With only a few days of campaigning left before April 9, the main battle is still for a key constituency of voters — the relatively small number on the “soft-right” — who could choose between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition parties and centrist Blue & White, led by Benny Gantz.
The polls over the last two weeks remain inconclusive, giving Blue & White a small edge over Likud in seats, but the coalition still has a small overall majority.
The campaign has become intensely personal and negative in recent days, as nearly all the parties have focused on the shortcomings of either of the two leading candidates. Likud and its allies have attacked Mr Gantz for not having the mental stamina and the character to fill the prime minister’s job.
The latest Likud attack advert used edited clips from a less-than-successful interview Mr Gantz gave this week alongside recordings from a meeting in which he accused the prime minister of wanting to kill him and using the Russians to hack his phone.
The objective is to paint the picture of a hesitant and paranoid person under the slogan: “Gantz, it [the job] is too big for him.”
Other coalition parties used more specific lines of attack: United Torah Judaism’s Moshe Gafni hit back at Mr Gantz’s speech in Washington where he expressed support for all Jews being allowed to pray at the Western Wall, telling him to “stick to what you know about.”.
New Right leader Naftali Bennett also went for the Blue & White leader, accusing him of weak leadership of the IDF in the 2014 Gaza offensive. Mr Bennett promised that should his party win enough seats for them to demand the Defence Ministry in the next government, he would ensure “that Israel will start winning again.”
However, criticism of the government’s policy in Gaza, and of IDF Chief of Staff Gantz’s conduct, is a double-edged sword for the coalition: it was Mr Netanyahu who appointed then-General Gantz and the Gaza policy was his. In fact, it is the same policy in effect now and as another round of Gazan violence this week flared up, and then petered out, the prime minister was under fire from all quarters for not leading a much more forceful response against Hamas.
Gaza remains a major headache for Mr Netanyahu (see page 26), but this has been compounded by new allegations arising from the so-called “Submarines case”, in which Mr Netanyahu had hoped to be exonerated.
But this week he was forced to admit that he made nearly $4 million (£3.03 million) from the sale of shares in his cousin’s company, which had business dealings with Thyssenkrupp, a German industrial conglomerate which owns the shipyard where Israel’s submarines are built.
Mr Netanyahu denies any connection between his stock sale and the submarine construction, but the timing is extremely awkward for him.
Also awakward was the other admission he was forced to make, in a rushed interview on Saturday, that he had told Chancellor Angela Merkel that Israel had no objections to Germany selling advanced submarines to Egypt.
He said he had not informed the IDF Chief of Staff or the Defence Minister at the time because of a “secret” — but he would not divulge what this was.
The evolving submarines case has left Mr Netanyahu’s alleged corruption on the news agenda, somewhat blunting Mr Likud’s attacks on Gantz’s character.
If Gaza does not flare up again in the next few days, this is likely to remain the dual narrative of the election campaign: a choice between corrupt Bibi and flaky Benny.
