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Netanyahu wages war and fights for his own survival

A new emergency cabinet brings military experience, but not necessarily restraint.
Image: Getty Images

Image: Getty Images

Israelis tend to come together in times of war. The horrendous terror attack launched from Gaza on October 7th by Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the enclave, has prompted just such unity in a country that had been divided for months by the judicial reforms of Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. On October 11th Mr Netanyahu agreed to form an emergency war cabinet with Benny Gantz, the leader of the second-largest opposition party. As a former defence minister and commander of Israel’s armed forces, Mr Gantz will give heft to a government that has few ministers with experience of this kind of conflict. Even Mr Netanyahu, who has led the country through numerous short clashes and wars in Gaza, has not had to deal with a war on this scale. The formation of the new inner cabinet will influence the course of the fighting, and potentially what happens to Mr Netanyahu when it stops.

Mr Gantz will join a small five-person emergency cabinet chaired by Mr Netanyahu. The other core member of this will be Yoav Gallant, the defence minister (who was almost sacked earlier this year over his criticism of the government’s judicial reforms). The remaining two seats will be taken by “observers”, though in reality participants: Gadi Eisenkot, another former commander of the Israeli defence forces; and Ron Dermer, the minister of strategic affairs. This inner cabinet, which will make the main decisions related to the war does not include any of the far-right ministers that Mr Netanyahu brought into his coalition to form his government last year. The group has a high level of military experience and professionalism, but given the level of outrage in Israel that does not necessarily mean it will show military restraint in Gaza, where a ground invasion by Israel now looms.

The unity government still has a significant omission: Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and the official leader of the opposition. Although Mr Lapid said soon after the attack that he would join an emergency government, he also said that the war could not be managed “with the current extreme and dysfunctional security cabinet”. This was, in essence, a demand that it exclude the leaders of the far-right parties in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition. Instead of booting them out, Mr Netanyahu fudged the issue by creating the emergency cabinet. It is unclear whether this fudge will be sufficient for Mr Lapid to change his mind. But if he does, he will be given a seat in it.

Mr Netanyahu does not hold the far-right parties in particularly high regard. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Jewish Power party, may hold the grand title of National Security Minister, but the prime minister has made a point of excluding him from most high-level security briefings. Few Israelis, even those on the right, would grieve over the absence of Mr Ben-Gvir and the other religious or ultranationalist fanatics from military decision-making during a national crisis.

Yet Mr Netanyahu has always put his own political survival above all else. And he appears to be continuing to do so even in the middle of a war by refusing to kick the far-right parties out of his government. Mr Ben-Gvir retains the capacity to cause problems at a perilous moment. He remains in charge of the police and has been ramping up tensions with Israel’s Arab population in recent days. Mr Netanyahu is unwilling to turn his back on his far-right partners because he will need their support if he is to stay in power after the war and if he is to have any hope of winning another election. Media proxies that support Mr Netanyahu argue that he cannot marginalise Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and the leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, for instance, because some of Mr Smotrich’s voters are now fighting on the frontlines.

The opposition leaders sought a unity government because they were anxious to counteract the influence of the far-right and to inject some professionalism and experience into the government. But they know, too, that in joining the cabinet they are giving Mr Netanyahu the opportunity to offload some of the blame for the failures that led Israel into this war. They have no doubt he will seize it when a reckoning comes. Moreover, they worry that their presence in the government will legitimise a tainted prime minister and his radical coalition. It is possible that Israel will eventually have a political realignment that gives more weight to centrist parties and less to extremist ones. But probably only once Mr Netanyahu has left the stage.

He is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, but whatever his achievements for Israel over his long public career, his legacy will forever be overshadowed by the fact that these terrible events occurred on his watch. He was the chief architect of a strategic concept based on the idea that the threat posed by Hamas in Gaza could be managed by erecting a high-tech border barrier, instead of by seeking a long-term solution and improving conditions in Gaza. That concept failed miserably on October 7th.

Previous prime ministers have faced military debacles. In each case—Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Menachem Begin and Ehud Olmert after the wars in Lebanon of 1982 and 2006 respectively—they announced their resignations within two years of the wars’ end. Mr Netanayhu may face the same fate when a wave of public anger sweeps in after this war is over. It seems almost inevitable that the prospect of the end of his political career will affect his decision-making now and that he will try desperately to cling on. This makes it all the more pressing that those who have joined his cabinet try to force him to focus on the security of the country and not on his political survival. ■

Author: Editors Desk

Source: The Economist

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