Israeli politics seemed to be taking place in parallel universes this week. At the King David Hotel, the cabinet gathered for a festive meeting in which Prime Minister Naftali Bennett sat side-by-side with the visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
The woman who has ruled Germany for 16 years — and as soon as a new coalition is formed in Berlin will be on her way out — seemed unusually chirpy for someone who is adept as she is at hiding her emotions.
Mr Bennett seemed very pleased with himself as well. She was the first senior world leader he was welcoming to Jerusalem and though neither of them mentioned his name, it was clear they were pleased that the host wasn’t someone else.
Meanwhile, in another universe across town, a series of events was being held to mark the anniversary of the signing of the historic “Abraham Accords” between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The guests of honour were an Israeli prime minister, an American Secretary of State and a power couple of senior advisors from the White House. No-one mentioned that Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are all now exes, turfed out of office.
The four of them all intend to try and get back into power in the not-too-distant future. For Mr Netanyahu especially, who has been finding it hard to get accustomed to his new role as leader of the opposition, it was a rare opportunity to bask once again in the limelight and the adulation of the audience who cheered every time he got up to speak. But then, on Monday night, reality came crashing in again.
When the party's over
Yuli Edelstein, the former Knesset Speaker and Health Minister, is the rare Likudnik who is not known to have any enemies. The last time the party held primaries for its Knesset candidate list, he came first, giving him the second spot, just behind the one reserved for the party leader. On Monday evening, he made a surprise announcement.
“I’ve decided to run for leadership,” he said in an interview with channel 12. “We held four elections,” he reminded his Likud colleagues. “And four times we couldn’t form a national government lead by Likud. So if we don’t have a serious reckoning, we will stay in opposition for long years. And the reckoning says we have to replace Benjamin Netanyahu.”
This is a pivotal moment for Mr Netanyahu. If Mr Edelstein is the sole challenger, the former PM is likely to win by a landslide. The last Likud primary took place in December 2019 and he won that with 72.5 percent of the vote. The loser was Gideon Sa’ar, who was even more popular than Mr Edelstein in the party. But that was still far from enough to take on the prime minister.
Mr Netanyahu is now out of office, but that doesn’t seem to have made him less popular with the party faithful. One poll, conducted immediately after his announcement, found 86 percent of Likud voters still preferring Mr Netanyahu, and only six percent in favour of Mr Edelstein. The next leader will be decided by the party members, and if anything they are even more loyal than the Likud voters.
But Mr Netanyahu’s chief concern isn’t losing a primary any time soon. It’s the appearance of his leadership beginning to erode and, if other heavyweight candidates emerge such as former Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat or former Finance Minister Yisrael Katz, both of whom are mulling a challenge, it will damage his image as party overlord.
No date for a primary has been set. But the thinking in Mr Netanyahu’s circle is that it would be best to hold one as soon as possible, before others launch their campaigns. This way, another landslide will seal his leadership for a few more years to come, despite languishing in opposition.
But if Mr Edelstein’s chances are so slim, why has he taken the plunge?
One of his associates, who was surprised by the news, gave two possible reasons. First, Mr Edelstein wants to be remembered as the only Likud big beast who dared take on the king, so that next time a primary is held, after Mr Netanyahu finally leaves, he will be remembered as being braver than his rivals. The other possibility is that he thinks it will somehow boost the chances of his wife, Irina Nevzlin, who is running for the job of Jewish Agency Chairman.
And the candidates are...
The Jewish Agency, which was Israel’s government-in-waiting before the state’s foundation, has not been in the news like this for decades. This week was supposed to be the one in which a new chairman was appointed by a 10-member committee of the Agency’s executive members and chief stakeholders, but it has long been evident that they would fail to reach the necessary consensus over the chosen candidate (the by-laws dictate that at least nine members must be in favour).
Former chairman, now president, Isaac Herzog, has been predicting for months in closed conversations that the decision would have to be deferred. And that was even before the coalition’s main candidate, Yesh Atid member and Intelligence Affairs Minister Elazar Stern, ruined his chances in a car-crash of an interview.
“As commander of the IDF’s personnel branch, I shredded anonymous complaints against senior officers of sexual harassment,” Mr Stern said last week in a radio interview.
When the severity of what he had just said at last began to dawn on him, he tried to explain that he had of course encouraged female soldiers and officers to complain of sexual harassment, but had meant only that he was against anonymous complaints being used to settle scores. But it was too late.
The norms have changed in the 13 years since Major General Stern left the army. At least they are supposed to have changed. And despite receiving the lukewarm backing of his party leader, foreign minister Yair Lapid, by Tuesday Stern had been forced to remove his candidacy, leaving the appointment process in chaos and the selection postponed at the last minute. Nominally, the chairman of the Jewish Agency is selected by representatives in the World Zionist Organisation, from the main Israeli political parties and the prominent Jewish federations of North America. In the past, they ultimately found themselves voting for the candidate put forward by the prime minister. But things have changed.
In 2018, Mr Herzog, a former leader of Labour, became the first Jewish Agency chairman to be elected against the wishes of the prime minister. It was a display of pique on behalf of American Jews at his disregard of them and the blanket support Mr Netanyahu had given Donald Trump.
This time around, the prime minister is no longer Mr Netanyahu and he’s no longer a leader of a large party. Mr Bennett has ceded the coalition’s support to Mr Lapid’s candidate, who was supposed to be the now disgraced General Stern. There are plenty of other candidates, backed by various coalition and opposition parties, but none of them are appealing or consensual enough to get the nod from the committee.
Considering the circumstances in which the frontrunner was forced to bow out, many now think that the next chairman should be the Jewish Agency’s first chairwoman. And in some ways, she would have been a perfect candidate. Ms Nevzlin is not political, but having a husband who is a senior Likudnik would have secured their support. As chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv she oversaw an ambitious and much-lauded overhaul of its finances and renovation of the dilapidated building and exhibits. The daughter of a Russian billionaire has the contacts in major Jewish communities and a flair for fundraising, which would come in handy for a cash-strapped organisation.
Until this week, the only major item counting against Ms Nevzlin was the fact that her father, Leonid Nevzlin, is considered a political enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Surely, her supporters argued, that wouldn’t be taken out on Russian Jews. But now she has a much bigger problem. Her husband, Mr Edelstein, had the temerity to take on his party leader, and that will surely not be forgiven so easily. That is, unless Mr Netanyahu is actually happy at the chance to fight a primary now, which he will almost certainly win, scotching talk of insubordination in the ranks. Who knows? Perhaps in return for sticking his neck out, Mr Edelstein’s wife will actually be rewarded.
