With the national elections taking place a week from this Tuesday, the feelings in the Likud campaign are mixed. They believe the goal of a 61-seat coalition—with Yamina (Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked), Religious Zionism (Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir), Shas (Aryeh Deri), and United Torah Judaism (Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Litzman)—is within reach, but they are concerned about the biggest party’s difficulty in soaring beyond 30 to 31 seats in the polls.
In previous election campaigns, Netanyahu was able to put his opponents in the boxes that were most convenient to him. This time it’s not catching on. The PM has been trying for over a month now to frame the election as being fought between himself and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid – and this way be able to ignore Likud’s actual competition for votes, Saar and Bennett. So far, his repeated attempts to drag Lapid into a skirmish are not going well. The normally combative Lapid is turning the other cheek in a show of humility and grace that’s not common in the Holy Land. Rumor is Lapid has been consulting in Mark Mellman, a senior political consultant for the Democratic party in the US, and Mellman advised him he’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And so far, Mellman has been on the money.
A Saturday night poll of Kan 11 News and Meimad predicted 62 seats for a right-wing coalition led by Likud (31), along with Yamina (12), Shas (8), UTJ (7) and Religious Zionism (4). This is probably the best this group of parties could do next week. If Netanyahu manages to increase his votes, it would be at the expense of Yamina, which won’t be tragic – but it might be at the expense of Smotrich and Ben Gvir who could end up below the vote threshold. So Bibi needs to be careful what he’s wishing for.
Netanyahu’s opposition bloc stands at only 58 seats, of which 20 go to Yesh Atid, 11 to New Hope, 9 to the Joint Arab List, 8 to Yisrael Beiteinu, 6 to Labor, and 4 seats to Blue&White. Here, too, Naftali Bennett can make all the difference should he opt to join Lapid, Saar, Liberman, Labor, and Gantz. That combination would net Lapid 61 seats without the Arabs. But can Labor and Yamina seriously be part of the same coalition, and how long before one of them quits? Their first clash, of course, would be over Justice Minister Shaked’s continued campaign to shrink the Supreme Court’s illegally acquired powers over the other two branches of government.
A source close to Netanyahu told News 11 that the prime minister is working to ensure a loss for the Islamist party Raam, whose departure from the Joint Arab List cut down the latter severely. Netanyahu does not want a confrontation with Raam chairman Mansour Abbas, the self-proclaimed practical Arab politician who declared that for the right political price he would back Netanyahu. The PM would rather not have to deal with all that goodness.
Netanyahu’s strategy focuses on trying to strengthen the Likud at the expense of Naftali Bennett’s Yamina while avoiding harm to Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, which is hovering under the 3.25% blocking percentage. On the other hand, the goals of Netanyahu’s opponents for the next nine days are to rescue the seats of the swinging parties, especially Meretz, raising the turnout in the secular cities, and minimizing the damage from the fight over who would be the best replacement for Bibi.
Yamina is encouraged by the recent polls that show it stabilizing its power while weakening Saar’s New Hope. Until the election Bennett does not intend to continue attacking Saar, assuming his opponent will continue to retreat on his own, possibly hitting single digits. Bennett is also staying out of a confrontation with Smotrich because such a fight would give Smotrich free publicity. Ignoring him would limit his support to the hard-core followers who aren’t voting for Bennett and Shaked in the first place.
At the same time, Bennett is working hard to make it clear his party has no plans to join a Lapid-led government. Bennett is also going to reduce his number of media appearances and instead tour the country and hold face-to-face meetings with potential voters. Instead of interviews, Bennett’s ads now feature him riding in the back of a car with lots of paperwork on his knees, on his way to and from a meeting like a prime minister.
Recent polls do not bode well for New Hope party Chairman Gideon Saar, who resigned from the Likud to defeat Netanyahu. At the beginning of his election campaign, he aspired to reach 20 seats, and the polls were kind to him – voters like new, shiny objects. Nowadays the best Saar is receiving is 12 to 13 seats, and his trend is downwards. He may end up with 9 or 10 seats, judging by the most recent polls. At this point, he’ll be delighted with 13, which is why New Hope is going to attack Yamina in the last days of the campaign—having resolved publicly only two weeks ago to stay away from this kind of mudslinging—in the hope that this would help regain the lost momentum. Good luck.
Otzma Yehudit Chairman Itamar Ben Gvir, Smotrich’s partner in Religious Zionism, announced Saturday night that he intends to demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu make him Minister of Negev and Galilee Security in his next government.
“What’s going on in the Negev and Galilee is the Wild West, someone has to take care of it – and that’s me,” Ben Gvir said in a News 12 interview. “It’s been a month when soldiers come to me in the Negev and tell me ‘we are entering our firing zones and there is complete anarchy there,” Ben Gvir explained. “Women who go out jogging are harassed. In the north, not only in the south, business owners pay for protection. That’s why I’m saying here for the first time – I intend to ask Netanyahu to make me the Minister of Negev and Galilee Security. We need to restore security to the Negev and the Galilee.”
It’s a great campaign theme, but it also portrays the current Likud-led government as losing the fight for safety in the Negev and the Galilee, which won’t endear Ben Gvir et al in the eyes of the boss.
Ben Gvir also referred to the immunity bill he intends to promote in the next Knesset, according to which the Prime Minister and the ministers would be entitled to an automatic immunity from prosecution.
“I am not doing this for Netanyahu or Deri, I am doing this for every minister or prime minister so that they won’t be held captive by the Attorney General and the State Attorney’s Office,” said Ben Gvir. “In every normal country, there is no such thing. Only in Israel does one person have all the power to decide who will be prime minister or minister,” Ben Gvir continued. “This thing needs to be stopped.”
According to Reshet Bet radio on Sunday morning, Prime Minister Netanyahu is very disturbed by this effort of his potential partner in the next coalition. Netanyahu wants to avoid emphasizing the fact that he would be spending his days as prime minister—if elected—on the defendant’s bench in Jerusalem District Court. He is also not interested in negotiating with potential right-wing partners in the media.
But it appears Itamar Ben Gvir is hell-bent on defending Bibi to his last drop of blood—Bibi’s that is.