Opinion

Netanyahu has little wiggle room

February 24, 2018

At first, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked as if he might ride out the corruption storm raging around him. After the recent police recommendations that he be indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two of the corruption cases involving him, he initially stood strong, issuing defiant statements.

But just this week, police revealed two new investigations targeting members of Netanyahu’s inner circle, including his former family spokesman.

It is still much too early to write Netanyahu off. His staying power can be attributed in part to his ability to not reach a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after 12 years in office and successfully twinning his policies to that of his constituents - demanding that a future Palestinian state be under full Israeli security control and that any agreement with the Palestinians is dependent on their recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

However, should Netanyahu be indicted, pressure to resign would grow. But he may not resign. He may point to the letter of Israeli law, which does not require a prime minister’s resignation until conviction, as was the case with Ehud Olmert, and he may try to head his Likud Party into a new election campaign.

As of now, Netanyahu maintains strong support within Likud, with so far little speculation on who might take over in a post-Netanyahu world. Similarly, his key governing coalition partners say they will adopt a wait-and-see approach, committing to stand by him at least until the attorney general makes his final decision on whether he would face criminal charges.

More importantly, Netanyahu has a powerful base of party loyalists who believe he is such a strong and effective leader that they are prepared to overlook his personal shortcomings, even if those failings have reached the point of breaking laws. Netanyahu’s supporters insist he must be doing something right. Even as Israel continues to build houses for Jews in settlements and demolishes the houses of Palestinians in the West Bank, Washington rewards him by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The punishment that awaits Netanyahu if he is tried and convicted of, among other charges, illegally accepting gifts, will be far less severe than the punishment that he and his right-wing settlement friends have imposed on Palestinians with their criminal land policies. For more than 50 years, since the 1967 occupation of Palestinian land, neither Israeli law nor international law nor the greatest power in the world have prevented Israelis from settling on Palestinian lands. Even if Netanyahu manages to avoid prosecution in his “small” gifts affair, in which he allegedly received benefits from businessmen, he will leave behind a legacy of the “major” gifts that he has distributed over his lengthy tenure.

Even in the face of the ever-widening and worsening list of suspicions and accusations against Netanyahu, he remains a formidable figure, Israel’s only prime minister to have been elected three times in a row – four altogether – and if his current government lasts a full term, he will become the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history.

Within Likud, Netanyahu has been around so long he has no natural successor, no figure within the party perceived as being able to fill his shoes.

But with seemingly every other day bringing new revelations, what are the possibilities facing Netanyahu moving forward? The most dramatic scenario would occur if one or more of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, possibly one of the parties headed by a leader who aspires to replace him in the prime minister’s office, decides to quit the government. New elections would be called as soon as possible, presumably in the spring or early summer.

Two factors will ultimately determine Netanyahu’s fate: the reaction of his coalition partners, and the voters’ reaction in the next elections.


February 24, 2018
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