Published: 3 March 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The announcement was long anticipated and Netanyahu had plenty of time to prepare for it. In a last-ditch bid to stave it off, on Thursday morning the Likud party petitioned the High Court to overrule what was coming later that day.
Party representatives wrote in a press release, “The Attorney- General’s announcement ... is the result of pressure by leftist bullies over the past three years who intend to bring the downfall of the right-wing government and win the election, but not through the ballot boxes.”
The court rejected the petition and Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit released his announcement. There is no chance, however, that Netanyahu will see the inside of a courtroom any time soon, and certainly not before the April 9 elections.
Hearings are lengthy processes and can take months. Furthermore, according to Israeli law, if he wins the election, Netanyahu would not be required to resign as prime minister even if he is indicted.
So how will this indictment influence the election process and Netanyahu’s prospects for re-election? It may not affect them very much at all.
In December, Netanyahu dissolved his coalition and called for early elections, ostensibly because of his narrow and unruly majority (which held only 61 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset).
However, most pundits believe that Netanyahu, anticipating the imminent announcement of the indictments, decided that early elections would provide him with the best defence, allowing him to leverage his political persona as Israel’s greatest leader, but who is embattled, persecuted and victimised by his enemies.
Netanyahu has carefully crafted his election script and has consistently stayed on message. Since the election campaign began, he has made it clear that he will not resign and the indictments were an attempt by a nefarious “deep state”, composed of the Left, elites, human rights organisations, the legal establishment and the media, to bypass the democratic electoral process and put themselves in power despite the will of the people.
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The strategy appeared to be working and, until last week, most polls predicted that Netanyahu would win easily. But in general elections, Israelis don’t vote for individuals, but rather for party lists; the number of seats each list brings to the Knesset is a function of the proportion of support each party gets from the electorate.
Last week marked the deadline for the finalisation of these lists. Just hours before that deadline a new party, Blue and White, registered for the election and immediately presented the most credible challenge to Netanyahu in his nearly 10 years as Prime Minister. Forming their new party, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief-of staff, who were leading the two top-polling centrist parties, agreed to share the premiership in a rotation deal if they win the elections.
Since their platform has yet to be announced, it is clear that the “pivotal moment and the national task at hand,” as Lapid and Gantz declared in a joint statement, is to unseat Netanyahu. For further effect, Blue and White also includes former IDF chiefs Gabi Ashkenazi and Moshe (“Bogie”) Ya’alon.
The polls were immediately enthusiastic.
Netanyahu seemed to panic, fearing that because the Israeli Right had fragmented into numerous small parties that were unlikely to clear the electoral threshold, their votes would be wasted, and he would not have enough of a majority to form a strong coalition.
He postponed a scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and brokered a deal between the Bayit Yehudi (The Jewish Home) and the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) parties. As part of that deal, he promised members of Jewish Power ministerial positions in the government he plans to form.
Jewish Power is a political descendant of Kach, the party run by the infamous racist Meir Kahane. Kach was outlawed by the Israeli government in 1994 and was listed as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department.
Positions that Kahane and his followers have taken, and that members of Jewish Power have endorsed, include proposing legislation to strip non-Jewish Israelis of their citizenship, to ban sex and marriage between Jews and non-Jews, to separate non-Jews from Jews in public institutions such as hospitals, and to transfer non-Jews out of Israel.
In 1994, a close follower of Kahane, American-born Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Palestinian Muslims during prayers in the contested West Bank city of Hebron. A leader of Jewish Power proudly displays Goldstein’s picture in his living room.
The deal has been condemned in Israel, even from many whose positions are right of centre regarding the Israel-Arab conflict, and from Jewish communal organisations throughout the Diaspora. To some, the deal is proof that Netanyahu will cross any moral or ethical line to achieve victory.
But he is counting on his ability to fear-monger by painting his opponents as leftists and the allegations as politically motivated. Following the deal, Israel Today, the free newspaper paid for by pro- Netanyahu US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, ran banner headlines declaring, “Without the merger, the left will win!” Shas, the right-wing ultra-Orthodox party, also voiced its support for the merger.
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Speaking on Israeli TV late on Thursday night in response to the pending indictments, Netanyahu continued to blame the left wing and the deep state for the “ruthless persecution” against him.
“Something terrible has happened here, and it is damaging Israeli democracy,” he declared. “For the first time in the country’s history, we are going to a hearing before the election, just to topple the right wing and raise the Left to the premiership. There is no other explanation.”
Insisting on his innocence, and seeming to get teary for a moment, Netanyahu said that he and his family “have gone through hell” as part of this “witch-hunt”. Praising his many accomplishments in the fields of foreign policy, security, and finance, he said, “the Left knows that with such feats, they can’t beat us at the ballot.”
“That’s why ... they have been carrying out political persecution against us in order to topple the right-wing government.”
Netanyahu has also continued his attack on the Blue and White Party by referring to its members as leftists. Attempting to brand a party led by three former chiefs of staff as left wing, Netanyahu said the choice facing voters was between a “weak, new left-wing party” supported by Arab Knesset members who seek to destroy Israel” and “a strong, right-wing government under my leadership.”
Will the strategy work, despite the indictments?
According to a poll conducted by local polling firm Number 10 Strategies, for the Times of Israel and published early on Thursday morning before the indictment announcement, it will not. The indictments, their poll showed, will “be an election game changer,” causing the Likud to “lose a significant chunk of support as well as its ability to form a coalition after the vote.” Twenty-eight percent of those planning to vote for Likud said that they wouldn’t if Mandelblit indicted Netanyahu.
Yet the Times of Israel report also acknowledges that “polls are an almost daily occurrence in Israel in the months leading up to elections and are not seen as overtly reliable.” Moreover, due to Israel’s party system, governments are formed when parties agree to form a majority coalition.
By late on Thursday night, after Mandelblit’s announcement, all of the coalition parties from the last Knesset, with the exception of one (Kulanu), had issued statements of solidarity with Netanyahu, stating that they would only form a coalition made up of right-wing parties and led by him and the Likud.
And finally, as recent events and Israeli political history prove, the six weeks until the elections are a very long time. There is still plenty of opportunity for Netanyahu’s strategy to succeed (or fail), for Blue and White to flounder (or thrive) and for unpredictable events, such as security attacks – all of which will be more significant than these pending indictments, grave as they are.
READ MORE
Hundreds call for Netanyahu's resignation in Tel Aviv protest (Haaretz)
Netanyahu may not be able to form coalition, new polls show (Haaretz)
Poll shows two-thirds of Israelis think Netanyahu should resign if indicted (Times of Israel)
Justice minister criticises Netanyahu for personal attacks on state prosecutors (Times of Israel)
Photo: Benjamin Netanyahu seen in the Knesset plenum ahead of the vote on the Jewish Nation-State Law, July 18, 2018 (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
