The Extremely Complicated Politics of Wartime Israel
Years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was nicknamed "The Magician." He might just be able to pull into his bag of tricks when Israel most needs it.
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All of us, supporters of the current hardline right-wing Israeli government and its opponents, have been trying to avoid dealing with politics during the last 100 days that Israel has been at war.
But we all know that politics is an inevitable part of wartime calculations, decisions, and discourse, and the more this war stretches out, the more politics will creep into what has essentially been a pretty steady front of Israeli national unity following the Palestinian massacre in Israel on October 7th. Truth be told, politics has always been a key component of Israeli wars, from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, to the first and second Lebanon wars in 1982 and 2006, respectively.
Israel’s controversial prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, naturally commands the political spotlight, but his extensive experience and international relationships might just make him the best person for the job, even as his political tenure has been marred by accusations of corruption, bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.
Years ago, Netanyahu was given the nickname “The Magician” because of his ability to weave in and out of political dilemmas, and he appears to be putting on another show throughout the last 100 days or so.
However, those around Netanyahu fear growing frustration among members of his Likud party, in what could be a joint move with the opposition parties to oust him. As part of the containment battle, the prime minister has been trying to reinstate ministers who resigned under the Norwegian law, using the pretext of closing non-essential offices for wartime budgetary reasons. A senior member of the Likud party said: “Public savings are not as interesting to Netanyahu as the concern about unruly Members of Parliament.”1
Speaking of unruly, there have been a multitude of feuds with members of Israel’s war cabinet, which comprises National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, as well as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Gantz’s party was, before the war broke out, a member of the opposition, while Gallant is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Gantz, for his part, has been playing politics as well, refusing to participate in multiple press conferences with Netanyahu. Gantz’s stance is that he only speaks alongside the prime minister when it is strictly about the war and not related, implicitly or explicitly, to political matters.
According to opinion polls released last Thursday and Friday, Gantz would easily form a ruling coalition if elections were held today, and he trumps Netanyahu as the public’s preferred prime minister.
As far as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is concerned, you would think that he and Netanyahu, as members of the same party, would be on the same page, but their qualms go back several months before the Palestinian massacre. During a surprise press conference in March 2023, while Netanyahu was out of the country, Gallant criticized the government’s divisive judicial overhaul, claiming that it was hurting the IDF’s abilities to properly defend Israel. (It seems, in retrospect, that Gallant was onto something.)
The next day, Netanyahu fired his defense minister. But after immense public pressure, Netanyahu rehired Gallant two weeks later, although the relationship has never been the same since — and their tensions have carried over into management of the Israel-Hamas war. Netanyahu has reportedly been preventing Gallant from holding meetings to discuss efforts to secure the release of the abductees remaining in Gaza with Mossad chief David Barnea, without him, Netanyahu, present.
What’s more, Gallant has repeatedly declined invitations from Netanyahu to appear together in press conferences, and Israeli media reported two weeks ago that “significant tensions” were escalating between the two officials.
Then, this past Saturday night, Gallant reportedly stormed out of a war cabinet meeting due to an argument with Netanyahu. When Gallant arrived at the Tel Aviv military base with his chief of staff, he was told by Prime Minister’s Office officials that his assistant would not be allowed to attend, since aides were to be excluded. But according to one of Israel’s main TV channels, Netanyahu brought five assistants with him.
Israeli politician Tally Gotliv, of Netanyahu and Gallant’s Likud party, derided what she characterized as preschool antics, saying: “How can we rely on a narrow cabinet that is behaving like kindergarten kids? Is there not a single responsible adult there who can call on people to behave? Little children, that’s what you are, and in the midst of a war.”2
To be sure, Gallant seems to be eyeing the prime minister’s seat in future elections, and Netanyahu is not naive: He’s well aware that both Gallant and Gantz want to replace him as prime minister when the war is over.
To make matters even more complicated, Israel’s Supreme Court just a couple of weeks ago struck down a key part of the divisive judicial reform that triggered months of nationwide protests last year against Netanyahu’s government. The change would have limited the power of the Supreme Court in overturning laws it deemed “unreasonable,” but the timing of the Supreme Court’s decision absolutely added fuel to Israel’s political fire.
About a week before the Supreme Court’s decision, a draft was leaked (something that never happens in Israel) in an apparent effort intended to tarnish the Court and stifle its judges from not publishing their decision. The Court took the bait, and some Israelis contend that public trust in the judicial system has been compromised, since the Court published its decision in the thick of war. Surely, this was the desired result by whomever produced the leak.
Netanyahu is also juggling the prospect of a political feud with someone thousands of kilometers away from Israel. I’m talking about U.S. President Joe Biden.
According to the Washington Post, officials in Biden’s administration fear Netanyahu may see the escalation on the northern front with Hezbollah in Lebanon as a “key” to political survival, in the shadow of harsh domestic criticism of the government’s conduct of the war and the October 7th failures.
On Saturday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders called on Biden to distance himself from Netanyahu, saying: “I hope that Biden understands that you can be pro-Israel without supporting Netanyahu and the horrific war he is waging against the Palestinian people.”
Meanwhile, sources close to the American commander-in-chief have said that, in their opinion, there is a growing feeling in Biden’s administration that Netanyahu is dragging out the war in Gaza for personal political reasons, while not making the release of the abductees enough of a priority. According to the sources, Netanyahu wants to postpone a potential kidnapping deal for a few months, but “we don’t have that time, because in a few months the kidnapped simply won’t be alive.”3
The problem — and it would be the same problem for any sitting Israeli prime minister who represents any part of the political spectrum — is that Israel’s two stated goals for this war, to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip and safely return as many of the remaining abductees as possible, are diametrically opposed.
To muddy the waters even more, each of these goals comes with profound political strings attached: Eradicating Hamas will of course win political points for the government which restores perceived and real safety to Israel’s borders with Gaza, and there is no doubt that safely returning as many of the remaining abductees as possible will also generate tremendous political clout.
Hamas is completely cognizant of the fact that Israel might ultimately have to choose between one of these goals, and its leadership is banking on them being mutually exclusive. To the extent that it can, Hamas will not allow Israel to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously, or one after the other, but one would think that the U.S. could pressure Qatar, an American ally, to in turn pressure Hamas, a Qatari ally, to return the remaining abductees and relinquish control of Gaza.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s political projections might steer him toward a calculated confrontation with the Americans because doing so could boost support among his base. After all, Netanyahu must reestablish himself as leader of Israel’s political right because he is polling so poorly.
With exponentially more critics accusing Netanyahu of prioritizing his career over the country, the veteran politician is likely desperate to safeguard his legacy. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu has an incredibly personal agenda, and he knows that his days in Israeli politics could be numbered.
But Netanyahu is no fool. It’s important to recall that he is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied a double-load while simultaneously attending courses at Harvard University — completing a master’s degree (that would normally take four years) in only two and a half years, despite taking a break to fight in the Yom Kippur War.
MIT professor Leon Groisser recalled: “He did superbly. He was very bright. Organized. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done.”
In 2003, after serving as Israel’s youngest-ever prime minister from 1996 to 1999, Netanyahu was appointed finance minister, during a time of domestic uncertainty surrounding the economy. Many observers regarded it as a surprise move.
Indeed, some pundits speculated that then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon made the move because, given Netanyahu’s demonstrated effectiveness as foreign minister just prior, Sharon deemed him a political threat. By placing Netanyahu in the Finance Ministry at a time when Israel’s economy was at its low point because of the Second Intifada (a violent Palestinian uprising), Sharon could theoretically diminish Netanyahu’s popularity.
Netanyahu accepted the new appointment, and Sharon and Netanyahu came to an agreement that Netanyahu would have complete freedom as finance minister, and have Sharon back all of his reforms, in exchange for Netanyahu’s silence over Sharon’s management of Israel’s military and foreign affairs.
As part of his plan, Netanyahu liberalized Israel’s economy, ended excess welfare dependency, reduced the size of the public sector, froze government spending for three years, streamlined the taxation system, privatized state assets, raised the retirement ages, and capped the budget deficit at one percent.
With the Israeli economy starting to boom, while unemployment fell significantly, the debt-to-GDP ratio dropped to one of the lowest in the world, and foreign investment reached record highs, Netanyahu was widely credited as performing an “economic miracle” in just three years’ time.
Therefore, and I say this as someone who has never voted for Netanyahu or any of his coalition partners, if (and it is a massive “if”) there is anyone who can somehow pull off Israel’s two stated — yet diametrically opposed — goals of eradicating Hamas from Gaza and safely returning as many of the remaining abductees as possible, it might just be “The Magician.”
“נתניהו חושש ממרד בליכוד, ושואף להחזיר "אצבעות בטוחות" לכנסת.” Ynet News.
Tally Gotliv on X
“גורמים בסביבת ביידן: גוברת התחושה שנתניהו גורר את המלחמה מסיבות אישיות.” Ynet News.
I have to disagree. Israelis may have loathed Bibi, but, he was always considered the best defender of Israel. He, himself ran with that platform for years. I didn’t necessarily agree with all the protests, though I do believe their Supreme Court needs an overhaul but he never addressed the Israeli citizens on what he was hoping to achieve. As far as security goes, he failed in the most horrific way and still took a week to address Israelis. He has yet to accept any culpability in the massacre of October 7, he has not reprimanded Bev G’vir for outrageous remarks. He looks like a broken man with no authority. He was filled with hubris which lead directly to the massacre . I don’t think he is a magician anymore, maybe it was all an illusion. He may have proven to be right about Iran, but the current US government doesn’t care. Talk about hubris, they cannot admit that their disastrous policies has led to this moment. We are in big trouble.
I believe the most significant political event for Netanyahu will be the '24 US election
I believe Bibi will tread water as well as he can in hopes of getting his ally Don back.