Will Israel's wartime government save Netanyahu's political future?

Will Israel's wartime government save Netanyahu's political future?
© EPA-EFE/AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO HANDOUT   |   A handout photo made available by the Israeli Government Press Office shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) during a situation assessment meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, 08 October 2023.

Israelis were shocked that Hamas had organized such a large-scale attack without the security services finding out. Will Netanyahu pay the political price for this failure, or will the formation of an emergency government save him?

The sixth national unity government in Israel’s history

72 hours, after the carnage committed by Hamas in Israel, lasted the talks for the formation of a national unity government, an emergency government as the Israelis call it, to function for the duration of the war. Israel's Security Council was replaced by a war cabinet from which far-right leaders Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Jewish Power) were excluded. In the current context, both would complicate Israel's security policy considering that Ben Gvir holds the national security portfolio.

It is for the sixth time in Israel's history that a national unity government is born in a crisis situation. It first happened in 1967, on the eve of the 6-Day War. Then, in early 1969, when Golda Meir took over the leadership of the government after Levi Eshkol died, and the third was formed after the elections of October 1969. There followed the one of 1984, after the war in Lebanon, when the principle of rotating the office of prime minister between the leader of the Labor party, Shimon Peres, and the leader of Likud, Ytzak Shamir, was implemented. The fifth government of national unity was created in 1988 following elections in which no party got the majority.

48 hours after the attack, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of the most contested government in Israel's history, publicly called for the formation of a national unity government.

"The people are united and now the government must be united. I call on the leaders of the opposition to immediately create a national unity government, without preconditions, as Menachem Begin did on the eve of the 6-Day War," Netanyahu said.

National unity governments have led Israel through some of the most complicated periods in its history

In June 1967, Menahem Begin was leading the Herut party, the predecessor of today's Likud, and the party was in opposition. A day before the 6-day war started, the then prime minister, the Social Democrat Levi Eshkol, born in Ukraine, under pressure from civil society, brought the opposition parties into government, starting with Herut. It was the first time that those parties were included in a government, the first national unity government in the history of Israel. It was formed even though the alliance then in power under Levi Eshkol had a comfortable majority of 75 out of 120 Knesset seats. Rafi was another party then in opposition, a party established in 1965 by two historical figures of Israel: Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres. 111 deputies supported that government in which the defense portfolio was entrusted to Moshe Dayan. The first decision of the enlarged cabinet was a preemptive strike against Egypt. In that formula, the union government ruled the country for 38 months, a record compared to previous governments. In February 1969, Levi Eshkol died.

He was succeeded at the head of the Labor Party by Golda Meir, the 4th Prime Minister of Israel. But because elections were to be organized, the members of the coalition decided to stay put with regard to the idea of ​​national unity. This time, representatives of the opposition parties were also given portfolios in the government, until Israel went to the polls in October 1969. It was a government that had to manage the war of attrition with Egypt, a protracted seventeen-month conflict between Israel and Egypt along the Suez Canal. In June 1970, the Americans launched the so-called Rogers Plan, named after the Secretary of State at the time William Rogers, an Israeli-Arab peace initiative that provided for the establishment of a negotiation channel, the acceptance of   242 Security Council Resolution, which provided, among other things, the "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied during the recent conflict",  and the Arab states were required to accept Israel's right to "live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, without threats or acts of force".

Golda Meir eventually accepted this initiative, hastening the disintegration of an already fragile alliance. The first to withdraw from the coalition was Menachem Begin.

The fourth national unity government, led by rotation by Shimon Peres and Ytzak Shamir, was created against the background of a divided society after the war in Lebanon and had the particularity of being made up of 10 seats, divided equally between Labor and Likud, to make sure that each side could block, if necessary, the initiative of the other. This government decided the withdrawal from southern Lebanon into a security zone and had to manage the 500 percent inflation that was triggering large-scale social movements in the country. It was a government that completed its 4-year term.

After the 1988 elections, the Labor and Likud met again because neither party had won a majority and failed to form coalitions with the religious parties. A new arrangement between the Conservatives and Labor allowed Ytzak Shamir to be prime minister and Shimon Peres to be foreign minister.

Is the national unity government a vehicle Benjamin Netanyahu will use to save his political future?

In all these situations, behind the creation of a national unity government was the need to put aside rivalries at turning points, but also to re-establish the political and military leadership as the circumstances required.

What would be the common elements now? An Israel divided by a justice reform that Israelis fear will put the Jewish state's democracy in jeopardy. After 38 weeks of anti-reform demonstrations, Israeli civil society was more divided than ever, especially when it came to Netanyahu and his political and, why not, personal interests. I am referring, of course, to the trial in which he is accused of corruption. In fact, the division of society can be found in the composition of the Netanyahu 6 cabinet, the most radical in the country's history. Far-right figures like Itamar Ben Gvir have become uncomfortable even for Bibi who, before the country was attacked by Hamas, could hardly keep his Minister of National Security in check.

Therefore, a broad coalition government may be the political salvation of Binyamin Netanyahu, who after the war is over will have to account for the "hiccups" in his cabinet that contributed to the attack by Hamas terrorists. The internal security service, Shabak/Shin Bet, is under the direct authority of the prime minister, but also passes through the Ministry of National Security.

Benjamin Netanyahu is now doing what he knows best; he will prove that he is a strong leader in such a tragic time for the Israeli people, and by doing so, he will fight for political survival. The first coalition with Benny Gantz, now the leader of the National Unity Party, a career military man highly respected in Israeli society, so their first meeting, also on the principle of rotation, failed miserably. Netanyahu was supposed to hand over the baton to Gantz after 18 months at the helm of the government during the Pandemic, but he speculated a loophole in the coalition agreement and refused to approve the state budget. The coalition broke up and the government fell.

Benny Gantz learned his lesson and now, before accepting Netanyahu's proposal, he made the 12 seats his party has in the Knesset conditional on the formation of a war cabinet to be headed by him. I was saying that from the start Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Jewish Power) were excluded from this war cabinet. Looking back on the history of the Jewish state, I find it hard to believe that the waters will clear after this ordeal. The Netanyahu 6 government will not last. But the national unity government NUMBER 6 will surely be the ramp that Benny Gantz so needs, and for Netanyahu, the spring water that will wash his cheeks; at least one of them, anyway.  And probably in the period to come, a decent alliance will emerge from which the extreme right, and maybe even the religious parties, will disappear. The place of Yair Lapid - the other important leader of the opposition, who did not get along with Netanyahu - is kept in the war cabinet, which means the door is open. Israel is really in trouble right now, but who else but Bibi would know how to play this card best?

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