Wary of a quagmire, Netanyahu launches a war of words More than previous prime ministers, today’s incumbent is deathly afraid of an operational entanglement, of photographs of fallen soldiers in the media, of mounting public protest. By Yossi Verter | Jun. 20, 2014 | 8:38 PMOn the eve of the dissolution of the last Knesset, in a speech in the plenum devoted to the achievements of his second government – and as what seemed to be the opening salvo of his campaign for reelection – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following haiku-like utterance: “We did not launch unnecessary wars / Nor wars at all / In my seven years as PM not one war.” Exactly one month later, on November 14, 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. It just goes to show how fluid the situation in the Middle East is – fluid, fragile and unpredictable. Netanyahu, who is not necessarily a gung-ho type, was quick to end that operation a week after it began, despite massive pressure from right-wing circles and from his own party to send ground troops into the West Bank and allow the army to “crush” Hamas. Opinion surveys conducted in the aftermath of the operation showed a clear connection between the way it was concluded and the then-incipient rise of a small, uninteresting party called Habayit Hayehudi, led by ‘bro Naftali Bennett. More than previous prime ministers, today’s incumbent is deathly afraid of an operational entanglement, of a security mess, of getting pointlessly mired in quicksand outside the country’s borders or the Green Line, of photographs of fallen soldiers in the media, of military funerals and mounting public protest. Netanyahu is convinced that he would not survive under such circumstances for two and a half years in power, as his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, did after the Second Lebanon War. He’s certain he would be forced out of office by a pitchfork-wielding mob. There’s a very short fuse when it comes to him. Which is why he fights his wars with words. Rhetoric is his weapon. Slogans are his ammunition. Threats are his armor. No other candidate for prime minister has ever had greater recourse to the word “strong” in his election campaigns: “Strong in the face of Hamas” (2006), “Strong in security, strong in the economy” (2009), “A strong prime minister means a strong Israel” (2013). It’s often said that left-wing Israeli prime ministers make war and right-wing prime ministers make peace. Netanyahu, to his credit – or not, depending on the eye of the beholder – has not especially excelled in either. It’s easy to imagine how he as opposition leader would have preached and waxed militant and inflammatory if a prime minister from the other camp had chosen to respond to the kidnapping of three yeshiva boys by means of a wave of arrests, however grand, in the West Bank. Netanyahu has so far conducted Operation Brother’s Keeper cautiously, without being tempted to slide down slippery slopes. Apart from one episode in the security cabinet meeting on Monday, when he was, according to those present, impatient, edgy, scowling and angry, shouted at everything that moved and constantly interrupted the speakers (“a cuckoo’s nest,” one participant called it) – he has generally been attentive and patient in meetings. He is navigating between Naftali Bennett’s militancy and more moderate postures by Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon. He has been aided in this by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who time after time has vetoed explosive ideas put forward by Bennett, involving exile and expulsion or operations against the Palestinian Authority itself – ideas which, if implemented, would have thrust Israel into a completely different situation. “How many people will be affected?” the leader of Habayit Hayehudi asked in frustration in regard to one decision or another that was made. The irony of the situation is well illustrated by MK Shaul Mofaz, head of the possibly soon-to-be extinct Kadima party, who this week chose to outflank Netanyahu sharply from the right. He called on the prime minister to “call up reserves, leave no stone unturned in Judea and Samaria, and smash Hamas to pieces.” In 2009, the same Mofaz came out with a bold, jaw-dropping political plan, which called for dialogue with Hamas. What’s the difference between Hamas of today and Hamas of five years ago? Back then, the organization was holding Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza. Eye on the future Ministers and other politicians who meet with Netanyahu frequently describe him as being awash in adrenaline. He is busy consulting, listening to, asking others for advice. Twice, on Sunday and on Wednesday, he invited Shas leader MK Aryeh Deri for long talks. Deri is intelligent and experienced, but operational or military advice is not his thing. What it proves is that even in this stressful period, the prime minister is not neglecting the political arena. He has his eye on the future. He’s “re-oiling” the axis connecting him and Deri that grew rusty and rundown over the years, particularly in the current Knesset, as preparation for a rainy day. Experience proves it will always rain eventually, though it may tarry. However, the political agenda was abruptly hijacked last Friday, when news about the three missing teenagers broke. Continuing media preoccupation with Netanyahu’s behavior in the recent presidential election – which hurt him badly in the right wing and among the general public – ceased. Disturbing questions about the garden furniture that found its way to the Netanyahus’ private villa in Caesarea vanished. If the operation underway now ends successfully, without any unexpected entanglement or unnecessary bloodshed – if possible in the form of locating the kidnappers and the kidnap victims – it can be said, cautiously, that Netanyahu’s stock will rise. The security arena is his territory. The main opposition toes the line and salutes. Following a particularly miserable week for MK Isaac Herzog and his Labor Party – badly burned by their support for two presidential candidates, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Meir Sheetrit – the days that followed stripped them of any remaining relevance, and forced them to play the role of cheerleaders for the leader. Occasional critical voices have been heard from Meretz, on the left, and of course no crisis is complete without a shabby, predictable provocation by MK Haneen Zoabi (Balad), which even her Arab colleagues in the House found repulsive. But that’s the privilege of the extremities, of the off-the-wall political fringes. Zoabi’s “twin,” for all practical purposes, is Rabbi Dov Lior, from Hebron, who declared on Wednesday that the kidnapping was the result of the government’s “anti-Jewish” legislation. What’s worrying the prime minister is the unknown, the unexpected, the dangers of mounting a military operation deep in the West Bank. He has internalized the lessons of Olmert and the Second Lebanon War. In its first two weeks, the then-prime minister soared to new heights of popularity, with a fantastic 80-percent approval rating in the polls. Within a month or two, he had come plummeting to earth and was a lame duck until the end of his term of office. One can go out on a limb by saying that Netanyahu would like the kidnap victims to be found so that he can order the troops home and declare: We won. This is also the reason Netanyahu is choosing to make do with lean, dry, pathos-free statements for the time being. You won’t hear him reenacting Olmert’s speech to the Knesset the day after the soldiers were captured in Lebanon: “There are moments when we have to say: We’ve had it!” Netanyahu’s most far-reaching statement so far has described the abduction as “serious” and as bearing “serious implications,” as though he were a school principal and one of the students was caught smoking weed in the toilet. Below the radar Because of the security-related events, which pushed aside reports about the continuing interrogations of Ben-Eliezer concerning the wads of money in his safe, and of former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi in the Harpaz affair (which has become his affair) – the crisis over the addition to the defense budget for this year ended in a whimper. Finance Minister Lapid, who undertook publicly, on many occasions, not to boost the defense budget by so much as an agora, beat a model retreat and authorized the transfer of 1 billion shekels ($289 million) to Moshe Ya’alon’s piggy bank. Obviously, Lapid has learned something about politics. If you’re going to surrender, if you’re going to back off and go to sleep hungry, it’s best to do it now, with the media busy with other matters. Lapid also grasped that this is not the time to pursue a quarrel with the defense establishment. He opened the treasury’s wallet and paid, mutely. The result was to neutralize, without our feeling it, a land mine that threatened the coalition’s stability. The next installment of the saga will come in August, when discussions begin about the 2015 budget. If we are to believe informed sources in the Defense Ministry, this might not be the last addition in the current year. Their appetite has been whetted. A new coalition On Wednesday, the newly installed chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Relations and Defense Committee, MK Zeev Elkin (Likud), skittered between MKs from most factions in the House, holding an interesting draft bill titled, “Amendment – Release of prisoners for political or security considerations.” Elkin doesn’t want to stop Israeli governments from releasing security prisoners in prisoner exchanges or as part of political agreements. What he’s proposing is to make it easier to re-arrest the freed individuals if “the conditions change” after their release, and even if they have not violated their personal conditions of release. In other words, it will be enough if the organization to which they belong has brought about a “basic change” in the political-security circumstances for the prisoners who were set free to be unceremoniously hauled back to jail. To that end, he wants to change the procedure of releasing security prisoners. No longer will this be done by a presidential or military pardon, but by government decision – a decision that can be reversed at any time in order to incarcerate the individuals in question anew. To re-incarcerate 51 people who were released in the Gilad Shalit deal, a legal case has to be made that will meet the requirements of the law. Under Elkin’s bill, all that will essentially be required in the future, in order to send a released prisoner back to his cell, will be giving him a lift from home in an army vehicle. Elkin is also proposing that the law be applied retroactively, to encompass previously released prisoners. That clause could, however, encounter judicial flak. The proposed legislation has been lent heft by the political affiliation of some of the MKs who have signed on: not only Likud and Habayit Hayehudi people, but also MKs Amram Mitzna, Elazar Stern and David Tsur from Hatnuah (which is headed by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who chairs the Ministerial Committee for Legislation), Eitan Cabel (Labor), Ariel Atias (Shas), Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), and Aliza Lavie and Ronen Hoffman (Yesh Atid). Meet the Elkin coalition.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 20:54:36 +0000
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