Published: 28 February 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
If anything, the importance of a change in leadership has grown even more pressing since the last election in September. The announcement that Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment hearing on corruption charges will be held on March 17, barely two weeks later, brings into focus a foundation question.
Do Israelis care about the possibility that he may be judged a criminal? Can a democratic society look at itself in the mirror and say: “this man – who tried to bludgeon the Knesset into offering him immunity against any conviction - is morally fit to lead our nation?”
This question has been compounded by further demonstrations of his political colours following the release of President Trump’s so-called ’peace plan’ for the Middle-East. Drafted with Netanyahu’s endorsement, its degrading view of Palestinian statehood was based on a clutch of disconnected desert areas.
The prime minister mistakenly took it as a nod that he had free reign to start annexing West Bank territory straight away. The error called into question not only his contempt for bilateral agreement and sense of fairness but his political judgment, especially when even Israel’s Right rebelled against other elements of the proposal.
However compromised he seemed at the last election, Netanyahu has shown himself to be even less fit to be returned during this campaign. Yet at the same time, the political stock of his chief rival, Benny Gantz, has been weakened and compromised, both by external events and his own actions.
His initial appeal as a more centrist alternative, which almost got him over the line in September, has started to dissolve following his enthusiastic embrace of Trump’s peace plan. Ever since, he has resembled Netanyahu-lite. The closer he moves to the PM’s posture, the less he looks like an alternative and more like a pale imitation.
That has made him harder to endorse than last time, and Israeli voters have sensed this too, as Netanyahu’s stocks have risen in recent weeks and Gantz’s fallen in multiple election polls. The undecided conservatives disgusted by Netanyahu’s alleged corruption and excess are starting to doubt that Gantz is the right man to lead Israel into a more decent future.
His stature as a leader appears to have receded, and there is no-one else behind him to step up the mark.
Yet for the sake of decency and self-respect, and for that of the Palestinians, Israelis must reject Netanyahu. The time is long overdue for someone else to take the helm, someone without his political baggage and toxic morality.
Gantz is far from the perfect alternative. But like many generals before him, he may well grow into the strong centrist leader that Israel needs. Israelis must vote to break free of the electoral deadlock that has set their country adrift, and Benny Gantz should be given the opportunity to reset their political compass.
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Photo: People walk on a bridge under an election campaign billboard in Ramat Gan, Israel, February 18 (Oded Balilty)
