so ignore my speculation above on why the Israeli press had this story but the Turkish press didn’t. The Turkish press did make a big contribution to our knowledge though by reporting that the Israeli delegation met with, among others, the notorious Adnan Oktar (otherwise known by the honorific Adnan Hoca or by his real assumed name, Harun Yahya), who was presumably the “local interfaith organization” that invited Cohen and his cohort to Turkey. If you’ve never heard of Oktar, take ten minutes and read this right now, and you will have gotten your fill of daily entertainment. For those who want the short version, Oktar is a Turkish televangelist known for being a Holocaust denier and for keeping what is literally a harem. He has also been charged with a bevy of crimes including rape, blackmail, theft, and cocaine possession. He is currently popular with the Israeli rabbinical crowd as he has denounced his former views on Jews and the Holocaust and defends Jews as vigorously as he used to denounce them. He has in the past scored a meeting with Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and has a long-standing relationship with Kedar, which explains how Shas MKs would be coming to Turkey at his invitation but does not even come close to explaining why Israeli rabbis and officials are granting Oktar any shred of legitimacy. Is Israel really so desperate for a friendly face that it can’t find anyone with a more stable background than Oktar? It also sheds some new light on why the Foreign Ministry, which is presumably more familiar with Oktar’s exploits than the prime minister’s office, might have had reservations about the whole thing.
Bibi’s Bad Weekend
July 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
For anyone paying attention to the news this weekend, it appeared that Kadima was on the ropes. There were reports that a faction of Kadima MKs was set to leave and join Likud, while another group of more left-leaning Kadima members were plotting to leave and either form their own party or join up with Labor or Meretz. As of today, however, it seems that the rebels have been foiled for now. Finally, Shaul Mofaz shows why he was a top general! Instead of breaking away, the four Kadima MKs who had allegedly agreed to move over to Likud are now going to be referred to the Knesset House Committee as secessionists and if they are found to have tried to secede then they will not be able to run again under the Kadima banner.
The reason the four cannot just leave on their own is, in a bit of dark humor, a legacy of Likud trying to entice Mofaz to do the very same thing for which he is now denouncing his own members. Before 2009, if a faction of MKs wanted to break away from their party, they needed to have the votes of 1/3 of the party’s Knesset parliamentarians. In 2009, however, Bibi Netanyahu passed a bill through the Knesset that is known as the Mofaz Law, since its sole purpose was to entice Mofaz to leave Kadima, which at the time was controlled by Tzipi Livni. The Mofaz Law eliminated the 1/3 requirement and instead enabled a group of seven MKs to leave a party, which was coincidentally the number of Kadima members who were reputedly unhappy under Livni’s stewardship and considering joining Mofaz and returning to Likud. Mofaz himself denounced the law and did not end up jumping ship, but the law is still in force. Reports over the weekend were that a group of seven had been lined up, but this turned out to be premature, despite the fact that Likud members were reportedly bragging about having held discussions with half of the Kadima MKs.
Why did this gambit fail? For one, it was organized by the wrong person. Tzachi Hanegbi, who was trying to organize the group of Kadima rebels to jump ship and was going to be named Home Front Defense Minister in return, is not currently a member of the Knesset after having been convicted of perjury. For him, this is a cost-free action since he doesn’t have much to lose by incurring the wrath of Mofaz and the Kadima leadership, but that is not the case for the MKs. Either the larger group of seven got spooked by something or they did not like what they were hearing from Likud, but they were taking a bigger chance by attempting to leave than Hanegbi is and might have suspected that he was using them for no other reason than to get himself back into the cabinet. Had the move to Likud been organized by an MK, perhaps the story this morning might be different.
Second, it’s possible that Netanyahu himself fouled this up by inexplicably presenting his watered down Tal Law replacement plan to the cabinet yesterday. It is essentially a sellout to the Haredi parties that calls for only 6000 Haredim to be drafted annually and calls for a draft exemption age of 26, and does away with any personal sanctions for draft dodgers. After basically giving Haredim another free pass, it would have been tough for the Kadima MKs to go, as the Plesner plan was far more popular than the one that Netanyahu just announced and the optics would have been terrible for the Kadima rebels to join Likud the day after Bibi made it clear that he is putting his Haredi coalition partners’ interests above popular sentiment.
This appears to be Bibi’s first real strategic blunder to date. For whatever reason, the Kadima MKs are staying put for now and he still has to deal with his awkward coalition that contains Shas/UTJ and Yisrael Beiteinu, who are very much at odds. If the Kadima members had joined Likud, he would have been able to more or less ignore YB, but now he is stuck with the same problem he had before the Kadima unity deal. In addition, the polls on Likud are all over the place with some indicating that Likud is losing popularity over the Plesner Committee fiasco and others indicating that Likud will increase their margin in the next election. So as things currently stand, Netanyahu began the weekend with the prospect of picking up Knesset seats without having to call elections, and ended the weekend right back where he started but is now saddled with a Tal Law albatross around his neck of his own making. My hunch is that he thought the Kadima rebels jumping ship was a done deal and he then took the opportunity to shore up Shas and UTJ support with his Tal Law replacement bill. There have been rumors today that Netanyahu is now going to call an early election within 90 days, and then quick refutations from the prime minister’s office that these rumors are wrong. Elections would make sense if Bibi had expected to have a larger Likud this morning but now doesn’t and thinks he might reasonably pick up the majority of voters who cast their ballots for Kadima in 2009, but given the polls that show Likud dropping and the fact that he just signed on to what is sure to be a massively unpopular draft law, I think that the rumors of early elections are probably unwarranted. Whatever the case may be, this has not been one of Netanyahu’s better political sequences.
Back To The Drawing Board For Kadima (And For Me)
July 17, 2012 § 5 Comments
So remember when I predicted that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima were going to remain in the coalition? Turns out, not so much. According to reports, Kadima is officially out over the failure of Mofaz and Bibi Netanyahu to bridge the gap between their parties over what will replace the Tal Law. Specifically, the sticking point is the age until which Haredim can defer the draft, with Mofaz insisting that Netanyahu’s proposal of allowing Haredim to defer until age 23 is unacceptable. And so with that, the curtain closes on the grand unity government experiment.
Why did I get this wrong? I think I underestimated the humiliation and credibility factors for Mofaz. He has been threatening to pull out for weeks, and each time he issued a threat and Bibi called his bluff, it turned into a hollow one. There were only so many times Mofaz could allow that to happen, and my assumption that the overarching political considerations (more on that in a moment) would trump the more personal ones was pretty obviously faulty. I also underestimated the degree to which Netanyahu was going to remain in thrall to the Haredi parties, since the logic of creating the larger coalition was precisely so that he wouldn’t have to be held hostage to the demands of Shas and Eli Yishai. Unlike some others, I did not think that the Likud-Kadima agreement was about Iran, and unless Mofaz is actually leaving because a strike is imminent and he wants no part of it, the Iran factor was clearly overhyped by some. Given Netanyahu’s unwillingness to do what he could to keep Kadima in the coalition following his establishment of the Plesner Committee, which signaled his intention to let Kadima lead on the Tal Law, I am confused as to what his original intention was. It was obvious to me at the time that it was not about Iran or the peace process, and I assumed it was to give him maneuvering room for equalizing the burden of service and upsetting his Haredi coalition partners and for ignoring the extreme faction within Likud on his right. That he let the unity government fall apart like this is puzzling to me, since while Mofaz walks away from this looking weak and like a buffoon, so does Netanyahu to a lesser extent. Make no mistake, the Kadima position on this is a lot more popular with Israelis than the Likud/Shas position, and Netanyahu just lost an opportunity to score some very easy political points while at the same time doing the right thing by not letting Haredim avoid their duties to the state.
So, assuming that my analysis still carries some credibility, what comes next? To begin with, Kadima leaving does not alter the fact that Netanyahu still has a governing coalition that agrees on most rightwing issues. In fact, he is going to have a larger coalition than he did before the deal with Mofaz, because a bunch of Kadima MKs are now going to break off and join Likud. I thought this was going to happen both before the unity deal and after the unity deal, and the only difference now is that Mofaz himself will not be going with them. Netanyahu is still going to have to reconcile the fact that Shas and UTJ want to maintain the status quo on the draft and Yisrael Beiteinu does not, but this juggling act might be easier to manage depending on how many Kadima MKs break away from their current home and join their former home. I have seen early reports that it will be at least 7, and it might grow to more. So while Netanyahu’s life is more difficult today than it was yesterday, he is still in good shape and will head into elections in early 2013 in a strong position.
As for Kadima, this misguided move today is going to be the final nail in the coffin. Mofaz is first going to have to deal with a rump party following the MKs who break off and head for Likud, not to mention the other group of 7 that wanted to break away in May and start a new party to be headed by Tzipi Livni and Haim Ramon. Then there is the problem that Kadima has essentially transformed itself from one single issue party (disengagement from Gaza) to another single issue party (equalizing the burden of service), and while this is a popular issue, it is not enough to sustain a viable party (Kadima’s new slogan is apparently “Kadima L’Shareit” which means Kadima, To Serve, or more literally Forward, To Serve). Mofaz still has no real credibility on social justice issues, and what little benefit of the doubt anyone was willing to grant him vanished into thin air the day he joined forces with Bibi. So what’s left for him? There is no way that Netanyahu and Likud are now going to adopt any policy that even resembles what Kadima was proposing on the universal draft, and there might even be enough defections from Kadima one way or the other to knock Mofaz out of being leader of the opposition. Even if Kadima retains enough members to be the largest opposition party, Mofaz will be left shouting into the wind on this issue and does not have enough of a base or a coherent set of policies to prevent Kadima from getting decimated in the next election. The bottom line here is that this is an enormous loss for Mofaz; he was outmaneuvered by Bibi, made his situation much worse by issuing a stream of threats to leave despite his bluff being repeatedly called, and now his party is almost certainly fated to disappear and he has ruined his own chances of being welcomed back into Likud with open arms. No matter which way you view this, today was the most epic of fails for Shaul Mofaz, and Netanyahu gets to remain right where he was.
The Fate of Israel’s Unity Government
July 3, 2012 § 4 Comments
Two of my favorite Israel bloggers, Allison Good and The Camel’s Nose, are having an entertaining debate on Twitter and their respective blogs over the survival prospects of the Likud-Kadima coalition government. For those who haven’t been following along, Bibi Netanyahu disbanded the Kadima-led Plesner Committee charged with coming up with a solution to the problem of Haredi and Arab exemptions from military service following the resignations of Yisrael Beiteinu, Habayit Hayehudi, and the Haredi representative from the committee. AG thinks that this means that the coalition government is going to be gone by the end of the week because Bibi is ultimately going to stick with his more rightwing coalition partners and because Shaul Mofaz realizes that he is getting nowhere with Netanyahu and would rather resume his erstwhile role as opposition leader. In contrast, TCN thinks that the coalition will last because Bibi is a cunning politician and will be able to ride out the current storm and because Mofaz gains nothing by quitting the government.
I hate to pick sides here, but since I was planning on writing about this anyway before the two of them beat me to it, I have to go with The Camel’s Nose on this one. Allison’s logic is good, particularly on the issue of Bibi being a creature of habit with a long history of being risk-averse when it comes to big picture policies who tends to placate his rightwing base, but I will add a few reasons to the ones already set forth by TCN in explaining why I think the coalition holds.
First, Netanyahu issued a statement warning the Haredi parties that if a compromise is not reached, Haredim will be subject to the draft beginning August 1. This angered the Haredi parties to no end and they ripped him for issuing an ultimatum, and it seems like a strange move for Bibi to make if he is ultimately going to ditch Kadima and side with Shas and UTJ. Why warn them about coming back to the table if the intention is to back them to the hilt anyway? If the answer is that equalizing the burden of service is popular with the Israeli public and issuing the hardline statement is all public relations showmanship, then Netanyahu is setting himself for a severe backlash if he then goes and lets Haredim off the hook for military or national service. Furthermore, it bears noting that Haredi voters are not part of Netanyahu and Likud’s base – they historically have been willing to join any government, left or right, that has been willing to buy their support with subsidies and key ministries. Netanyahu’s base is the settler and religious Zionist movements, and they hold no water for Haredi draft dodgers. All of this reads to me like Bibi is gearing up to make Haredim subject to the draft, and only disbanded the Plesner Committee because it seemed like a futile exercise once YB and the Haredi rep had both quit and not because he is trying to protect the Haredi exemption.
Second, I don’t think that Mofaz has any intention of quitting the coalition. His threat to do so is an empty one since there is no reason for him to wait – if he was actually going to pull out of the government, he would have done so when Netanyahu pulled the plug on the Plesner Committee, which was Mofaz’s pet project. Mofaz has already been sufficiently embarrassed to justify leaving, and the fact that he hasn’t done so indicates to me that he is looking for excuses to stick around. That Mofaz brought Kadima into the government does not change the fact that Kadima’s poll numbers were badly sinking before the coalition deal was struck and that Kadima was increasingly looking like a party that would not survive more than one additional election. Leaving the coalition now, as TCN points out, probably dilutes Mofaz’s power since he is not by any means a natural leader of a left of center opposition, and that goes double now that he has tainted himself in the left’s eyes by joining hands with Bibi in a unity government.
Finally, there is the fact that Netanyahu created this monster of a coalition for a reason, and we need to think about what that reason might be. Sure, I think he liked the idea of presiding over a government with virtually no real opposition to speak of, but he also wasn’t accumulating numbers just for the sole sake of accumulating numbers. I think that creating such a large coalition was meant to give Netanyahu room to maneuver on precisely this issue – equalizing the burden of service and ending the Haredi military exemption – since it is a popular position and one that he could not pursue before without bringing down his government. The day after the news of the deal with Kadima broke, I wrote the following:
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.
This logic still holds. Putting Kadima in charge of the committee tasked with replacing the Tal Law was a high profile move and Netanyahu staked a lot on it, and the idea that after all that he would now just turn around, kill the committee and not allow its recommendation to see the light of day, and end the unity government, putting him right back where he started – namely, a coalition that is bound to break apart and bring down the government since Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas/UTJ cannot coexist for much longer – doesn’t make sense to me. Ultimately, the deal with Kadima was about Netanyahu’s survival as prime minister without having to call early elections, and so he needs Mofaz to stick around almost as much as Mofaz needs him in order to remain relevant. So, my prediction is that after everyone gets in their saber rattling, Netanyahu and Mofaz will work out some sort of arrangement, the Haredi parties will leave the coalition in a huff, and the unity government will remain in place. We should know by the end of the week if I am right or if I am wrong in a big way. And if it’s the latter, consider this my preemptive apology and huge tip of the hat to Allison Good.
Cracks Appearing In All Sorts Of Coalitions
June 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
Apparently Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy of expanding his governing coalition in an effort to deal with the crisis precipitated by the Tal Law’s expiration didn’t solve the problem but only kicked it down the road. Following the news that the Plesner Committee, which was charged with coming up with a viable plan to rectify the military and national service exemptions for Haredim and Israeli Arabs, has decided to essentially give Israeli Arabs a free pass, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party quit the committee. The news that Haredim were going to be treated differently than Israeli Arabs obviously did not sit well with Shas and UTJ either, who were already upset that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima are insisting on severe penalties for draft dodgers that are squarely aimed at the Haredi sector. So in a nutshell, the two sides that were pulling on Netanyahu from opposite ends during the last coalition crisis are now both angry again, and this is all being driven by Kadima, Netanyahu’s new coalition partner that was supposed to give him room to maneuver and put an end to the constant worrying about the coalition breaking apart.
Netanyahu and Mofaz are meeting today in an effort to try and resolve the impasse after the prime minister made clear that he was not ok with the Plesner Committee plan (which is being pushed, if not outright dictated, by Mofaz), but this is just a reminder that Israeli coalitions are never fully stable no matter how large they are. This is not going to bring down the government, but if forced to choose between Mofaz and Kadima on the one hand and Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu on the other, Netanyahu is going to go with Mofaz, which will set off all sorts of problems with the settler community at the worst possible time for Bibi given that the Ulpana evacuation just went off shockingly smoothly.
Speaking of Ulpana, the events there this week revealed another important split, but this one has nothing to do with coalition politics. Instead, there seems to be a growing divide between the camp containing the majority of the settlement movement and the more extreme militant wing (often referred to by the shorthand “hilltop youth”), with some in the settler leadership waking up to the fact that violence turned outward almost always inevitably migrates inward as well. It began when Ze’ev Hever, who is in charge of the settlement movement’s building and construction, found his car tires slashed, prompting a set of mea culpas from him and from Yesha head Danny Dayan, who both admitted that they have stayed silent for years in the face of settler violence against Arabs. This acknowledgement and promise to begin cracking down on the violent extremists within their midst unfortunately came too late for the Defense Ministry subcontractors visiting Ulpana earlier this month in preparation for the evacuation who were pelted with rocks for their efforts to ensure that Ulpana’s residents would be moved out as painlessly and seamlessly as possible. Then if that weren’t enough, the Ulpana families – who were fully cooperative and left peacefully – had to spend their time skirmishing with hilltop youths who were trying to prevent those very families from evacuating by barring their way and then barricading themselves in one of the vacated apartments. If it wasn’t clear to the settler leadership that they have a serious problem within their midst while violent settler extremists were torching mosques and carrying out odious “price tag” attacks in the West Bank, it has become abundantly clear now. All of this is a useful reminder that, as Jeremy Pressman aptly put it yesterday, the term “settler” papers over the fact that settlers are not a monolithic group and the settlement movement is not a unified whole marching in lockstep. These divisions within Israeli politics and Israeli society bear close watching over the next few months as tensions that have been buried are now starting to bubble up to the surface.
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.
The Avigdor Lieberman Era Is Mercifully Coming To An End
May 2, 2012 § 5 Comments
Avigdor Lieberman has been an embarrassment as Israel’s foreign minister. Whether he is praising Vladimir Putin and the recent Russian elections as fair and democratic or being shunned by other world leaders, Lieberman has probably been Israel’s most ineffectual and irrelevant foreign minister in history. His appointment to the post is a result of Israel’s dysfunctional political system in which Netanyahu had no choice but to bring Yisrael Beiteinu into the government, creating tension within his cabinet between the staunchly secular Lieberman and his Haredi coalition partners in Shas. Thankfully, developments are making it likely that Lieberman’s tenure as a figure of importance is over.
In the grand tradition of Israeli politicians such as Ehud Olmert and Ezer Weizman, Lieberman is terribly corrupt and has spent a lifetime engaging in shady and possibly illegal behavior. The attorney general is right now deciding whether to indict Lieberman for fraud, money laundering, corruption, and witness tampering, and if he is indicted or a plea bargain is negotiated, it means that he can no longer serve in the cabinet. The likelihood of this happening is relatively high given that Israel has never shied away from investigating its highest officials – its past president is right now in prison for rape and sexual harassment – and that the list of illegal things that Lieberman is suspected of doing is quite long. Furthermore, the former Israeli ambassador to Belarus was indicted yesterday for illegally alerting Lieberman to the fact that he was being investigated, which suggests that Lieberman himself will be next.
However, in the unlikely event that Lieberman manages to escape the long arm of the law, it looks like his time in government is coming to an end anyway. The crisis that he has instigated within the coalition over the Tal Law has earned him Netanyahu’s ire, and Netanyahu is looking for a way to not have to include him in the next coalition, a move that might be tough given that Likud is expected to win only 30-32 seats and will have to rely on smaller right wing parties. Fortunately, Yair Lapid and his new Yesh Atid party may provide Bibi with a way out. Last month, Lapid announced his willingness to join a future Netanyahu government and criticized Kadima for not doing so following the last elections. Yesterday he took a step toward making this pledge a reality by introducing his own solution for replacing the Tal Law and dealing with Haredi military service by extending their blanket exemption from serving in the IDF for another five years. The reason this is important is because Netanyahu needs to get to 61 seats, and it is going to be next to impossible for him to do so without relying on Haredi parties. The Haredi parties are not going to tolerate Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu in the government coalition again – and Lieberman probably cannot serve alongside Shas after the elections given the preferences of his voter base – so Netanyahu needs to find someone who is acceptable to Shas and UTJ. With his proposal that basically kicks the issue of Haredi military service down the road by calling for “service for all” but not for half a decade (which is an eternity in Israeli politics), Lapid is announcing loud and clear that he is willing to be that guy. It seems shocking that Tommy Lapid’s son is willing to pander to the ultra-orthodox in order to be part of the government, but Yair Lapid is doing just that, and he is giving Netanyahu a great way of getting rid of Lieberman once and for all.
