Will Bibi and Likud be in office or in power this time around? - The Jewish Chronicle

It is already clear that Benjamin Netanyahu will have to ask President Isaac Herzog to grant him a two-week extension next week of his mandate to form a new government.

No one has any real doubt that at the end of that period a government will indeed be formed (though everyone remembers how, less than four years ago, it looked as if a government was about to be sworn in, only for Avigdor Lieberman to pull out at the last moment).

But as things stand now, Mr Netanyahu is going to need the full six weeks to finalise the complex coalition agreements.

However, there can be no vacuum when governing a country, and at all levels entire departments and individuals are bracing themselves for what is expected to be a very different administration. Some potential clashes are already looming.

One major confrontation that is already in the open is over the agreement signed between Likud and the small ultra-nationalist and proudly homophobic Noam Party.

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Avi Maoz

Under its terms, Noam leader Avi Maoz is to serve as deputy in the prime minister’s office, where he will be in charge of an “authority for national Jewish identity” with a quarter of a billion shekel (£60 million) budget over the next two years.

What sparked a furore was the news that the new “authority” was to take control of the department, currently in the Education Ministry, in charge of educational programmes carried out by private organisations.

In an interview last weekend, Mr Maoz was very clear why he wanted power over the department.

“There are currently 3,000 educational programmes written by progressive radical-left NGOs, funded by foreign foundations and the European Union,” he said.

“Are they there to strengthen the Jewish state? Of course not. They want to make Israel a state like all states.

“Who will make sure that Jewish identity programmes will be written instead? That’s my job.”
First to raise the banner of rebellion was Shirley Rimon, head of Tel Aviv’s City Education Administration, who, with the backing of Mayor Ron Huldai, wrote to all head teachers in the city: “If in future they won’t have programmes that fit our city’s values, we will continue to fund these programmes from the municipal budget.

“We will not leave you relying on them.”

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Ron Huldai

Seventy local authorities, over a quarter of Israel’s local governments, have already joined in, announcing they would not cooperate with the new deputy minister on educational programmes.

These are predominantly secular and middle-class local authorities who invest a lot of their own budgets in education and feel confident of standing up to the new government. And there are other powerful parts of the Israeli public establishment waiting in the wings — including the most powerful of all.

Another of the coalition agreements, this one with Religious Zionism, promises that a minister from the party, in this case Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich, will approve the appointments of the Coordinator of Government Activities and the head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank.

Mr Smotrich, who is to be Finance Minister, wants a say in these appointments as they have a direct influence on the lives of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, his core constituency.

But the two positions are also part of the military hierarchy. One comes with the rank of Major-General, the other Brigadier-General.

They are appointed by the IDF Chief of Staff and only the Defence Minister has a say in approving those appointments.

At least that has been the situation for the more than half a century during which the two roles have existed.

The IDF High Command won’t stand for having politicians openly interfering in its high-level appointments.

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Aviv Kochavi

The new government is coming to power at a moment when the top brass are in a position to put up a fight, as the current Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Amir Kohavi is in the last few weeks of his term and has little to lose by standing up to the incoming government, and his successor Herzi Halevi’s appointment was already finalised by the outgoing government.

“Kohavi is not prepared to have his legacy tainted and Halevi doesn’t want a precedent to loom over his term,” says a senior IDF officer.

“Both of them will push back against any suggestion that Smotrich can appoint generals. What remains to be seen is whether Netanyahu wants to begin his next term in office in conflict with the IDF.”

A similar bust-up is brewing between police chiefs and their soon-to-be new minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Commissioner Kobi Shabtai was about to announce this week a series of senior appointments within the force, already signed off by the outgoing minister, and Ben-Gvir privately urged him to wait.

Commissioner Shabtai sees this as an insufferable interference and is rumoured to be on the brink of resignation when Mr Ben-Gvir arrives.

Tensions between ministers, senior civil servants and local government exist in every democratic country and are part and parcel of any transition process.

What makes this different is that after having had a brief spell in opposition, Likud and its right-wing and religious partners are back with a vengeance and feel that they have to make clear to the bureaucrats that this time it’s a “full-on right government” — a coalition which is not tempered or moderated by any centrist party, as nearly all of Likud’s coalitions have been in the past.

Ever since Likud first won an election in 1977, there has been grumbling on the right that the party has only been in office, but never in power.

The feeling was encapsulated in the title of a book written a few years ago by Erez Tadmor, a Likud activist and sometime adviser to Mr Netanyahu: Why do you Vote Right and get Left?

While Menachem Begin is still a mythical father-figure for many old Likudniks, there are those who never forgave him for the way he took power in 1977, when he insisted on not replacing any of the senior officials he inherited from Labour, including such key positions as the ambassador to the United States.

This engendered a feeling of enmity, within parts of the right, towards the civil service, in particular the legal advisers and security chiefs.

Mr Netanyahu himself has been much more difficult to pin down.

While he often seems closer in spirit, and sometimes in rhetoric, to those Likudniks who demand that their party “learn to govern,” and not just win elections, as prime minister he has been more of a Begin, usually backing down from major clashes with the more powerful civil servants.

But with a very different coalition from the ones he led in the past, and he himself still on trial for bribery and fraud, it’s anyone’s guess which Netanyahu we will get this time around.

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Israeli Politics

Pfeffer's Israel

Israel