As Netanyahu sees a fifth election, is he driving Bennett into Lapid’s arms?

Twelve days remain Benjamin Netanyahu’s mandate from the president to form a government, and everything is really stuck.

The Knesset has been frozen after Netanyahu lost a plenum vote on Monday that denied Likud a majority in parliament’s Arrangements Commission and prompted the committee chair, Likud MK Miki Zohar, to refuse to convene it.

It is a technical, procedural issue, but it has major implications for the Prime Minister. Without the Arrangement Committee, no other committees can be set up, making it virtually impossible for Parliament to do its job.

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For Netanyahu, the loss of the commission means that he cannot change the electoral system to allow for the one-time direct prime minister race he demands, which he claims will ultimately decide who becomes Israel’s next prime minister after four indecisive elections.

Barring a dramatic political surprise (always a possibility as far as Netanyahu is concerned), the next 12 days will likely pass without a functioning Knesset.

The past three days. the parliament building is shrouded in a strange silence, but for Netanyahu, that has not dulled the will to continue fighting. He has entered the next phase in his fight for a decisive victory and is preparing for a fifth election.

The inexplicable attack on Naftali Bennett

“Contrary to what you claim, Naphtali, you are doing everything you can to torpedo a right-wing government,” Netanyahu told cameras on Wednesday in comments from all major television outlets.

It was a refrain repeated ad nauseum for the past few days by Likud officials and Netanyahu himself. Bennett “destroyed the right,” obstructed a right-wing coalition, and, as Netanyahu put it, prepared to “lead a left-wing government of [Yair] Lapid, Meretz and Labor backed by the Joint List…. While we have the mandate, you made a deal with Lapid on a government of the left and the far left.

‘You said,’ Bring [Betzalel] Smotrich and Gideon [Sa’ar]’Netanyahu said to Bennett,’ but there is a solution that does not depend on them, a solution where the public decides who is the prime minister, and that solution depends only on you. ‘

Netanyahu’s accusation is strange. Mathematically, it’s not true: Netanyahu’s religious-right coalition, including Bennett’s Yamina, has only 59 seats in total, two fewer than the majority Netanyahu needs to form a government.

Netanyahu’s intense efforts to get Ra’am or New Hope on his side failed miserably, but neither failure was Bennett’s fault. It was religious Zionist leader Smotrich who stopped the Ra’am deal and New Hope’s own Sa’ar told Netanyahu not to bother peeling him off Lapid. Bennett, meanwhile, announced last week that he would support a Netanyahu-led government as soon as one could be found. He then voted with Likud on the bill on the regulations commission.

Bennett expressed doubts about the direct election bill, which he said would falsely empower the prime minister at the expense of parliament, and marked a fundamental change to the rules of the game mid-game. Wednesday he came out openly against it. But Netanyahu wouldn’t have had the votes to pass the measure, even if Bennett had backed it.

Netanyahu is right that Bennett has hedged his bets, refused to commit to a Netanyahu-led government during the campaign, and has at least one obvious reason to prefer a government with Lapid over a government with Likud. (one turn as prime minister). But that doesn’t change the embarrassing fact that Bennett was not the cause of Netanyahu’s election troubles. At every turn – at least until Wednesday – Bennett voted with Netanyahu.

Then why is Bennett the sole target of his anger? Why did Netanyahu hit him like a little right-wing “pinhead” atop a left-wing government or mockingly suggesting that he considered having Bennett spend a weekend at the prime minister’s residence to overcome his “lust for power”?

The fifth election

The answer is simple: he has decided to run for a fifth election.

To get there, Netanyahu must first ensure that Lapid fails to form a coalition after he fails.

When Netanyahu’s mandate expires in 12 days, President Reuven Rivlin will have several choices available by law, including extending Netanyahu’s mandate for an additional 14 days; Handing over the mandate to Lapid as head of the second largest party, giving him 28 days to try to form his own coalition; or throw the baton to the Knesset as a whole, creating a 21-day period in which any MK who can win a vote of 61 MKs can become Prime Minister. At the end of the last 21-day period, if no one has managed to form a government, the Knesset will automatically dissolve and call new elections.

That order is essential to understanding Netanyahu’s plan and Lapid’s impending challenge: Netanyahu, then (if the president elects) Lapid, then the whole Knesset will have a chance.

Netanyahu appears to have resigned himself to not getting a majority to form a government or relit the March 23 race through a direct vote to the prime minister.

Now he must prevent Lapid from succeeding where he will almost certainly fail.

The campaign against Bennett has one goal: to deter him from a coalition with Lapid. It’s a preview of Likud’s upcoming campaign against Yamina, which Bennett knows could decimate his party at the polls.

Netanyahu seems to believe that viewing Bennett as a “power-hungry” enemy of the right will deter the Yamina leader from a government with Lapid and left-wing parties. He seems to believe that Arab majority naming the Joint List will hurt Bennett, even after Likud’s intense courtship of Islamist party Ra’am over the past two weeks – and even after Netanyahu’s appeal to Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas. who sought support for the direct election bill shortly before his Wednesday speech at Bennett.

Turning point

Netanyahu’s strategy is smart. Bennett and Sa’ar (as well as Smotrich) have much more reason to fear new elections than Netanyahu. Each can be cleared from the Knesset on the next ballot. So it makes sense to try to scare them with that possibility, to do your very best to drag them coalition-less to the abyss and see if they don’t come along. Worst case scenario, Likud could focus its campaign in the subsequent race on decimating the two right-wing challengers.

But there is a tipping point that Netanyahu does not see. He is so used to playing the game in its most unscrupulous and predatory way that he cannot tell when he has crossed the line to reverse the effect of his smear campaign. As tyrants and bullies often learn from their grief, a small amount of pressure can guarantee obedience, but too much pressure can cause a sudden and overwhelming backlash.

Netanyahu’s anti-Bennett campaign may have passed that point.

The attacks by Netanyahu and other Likud politicians and media surrogates “do not impress me,” Bennett said Wednesday. ‘He says,’ If I don’t have a government, no one will have a government; we have elections – 5th and 6th and 7th…. This cannot continue. Israel cannot be held hostage by politicians…. While the country wants a government, Netanyahu prefers a new election. I will not let that happen. “

Rather than convincing Bennett that he would be better off on Likud’s side than Lapid’s, Netanyahu has convinced him that he will at least have to face Likud’s anger that Netanyahu will try to wipe him out in the next election. no matter which way he takes. now.

That knowledge only makes a coalition with Lapid even more attractive. Bennett would stand a real chance of winning the premiership, could end up with some credit for stabilizing the political system and ending the cycle of repeated elections, and, based on his demands in previous talks with Lapid about a ‘ government of national unity ‘, successfully holding the line against left-wing policies.

It is certainly a gamble. But all political coalitions are a gamble, as Netanyahu’s own experience with some unstable coalitions over the past decade shows. If the trial by fire comes anyway, he might as well sit in the driver’s seat as it does.