The Atlantic: The End of Netanyahu’s Unchecked Reign

Then, something odd happened: Avigdor Lieberman, who had been Netanyahu’s right-hand man in the 1990s and later served under him as foreign minister and then defense minister, refused to join the right-wing coalition with his small party unless a bill was passed aimed at military conscription of ultra-Orthodox men. This was an act of political theater—the bill would not have changed very much—but to everyone’s surprise, Lieberman held out until Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government expired. Legally, the president of Israel would then have had to task another member of Knesset with forming a government, essentially barring Netanyahu from the role. To prevent this, Netanyahu pushed the Knesset to dissolve itself and call for a second national election in less than six months.[...]

In the elections to the 11th Knesset in 1984, the Alignment (based around Labor) received 44 seats to the Likud’s 41. Neither bloc had a majority. The country was deadlocked, with no coalition in sight. The president at the time, Chaim Herzog, intervened, twisting arms and cajoling both parties to form a joint government. The two parties even agreed to a rotation in the prime minister’s post: Shimon Peres of Labor was prime minister for the first two years, and Yitzhak Shamir of the Likud led the country for another two (and then beyond). The government could agree on nothing in terms of negotiations with Israel’s Arab neighbors, producing a “national paralysis government” in foreign affairs, but it was one of Israel’s most successful governments in terms of domestic policy. Inflation, which hit an astounding 445 percent in 1984, was brought down to 16.4 percent by 1988. Israel also withdrew from most of Lebanon’s territory, downscaling a bloody intervention. [...]

Most Israeli policy would not change with a different prime minister. The basic attitudes of Lieberman, Likud, and Blue and White on Iran, on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on world relations, and even on the prospects of achieving peace with the Palestinians, are all more or less in consensus. A Gantz government would at least hope for a different outcome with the Palestinians and would take a slightly different approach to managing the protracted interim—a small but meaningful difference. But in terms of actionable policy, continuity would be the rule. [...]

In the days leading up to the elections, Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson of Haaretz reported that Netanyahu was actually prepared to launch a major escalation in the Gaza Strip, necessitating the postponement of the election, all without properly consulting the security chiefs. Only after their adamant objections and the intervention of the attorney general, who demanded a proper process for such a decision, was the plan set aside. The cautious Netanyahu of old, who held national security above any other considerations, is simply gone.  

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Vox: Israel’s election results show Netanyahu is in serious trouble

There’s a center-left alliance, which includes down-the-middle Blue and White, center-left Labor, the left-wing Democratic Union, and the Arab minority’s Joint List (which came in a strong third in this election). Then there’s a right-wing grouping, which includes Likud, the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the pro-West Bank settlement Yamina. (Another right-wing party, the Jewish supremacist Otzma Yehudit, failed to get enough votes to enter the Knesset). [...]

Lieberman is extremely hawkish on security and the Palestinians; he supports annexing part of the West Bank. This aligns Yisrael Beiteinu with the right-wing bloc; indeed, Lieberman had served in Netanyahu’s cabinet in the past.

However, Lieberman’s voting base — made up significantly of voters from Russian backgrounds — is also relatively secular and resentful of the privileges the ultra-Orthodox have in Israeli society. After Israel’s last election in April, Lieberman refused to join Netanyahu’s coalition unless Netanyahu agreed to a bill undermining the exemption from mandatory military service provided to ultra-Orthodox men. Netanyahu refused to avoid losing ultra-Orthodox support, but without Lieberman’s backing, he didn’t have enough votes for a parliamentary majority. So he chose to call new elections in September with an eye toward winning a more secure majority. [...]

Netanyahu could remain prime minister in some fashion — perhaps if he agrees to step down when the criminal indictment against him is formally filed. Gantz could end up sole prime minister. Another Likud member could end up with the top job, fulfilling Gantz’s condition that Netanyahu no longer hold the premiership. The wackiest scenario is that the parties could quite literally share power — with Gantz and some Likud leader taking turns holding the top job. This has happened before in Israeli politics, weird as it sounds.

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Haaretz: Netanyahu May Have Won, but Israel's Political Landscape Has Fundamentally Changed

So now we are back to two big parties, just without Labor. With its 35 seats, Kahol Lavan has received more votes than any other centrist party in Israeli history. Even Kadima, the only centrist party to ever hold power, never won more than 29. [...]

Why did Likud succeed in coming back from the double whammy of direct elections and the Kadima “big bang” while Labor has been all but obliterated? There are several factors. In Sharon, and now Netanyahu, Likud had strong, persuasive and experienced leaders who were also brilliant campaigners. Of the seven men and one woman who led Labor in the corresponding period, most lacked these skills. There were two who rivaled Sharon and Netanyahu’s stature — Peres and Barak — but they also failed to overcome the failure of Labor’s key policy: A historic compromise with the Palestinians, which had only resulted in more bloodshed during a second intifada and clashes with Gaza. [...]

The only issue really setting Kahol Lavan apart from the right wing is its support for the legal system, in the face of the governing coalition’s campaign to curtail the power of the Supreme Court and shield Netanyahu himself from the criminal indictments he faces. [...]

Kahol Lavan ran its campaign on being the antithesis to Netanyahu but didn’t present an alternative vision. Most of those who voted for it did so in the hope of simply seeing a change in government. That hasn’t happened and Kahol Lavan has no clear idea what to do with its 35 Knesset members.

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Haaretz: Israeli Culture Minister's 'McJesus' Response Proves: Culture Is Now a Dirty Word Associated With Leftists

“McJesus” brought hundreds of angry demonstrators out into the streets in Haifa, protesting the offense to the religious feelings of Christian believers. Earlier someone threw a firebomb at the museum's exterior, and three policemen were injured in a confrontation with the protesters.

We may recall the case of a hamsa with the inscription “Idbah al-Yahud” (Slaughter the Jews) produced by Gal Volinez and displayed at Sapir Academic College, which aroused the anger of a student who destroyed it; or the portrait of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in the nude at an exhibition of students' work at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, which ended with the removal of the work and the resignation of the head of the art department, Larry Abramson; and the video clips by Natali Vaxberg, who defecated on the Israeli flag; and the white flag that Ariel Bronz rammed into his posterior at a Haaretz cultural conference. Provocation always works and always arouses one of the major questions that preoccupies us here: Is freedom of expression an absolute value or it is it relative? [...]

Culture Minister Miri Regev was quick to contact the executive director of Haifa's municipal museums, Nissim Tal, demanding that he remove the work. She wrote that she had received “many complaints over the serious offense caused to the Christian community’s feelings” and that “contempt for symbols sacred to religions and many believers around the world as an act of artistic protest is illegitimate and cannot be displayed in a cultural institution supported by state funds.” She also added a threat that the Culture Ministry would withhold support from the Haifa Museum of Art. [...]

So not only freedom of expression is a liberal, Western value and therefore unnecessary in Regev’s opinion, but culture as a whole becomes a dubious idea. Culture has become a dirty word that is identified with leftists, and it is the antithesis of the most basic and important characteristic of the Jewish people in its own view, which is to be a special people.

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Tzipi Livni to Haaretz: Next Israeli Election Will Be Referendum on the Declaration of Independence

But Livni plans to use the situation to her advantage. In one of her first moves as opposition leader, she gathered together representatives of 40 civil society organizations active in a wide range of causes and invited them to join her new “emergency coalition,” as she terms it, to fight this law, which she believes jeopardizes Israel’s democratic character. [...]

An outspoken advocate of the two-state solution, Livni has led numerous rounds of negotiations with the Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli government. Her cabinet posts have included stints as foreign minister, housing minister, immigrant absorption minister and, twice, justice minister. And in more than two decades of government service, she has moved increasingly toward the left. [...]

Livni broke with Likud in 2005 and, together with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, helped found the centrist Kadima party. After Kadima disintegrated, she started a new party, Hatnuah, which focused on promoting peace. It joined with the Labor Party before the 2015 national election to form the Zionist Union alliance. After Isaac Herzog left the Knesset earlier this month to assume his new position as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Livni was appointed opposition leader by Avi Gabbay, Labor’s new chairman. (Although he heads the party, Gabbay does not have a seat in the Knesset and, therefore, cannot serve as opposition leader.) [...]

Livni steps into her new role at a time when Israel-Diaspora relations have also hit rock bottom: Progressive Jews – who account for the vast majority outside of Israel – have grown increasingly anxious about the direction the country is taking, both religiously and politically.

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Haaretz: Netanyahu to Make It Official: Fascism Is What We Are

First among Netanyahu's current priorities this is the Nation-State Bill. As its name suggests, the proposed law has everything to do with extreme nationalism, and with the exercise of raw, explicitly unequal power. It has nothing to do with what we used to know as Judaism.

So ill-advised is the Nation-State Bill, so giant a step it is toward the implementation of fascism – and, in fact, so anti-Jewish is its essence - that President Reuven Rivlin, a lifelong advocate both of enhanced democracy in Israel and of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party, wrote in an open letter Tuesday that a central clause of the bill "could harm the Jewish people and Jews around the world and in Israel, and could even be used by our enemies as a weapon." [...]

- Science Minister Ofir Akunis - interfering with and ruining the work of a German-Israeli committee which could have brought millions in funding for neuro-science research in Israel - this week barred one of the country's foremost brain researchers, Prof. Yael Amitai, from the panel. Akunis' explanation?  In 2005, along with hundreds of other Israeli academics, she signed a petition supporting soldiers who, while continuing to serve in the military, refused to serve in the territories. [...]

The measure would allow her ministry to cut off funding to institutions and films which, in her view, "participate in incitement against the state," "delegitimize Israel," or violate the Nakba Law, which is meant to defund any institution which views Israel Independence Day as a day of mourning for the Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee in 1948. [...]

Rivlin singled out for particular condemnation a clause which Knesset Legal Advisor Eyal Yinon declared Tuesday apparently has no "equivalence in any constitution in the world." It would explicitly legalize what the Attorney General's office has called blatant housing discrimination in towns and communities, which would mean that "the residents 'selection committee' can hang up a sign saying ‘no entry to non-Jews.’”

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Haaretz: Israelis Reveling in Iran Deal's Downfall Forget Euphoria Is Often a Prelude to Disaster

And that’s not all. After the U.S. essentially violated the Iran nuclear deal and following the massive Israel Air Force attack early Thursday morning on Iranian installations in Syria, the new U.S. Embassy will be inaugurated next week, perhaps in keeping with the prescient saying of ancient Jewish sages: “And the gates of Jerusalem are destined to reach Damascus.” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat has already named a square in Jerusalem in honor of our savior Trump, while Third Temple enthusiasts minted a coin bearing the likeness of Trump against the backdrop of Cyrus the Persian emperor, the only gentile to be dubbed “a king messiah” in the bible. I will “subdue nations before him”, God promised through his prophet Isaiah, and, in what could make Trump even happier, will give him “hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places,” that might even exceed the generous “contributions” of Trump’s Russian oligarchs.

With these two dramatic decisions, the withdrawal from the deal and the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, Trump is not only fulfilling his role in the Talmudic “beginning of redemption”, he is reflecting the very essence of today’s “Israeliness”. Not only is Trump instituting the most pro-Israeli U.S. policies in the history of relations between the two countries, he is doing so while personifying the traits that Israelis, some would say unfortunately, admire most. He speaks the blunt “dugri” that Israelis cherish, denigrates diplomacy, ignores international norms and conventions, cares nothing for the UN and torments those anti-Semitic but nonetheless spineless Europeans. He is embracing the traditional Israeli maxim that “Arabs understand only force” and expanding it to include Muslims as a whole, especially the ayatollahs in Tehran. [...]

No one disputes that Iran poses a mortal threat to Israel’s wellbeing and hardly anyone fails to take seriously its leaders’ threat to destroy the Zionist entity. The argument is over the means, not the end. Those who supported the extension of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action believe that its harsh inspection regime was a preferable way to curtail its nuclear ambitions and thus served Israeli interests better than the chaos and bedlam and danger of all-out war that is now looming over the Middle East. The deed, however, is now done, and that train is leaving the station. While the fervent admirers of Trump and Netanyahu celebrate a victory that has yet to be achieved, critics of the two leaders can only hope and pray that their apprehensions are misplaced and that euphoria, for a change, won’t turn out to be a prelude to disaster. 

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Haaretz: Netanyahu Has a New Scapegoat for His Corruption Scandal

Only Benjamin Netanyahu could have navigated the past three days and landed on his feet, unscathed in any significant way politically and without throwing the coalition into turmoil. He chalked up an impressive success in shaping the media discourse following the calamity of the police’s recommendations after their investigations of him. His party is united in supporting him and many of his friends took part in the vilification of the political rival who turns out to be a witness in Case 1000: MK Yair Lapid, chairman of Yesh Atid. [...]

The death throes are going to be prolonged and ugly. The handwriting of Netanyahu’s end is already written on the wall. The lightning polls conducted a day after the police publicized their findings showed that Likud has not been weakened and in fact has been strengthened, but that its leader’s situation is dire and isn’t likely to improve. The majority of the public doesn’t believe him, prefers the police account and thinks the prime minister is corrupt and needs to resign. The breaking point will come when the attorney general announces his decision to indict the prime minister – if that’s what he decides. However, that is still months down the road. [...]

Throughout all his years in politics, Netanyahu has honed to an art the practice of shifting the campaign to his rival’s field. He defines himself through the agency of his foes, both in the international arena and in domestic party politics. In the run-up to the last election, for example, he portrayed Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni as traitors and collaborators with the Islamic State, who were directing the militants toward Jerusalem on their pickups.

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Haaretz: The 'Two-state Solution' Only Ever Meant a Big Israel Ruling Over a Palestinian Bantustan. Let It Go

This is a skewered view, to say the least. In fact, every Israeli government since 1967 has failed to live up to those proud liberal values by pursuing an expanded Israel ruling over a truncated Palestinian Bantustan, even if they did it under the guise of a "two-state solution."

Within weeks of the start of the occupation in 1967, the Allon Plan (under Labor prime minister Levi Eshkol) already proposed Israel annexing territory surrounding and isolating the Palestinian population centers. [...]

By Oslo’s end in 2000, there were 400,000 settlers in massive "settlement blocs" that fragmented the Palestinian territory into some 70 tiny enclaves of Areas A and B, plus the prison that is Gaza. Today, the settler population approaches 800,000.

If the two-state solution is gone, it is because of successive "sane" Israelis in government, in particular those of Golda Meir and Ehud Barak, as well as of the Likud, Kadima and the religious right, and the Zionist left, "hard" right, and the always malleable center that put them into office. [...]

But Yoffie is also wrong about how he characterizes what he calls the "hard left's" one-statism. Left groups who acknowledge the death of the two-state solution have not moved to a one-state alternative – at least not yet. Jewish Voice for Peace, which Yoffie demonizes because of its support for BDS, does not actively advocate for such a solution. And the rest of the "hard" left is still wrestling with where to go.

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Haaretz: What the 'One-state Solution' Really Means: Israeli-sanctioned Apartheid or Eternal, Bloody Civil War

The Likud Central Committee and the Jewish Voice for Peace have joined the same team, along with other extremist forces on the right and the left. Both are intent on establishing a bi-national state in place of the Jewish state of Israel. Both are committed to a one-state solution that will put an end to Israel as a Jewish and democratic commonwealth. Both constitute a mortal danger to mainstream Zionism. [...]

Contrary to widespread press reports, the awkwardly worded resolution adopted that evening did not actually call for the formal annexation of territories. Its intention was to encourage the application of Israeli law in the West Bank to Jews - and Jews alone.

In fact, this is already the case; but the current legal situation is temporary, at least in theory, and is dependent on the approval of the military governor of the territories, who has ultimate legal authority. But if the resolution were to be passed into law, as Likud now demands, the legal discrimination would become official Israeli policy. [...]

And if adopted by the Knesset, the decision would put in place some form of apartheid - a word that most of us in the mainstream Jewish community have carefully avoided until now. But since the Likud resolution intends to apply two different sets of legal rules to different populations occupying the same territory, there is simply no word other than "apartheid" that fits.

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Haaretz: Right-wing Dissent Against Netanyahu Is Growing, but They’re Not Turning on Him Just Yet

On Saturday night, an assorted group of right-wingers, settlers and religious folk will gather in Jerusalem’s Zion Square for a rally in support of the rule of law and against corruption. It is intended as a riposte to the now weekly anti-corruption Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv, which are largely dominated by left-wingers and open calls for the removal (and imprisonment) of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. [...]

Their comments echoed similar recent sentiments written by other leading right-wing journalists, including Kalman Liebskind and Yoaz Hendel, who is one of the organizers of the Jerusalem rally and also served as Netanyahu’s communications director from 2011 to 2012. Without necessarily targeting Netanyahu, they have served as a counterpoint to the regular right-wing rhetoric that attacks the police, the prosecutors, the left and the media for unfairly persecuting the prime minister. 

The most powerful voice so far has been that of Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, who’s one of the more mainstream rabbis on the religious right. Defying his own public, he appeared at the Tel Aviv rally last Saturday, where he said “corruption is a strategic threat to Israeli society. The meaning of corruption is abuse of power by those who have been given it – power that is used for the wrong reasons. Power is essential, but it is dangerous and can topple the state into the depths.” [...]

The trauma of 1992 is still deeply felt within the Israeli right. Yitzhak Rabin won that election, even though the religious and right bloc received more votes than the center-left parties. Fragmentation on the right led to the ultranationalist Tehiya party not crossing the electoral threshold, with its votes rendered useless.

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Haaretz: This Is Netanyahu's Dying Israel. Where the Doctor Is the Disease

Though they go by many names, we all know the symptoms and signs of the disease. There is the physical, psychological and genetic damage caused by generations of ever-deepening occupation, associated with and exacerbated by creeping annexation, and a behind-the-wall West Bank apartheid which is seeping unchecked into pre-1967 Israel.  [...]

This week, a barrage of rabid incitement was levelled squarely at President Reuven Rivlin, a level of extreme-right venom that approached the ferocity of the public-arena hate storm which directly preceded – and led to – the 1995 assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. [...]

In 20-plus years of having himself contributed to incitement against Arabs, against leftists and liberals, against Reform and Conservative American Jews, against human rights groups, against asylum seekers and a host of others, this week Benjamin Netanyahu managed to hit a new low. [...]

Israel crossed a line this week. Then again, of late, Israel crosses a line every week. The list of the disloyal grows by the day. Arabs and leftists and Reform Jews and rights activists have been joined by the chief of police, the Shin Bet, the Supreme Court, the attorney general, and the state comptroller – to name a few.

This is Netanyahu's Israel. Where a quarter to a third of the people stand with their ruler no matter what. No matter what segment of Israeli citizens his party demonizes – as long as it's leftists or Arabs or Reform Jews or Ashkenazim or kibbutznikim or Haaretz readers or Breaking the Silence or B'Tselem or a judge in the army who convicts a potential voter like Elor Azaria.

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The Economist: Politics in Israel no longer offers much of a choice

Holy sites are the powder kegs of the conflict, imbuing the nationalist dispute with religious fervour. A row over the Kotel in 1929 led to deadly anti-Jewish riots across British-ruled Palestine. A visit to the Temple Mount in 2000 by Ariel Sharon, then the Likud party leader, lit the fuse of the second Palestinian intifada. And the increasingly frequent prayer visits helped launch the current wave of stabbings and car-rammings by Palestinians. [...]

It was in Hebron in March 2016 that an army medic, Sergeant Elor Azaria, killed a Palestinian lying on the ground, even though he had already been wounded and incapacitated after trying to stab Israeli soldiers. Mr Azaria shot the man not in the heat of the moment but 11 minutes after the stabbing—and was caught on video. The army’s high command demanded exemplary punishment, but populist politicians agitated for an acquittal or, once the soldier was convicted of manslaughter, a pardon. Strikingly, the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, took the side of the pardon-seekers.

The Azaria affair says much about the chauvinism that suffuses Israeli public life. Politics is no longer a contest of right against left but of right against far right. Israel has become more ethno-nationalist and less universalist; more Jewish and less Israeli. Mr Netanyahu, once regarded as a demagogue, often looks like a moderate next to many of his cabinet members. [...]

Right-wingers have sought to marginalise Arab parties in the Knesset and hamper leftists and liberals. The Knesset is pushing laws on everything from reducing the volume of Muslim calls to prayer to forcing the disclosure of money given by foreign governments to NGOs (which often support human rights and other liberal causes) and giving immigration authorities greater power to ban BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel) activists from entering Israel. The government has inveighed against what it calls the “activist” Supreme Court (which it deems too liberal) and against the media.

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Deutsche Welle: Knesset moves to make Israel Jewish

With a 48-41 vote in the 120-seat Knesset Wednesday, lawmakers gave initial approval to a bill to redefine Israel as "the national home of the Jewish people." Authors called the bill, which would enshrine Hebrew as Israel's official language, "especially crucial in times like these, when there are those who seek to undermine the Jewish people's right to a national home in their land." [...]

Activists have raised concerns that the bill would lead to further discrimination. Many in Israel view Netanyahu's government, which supports the bill, as the most right-wing in the country's history, and Arab Israelis, generally the descendants of Palestinians who remained within newly drawn borders when the state arose in 1948, allege widespread discrimination. Not counting the more than 4.4 million people who live in the Palestinian territories, Arabs make up 17.5 percent of Israel's population, and road signs and government services are often bilingual. [...]

Nevertheless, Jamal Zahalka, of the left-wing Balad party, was removed from the Knesset on Wednesday afternoon after tearing up a copy of the bill and calling Dichter a "fascist" and a "racist." And Zehava Gal-On, the leader of the pacifist Meretz party, said the legislation was "a declaration of war against the Arab citizens of the country and contrary to Israel as a society governed in a democratic manner."

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Politico: The Man Who Would Beat Bibi

Benjamin Netanyahu is a survivor. He’s beaten back what looked to be near-certain defeat at the polls more than once. He’s outlasted hard-line rivals and liberal critics to become Israel’s longest continuously serving prime minister, and if he can hang on two more years, would even outdo David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s idolized founding father, to claim the overall record in the job. [...]

The late Shimon Peres, the peacemaker behind the Oslo Accords who was beaten by Netanyahu in an election he was widely expected to win, was famous for saying the polls are like perfume, best to be smelled not drunk. Are these latest surveys showing Netanyahu’s vulnerability and Lapid’s surprising strength, for real? And do they matter at a time when Trump and his advisers actually seem to be getting serious about rekindling a peace process just about everyone else had given up for dead? [...]

Labels aside, whatever he’s doing seems to be working, and Lapid’s newfangled politics—heavy on the requisite tough talk about Israeli security but with an emphasis on good governance and boosting Israel’s economy—have improbably vaulted him and Yesh Atid, the party he founded in 2012, to first place in survey after survey over the past several months. The latest polls generally show Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future” in Hebrew), leading Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party by about four seats in parliamentary elections. [...]

Enter Lapid, a polished talker with a lush head of anchorman-silver hair who tells me he is running as “an extreme moderate,” preaching centrism as the new populism and a sort of gauzy patriotic nationalism that tends to give his former colleagues in the world of liberal journalism fits. Lapid, who served a stint as finance minister in a short-lived coalition with Netanyahu, now tours the world as a sort of shadow foreign minister, tangling with increasingly vocal Western advocates of boycotting Israel as a result of its continued occupation of the West Bank and ongoing settlement building there. “With the world of alternative facts, the country is under attack” by advocates of the budding boycott movement, Lapid tells me animatedly, and he is at his most passionate these days taking on those who prefer beating up on what he invariably calls “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

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Haaretz: Bibi the Invincible: Netanyahu Is Acting Irrationally but Political Arithmetic Is in His Favor

Benjamin Netanyahu looks like he’s playing with fire. His ongoing crusade to strangle at birth the new public broadcasting corporation, scheduled to begin operations on April 30, has put him on a collision course with both the entire political and media establishments.

With the exception of a small handful of toadying ministers and members of Knesset, and a few hundred employees in the soon-to-be disbanded Israel Broadcasting Authority, just about no one in Israel understands what he’s fighting for, or at least claims to be fighting for. Not even the majority among the prime minister’s supporters in Likud, many of whom have openly questioned the wisdom of threatening to hold early elections if Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon doesn’t agree to defund the new corporation, also called Kan (Here), and to keep IBA alive. [...]

Then there’s the “weekend effect” theory: that Netanyahu routinely changes his mind after family Shabbat meals, when his wife Sara and elder son Yair egg him on to confront his enemies, real and imagined. The timing of the latest twist in the saga gives some credence to this theory. Last Thursday evening Netanyahu and Kahlon agreed that Kan would begin broadcasting on schedule and that the coalition during the next Knesset session would pass a new media regulation law, giving the government control over all public broadcasting. Then along came Shabbat eve and the next day Netanyahu had ditched the agreement and was threatening early elections if Kahlon didn’t back down. [...]

Netanyahu truly believes he is omnipotent. Just look how he beat down all opposition to his grand designs for exploiting the natural gas finds off Israel’s coastline. It’s all coming together exactly as planned and the protesters can go to hell. Everything is working for him. He decides to designate “smart transportation” as the government’s priority and in a matter of weeks Intel writes a $15.3 billion check for Mobileye. His critics accuse Netanyahu of isolating Israel due to his intransigence over the diplomatic process with the Palestinians, but barely a day goes by when he doesn’t host in Jerusalem another president, prime minister or foreign minister from every corner of the globe.

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