“The horseshoe” in the Knesset is the most exclusive club in Israel. Unlike the “members’ canteen” on the other side of the corridor, journalists, lobbyists and all but a select number of senior aides and officials are not allowed into the long curving room (hence its nickname) just before the plenum.
Originally, this was just supposed to be an anteroom where Knesset security would ensure that only members entered but, over the decades, it has become a cloistered sanctuary, with armchairs where MKs can mingle without being observed or overheard. In more recent years, television screens have been added on the walls and it is used by MKs also for more recreational purposes.
On Tuesday evening, when the 25th Knesset’s first round of serious legislation just happened to coincide with the World Cup semi-final between Argentina and Croatia, “the horseshoe” was packed.
Yariv Levin, Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary consigliere and an avid football fan, who had that morning been elected the new Knesset Speaker, had departed from tradition and arranged lavish refreshments. The MKs, regardless of party, lolled on the armchairs, watching Lionel Messi and his mates beat the plucky Croatians.
On the podium, prime minister Yair Lapid and other ministers of the outgoing government lambasted the laws about to be passed by the incoming coalition, but around them the hall was gripped with football fever as those who hadn’t secured a spot in front of the screens outside sat at the desk and watched the game on their smartphones.
It was an anticlimatic end to one of the most bitterly fought Israeli election seasons. The moment which they had warned would spell “the end of Israeli democracy” had come. But once it was actually upon them, the scenes from Qatar’s Lusail Stadium were more compelling.
Four times they all trooped in to vote and the Netanyahu bloc comfortably won all four votes on their first reading.
The amendment to the law which will allow Shas leader Aryeh Deri, despite his conviction for tax fraud earlier this year, to serve as a minister passed.
So did the law which will grant Itamar Ben-Gvir wider powers over the police as the designated national security minister, and the one giving Bezalel Smotrich, the designated finance minister, control over the defence ministry’s coordination unit in the West Bank. The fourth amendment was to the law regulating parties splitting in the Knesset. This one was for Mr Netanyahu, who is anxious to prevent a small group of Likud MKs, disgruntled at the meagre pickings left for their party now that so many choice ministries have been distributed to the prospective coalition partners, from threatening a defection.
“We were so careful not to pass any personal laws when we were in power,” observed an MK from the outgoing coalition, referring to the kiboshed proposal to pass a law forbidding an MK facing criminal charges from serving as prime minister.
“Now look how the new government, even before they’re officially in power, have already passed all these personal laws with barely a murmur.”
In normal times, the “Deri Law,” the “Ben-Gvir Law” and the “Smotrich Law” would have been cause for pitched parliamentary battles. But the MKs of the outgoing coalition are just too exhausted and are not yet in opposition mode.
They still had a few days to try and fight these new laws in committee before they reach the final readings but they didn’t have much fight left in them for what would be a lost battle anyway. So why not lean back, watch the match and rest up for a long winter session in opposition?
Could it? Could it? No
And yet, while the centre-left Knesset members are already resigned to defeat, there are still those who want to believe that the long and disorderly process of forming this coalition, now in its seventh week, could perhaps signify that the outcome will somehow be different.
One senior official who, as a civil servant, knows their role will be to serve and represent a new government with policies and values very different to their personal ones, wondered out loud in a routine briefing this week: “Who knows? Perhaps all these delays are actually signs that Netanyahu is going through the motions and at the last moment will pull out, blame the far-right and form a government with Gantz?”
Similar forms of wishful thinking can be heard in offices across Jerusalem but they have no base in reality.
True, the coalition negotiations have been much more difficult than Mr Netanyahu and his team envisaged once the election result was in, back in early November, but this is mainly because his partners know they have him over a barrel and he has no alternative for a different coalition.
There is as yet no sign whatsoever that Mr Netanyahu is prepared to contemplate the compromises necessary to form a government with Benny Gantz’s National Unity list and that, even if he was willing, Mr Gantz and his colleagues would be prepared to accommodate him at this stage.
That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Mr Netanyahu has until midnight on Wednesday night to inform President Isaac Herzog that he’s succeeded in forming a government. Once he’s informed the president, he’ll have another week to actually swear in his new government.
There will no doubt be last-minute crises and he may well be forced to use up all the days allotted him, but it will almost certainly happen by the end of 2022.
Spilling the beans
Not only will Israel have a new prime minister and a new government when the new year begins, it will also be getting a new IDF Chief of General Staff as Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi ends his four-year term and hands over to Herzi Halevi.
Ever since the debacle of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the IDF’s most senior commanders have refrained from giving interviews or making too many public appearances until the very end of their term. And then, just when they’re about to end their long careers in uniform, they suddenly have the urge to cement their legacy.
It was the same four years ago when Gadi Eisenkot, after four years of silence, rushed to give interviews taking credit for a series of attacks on Iranian targets in Syria in which he claimed “thousands of bombs” had been used.
Now it’s General Kohavi’s term and he began his farewell round on Wednesday morning at an event held at Reichman University in Herzliya, in memory of another former CIGS, Amnon Shahak.
The lecture was titled “The power to design” and was ostensibly meant to be about grand strategy.
Instead, he spoke about specific details of “the northern front, by which I mean mainly Syria, but not just Syria, because it’s in the sky, on the seas, in Lebanon and in other places, but the centre is Syria, and as a result of these operations over many years, the Iranian vision has been totally disrupted.”
But he had more.
He extolled the IDF’s intelligence capabilities and then went back to the northern front.
“We could have not known a few weeks ago about the Syrian convoy going from Iraq to Syria.
"We could have not known what was in it and we could have not known that among 25 trucks, it was truck eight with the weapons — and we have to send out pilots there and they have to know how to avoid the anti-aircraft missiles. Make no mistake, there are operations in which they fire 30, 40 and even 70 missiles at them.”
Well, now we know. Thankfully, not only governments change, but so do generals. Or we wouldn’t know.
