War of policies

Lately there have been rumors that Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, who is groaning under the pressure of the American boot, will turn to Kadima in his great anguish and ask for coalitional succor. The difficulty in imagining Netanyahu and opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni in the same government is not because of Netanyahu, but rather because of Livni, who is full of scorn and revulsion for him. She recently addressed him as "Bibi" in the Knesset plenum and called upon him to "be a man." However, behind closed doors and without cameras, she relates to him as if she is a squad commander and he is the least promising soldier.

In a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee she clashed with him several times. The first time was in response to his assertion, accompanied by the banging of his fist, that he did not mind being "unpopular" and that what was important was to make the best decisions for the Jewish people. "Even if you bang on the table and say this several more times, it is not going to sound less demagogic," she said to him.

Following that, Netanyahu said something about how, during its negotiations with the Palestinians, Kadima hadn't stressed security issues. Livni interrupted him, something not customarily done at such meetings: "That's it!" she scolded him. "You can say whatever you want and twist things however it suits you, but you know that isn't true."
Advertisement

Asked this week whether she may possibly join the coalition, she replied: "That thing? That bunch, that policy? People don't understand that the coalition isn't the problem. There is a basic problem with this person [Netanyahu], with his conduct, with the Likud, and only afterward with the coalition. If he wants to do a reshuffle and turn the wheel back to the starting point, that's a different matter."

What Livni seems to want is this: that Netanyahu disperse the existing coalition, shred its guidelines and adopt Kadima's policy. Then they would have something to discuss. A senior person close to Livni, who in fact would gladly join the coalition, predicted this week that such a scenario isn't going to happen. In that person's assessment, if Netanyahu gets into a situation in which he needs Kadima, it will be from a position of weakness. Livni will demand an equivalent rotation and also everything he offered her in the negotiations conducted after the election: the same number of portfolios as Likud, including foreign affairs and defense; adoption of the formula of two states for two people; and a continuation of diplomatic negotiations from the point at which they were stopped during the days of the Kadima government. It is true that large parts of Kadima are longing to join, the source admitted, but not Tzipi. She won't let that happen.

After Netanyahu's return from Washington, he met privately at his home with Kadima MK Tzachi Hanegbi, Livni's close associate and someone she trusts. This meeting set off a wave of rumors within the party's upper echelon. True, Hanegbi is the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and has matters to discuss with the prime minister. Usually, however, committee chairpersons meet with the prime minister at his bureau, in the presence of the military secretary. They aren't invited for coffee at the Prime Minister's Residence.

"After the prime minister returned from the United States, he asked to brief me," Hanegbi explained this week. "We met at his home. He reported to me on the visit. Even though it was at his residence, it was formal. He did not bring up any subject beyond professional matters."

So why, we asked, did this happen at his home and not at the bureau? "It worked out that way," Hanegbi said.

On Monday afternoon, after they quarreled at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting, Livni called Netanyahu. Minutes before, she had heard about the intention to scuttle the appointment of Kadima MK Roni Bar-On as the only representative of the opposition on the judges appointment committee.

In defiance of the longstanding custom in the Knesset, whereby the largest opposition faction has a seat on the committee, Likud decided to choose MK Uri Ariel of the National Union party to sit beside the Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud representatives on the committee. Livni made a few clarifications, spoke to some people, and discovered that although the initiative was that of rookie coalition chairman MK Zeev Elkin (Likud), Netanyahu had approved it.

For the third time that day, Livni exploded at the prime minister. "If you are going to lend a hand to this thing, you should know there are going to be serious repercussions," she threatened him. "I am not going to keep quiet. This is a hostile takeover of the committee as well, and this is after you have abandoned the entire law-enforcement system [by placing it] in the hands of Yisrael Beiteinu."

Netanyahu promised to look into it and get back to her. The next day the matter was reported in Haaretz. The legal system was abuzz. Thirteen years after the first Bar-On affair, Netanyahu was again perceived as someone who was giving the Supreme Court a hard time. Following the report, a number of rather important people in Netanyahu's circles told him that even if he wins in the secret vote in the Knesset this coming Monday, and gets Ariel's appointment passed - it will be a Pyrrhic victory: a Pyrrhic victory vis-a-vis the public, the legal system and Kadima, which is, after all, the largest party in the Knesset. And for whom? For the National Union - the leader of which, Yaakov Katz, has sworn to topple him? And all this in order to take revenge on Bar-On? No one in Israeli politics is going to fall off his chair if Netanyahu suddenly does an about-face.

"These are the same symptoms," Livni said this week. "Bibi doesn't respect a single rule, not even one that has existed in the Knesset for 60 years. All he wants is to survive, all he wants is to make deals, democracy doesn't interest him and nothing interests him."

It is hard not to be amazed by the speed with which Netanyahu's second term has become a kind of rerun of his first, in nearly every sense. Within 60 days, including holidays, he has entered into a conflict with the United States and its popular new president; his government started off with tension in the legal establishment, after caving in to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's demand to give his party the Justice and Public Security Ministries and chairmanship of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The prime minister also took a beating after the budget deliberations, when he was depicted as having zigzagged and then surrendering to the chairman of the Histadrut labor federation.

In public opinion polls, Netanyahu is already deep into the red. The percentages of satisfaction with him are approaching those of former prime minister Ehud Olmert after the Second Lebanon War. We have already seen that polls do not topple prime ministers, but they do make his term an agonizing, hair-whitening, humiliating journey.

Once again Netanyahu is waking up every morning and checking to see whether he still has a coalition. And he is pondering whether to change it. And once again, he is identifying enemies all around. He definitely heard the statement made by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, to the effect that in a "properly run country" Lieberman would not have been appointed a minister. The prime minister may interpret this to mean that the indictment of Lieberman is coming soon, which could potentially rock the coalition.

In Netanyahu's circles they are anxiously following the moves made by former Shas leader Aryeh Deri, from whom the period of moral turpitude - during which he was not allowed to hold public office - will end next month, and who is already declaring he will be making a come-back. Even if it is not clear what he'll be doing, it is clear he is capable of undermining Netanyahu's coalition. Or perhaps, of strengthening it ...

Someone who previously served a number of important posts and is very familiar with Netanyahu's bureau, said this week that it took a lot of talent to put together a bureau that is the total antithesis of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration in Washington. Prior to the election, Netanyahu told many people that this time, yes, this time, he would assemble a different Prime Minister's Bureau, with people who are not necessarily replicas of himself, but are rather his diametric opposites. But now he is building up a right-wing bureau of skullcap-wearers, English-speakers and neoconservatives without even one lone voice telling him anything different from what the others are saying.

In discussions held by the prime minister this past week prior to Obama's speech in Cairo, he sent out agitated vibes that caused some of his listeners to suspect that he is pretending he is in dire straits. Netanyahu told one of his interlocutors that he feels like someone "who has been thrown under the wheels of a bus" by Obama and his people - translating an American expression into Hebrew.

When asked what will happen if he says a Palestinian state is a possible solution in the future - on condition, of course, that it is demilitarized, under international supervision, that there is no terror and that all of the stipulations of the road map have been fulfilled - Netanyahu replies: "I won't have a coalition."

Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have been part of a coalition that sanctified the two-state solution. Lieberman left because of Annapolis, or at least that was his excuse. Shas stayed until the last minute. One Shas minister said this week in a private conversation that he hasn't the faintest idea as to why Netanyahu is so panicky, and he wondered: "Who exactly is going to topple him?" wondered the minister.

Netanyahu has told people that no matter what he says to Obama, it will never satisfy the American president and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who in Netanyahu's circle is already being depicted as the "great Satan." The prime minister, too, believes Emanuel is playing a major role in worsening of relations, but he is also honest enough with himself to admit that there is an entirely different approach here, an entirely different president and, as he said to someone, "an entirely different America."

Netanyahu can only hope - and really does hope - that Obama will go so far with him that, ultimately, it will be the American president who will retreat.

Haaretz contributed to this report