How Houdini Bibi controlled his own escape — again

An election in March, eight months early, was a foregone conclusion.

The Knesset was already summing up the laws that could still be passed before breaking up, while party headquarters finalised their campaign staffing and media organisations planned their coverage.

All that was left was for Education Minister Naftali Bennett to announce his resignation and the departure of his Jewish Home MKs from the coalition and, on Wednesday, the Knesset was to dissolve itself and set the date.

But like so many times before, the political establishment failed to account for Benjamin Netanyahu.

It may only be eight months’ difference, but the prime minister had decided he was not going to be forced into an election where he could not determine the timing.

And neither would he cave to Mr Bennett’s ultimatum to make him Defence Minister.

The end was almost preordained. The two Jewish Home ministers — Mr Bennett and Ayelet Shaked — arrived on cue to make their statements in the Knesset on Monday morning.

But Mr Bennett’s speech, which began with all the reasons why he had decided the previous night to resign and why “Israel isn’t winning any more” under this prime minister, ended on a very different note.

He said he believed the prime minister’s promise for “tough action” in his new, additional job as part-time Defence Minister, and therefore was not going to resign.

Neither were his Jewish Home colleagues, nor the other coalition parties — Shas and Kulanu — whose leaders announced over the weekend they would support the opposition motion to dissolve the Knesset on Wednesday.

They too meekly backed down.

Mr Bennett had been the lynchpin. But why had he changed his mind?

It was partly due to pressure from rabbis and settler leaders, mobilised by the Prime Minister’s Office overnight.

The worry was that an early election could bring about a repeat of 1992, when infighting among the right wing brought down Yitzhak Shamir’s government and ushered in Yitzhak Rabin’s Labour. The fear that Jewish Home would be blamed and lose out in the polls was another factor.

But there is a deeper personal reason for Mr Bennett’s change of direction. The man who was once Opposition Leader Netanyahu’s chief of staff simply cannot release himself from the hold his old boss, now the Prime Minister for ten years, has on him.

Mr Bennett is often portrayed as Mr Netanyahu’s rival and challenger, but the truth is that, along with most of the Israeli right wing, he is still enthralled by him.

As a member of cabinet, Mr Bennett is fully aware that the new defence minister’s fearmongering speech on Sunday night — in which he ominously warned of “a complex security situation” and of decisions which would have to be made on the basis of secret intelligence that could not be revealed in public — was, at best, highly exaggerated.

But even if he does not believe it, Mr Bennett knows that key parts of his political base does. The risk of being cast by the Netanyahu spin-machine as the irresponsible, cynical opportunist jeopardising Israel’s security was one too far.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Houdini of Israeli politics, can put fear in the hearts even of those colleagues who have seen him come up with these tricks so many times before.

The Netanyahu playbook is effective not just because of what it does, but its fearsome reputation.

It has worked for him once again. By law, it is the Knesset that calls elections in Israel. Likud holds only a quarter of the seats. But its leader is now the only one who will decide when Israel goes to the polls.