Biden To Arrive in Jerusalem as the Israeli He Detests — Benjamin Netanyahu — Bids To Return to Power

When President Biden lands in Israel in mid-July, he will meet with a different prime minister than had been planned. That’s because his presidential visit will coincide with the launch of a hot political power struggle between two Israeli politicians, Yair Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu. This prospect looms following the announcement by the heads of Israel’s ruling coalition — Prime Minister Bennett and Mr. Lapid — that they would dissolve the Knesset and call a national election, likely to take place in October. By next week the Knesset will be acting on an interim basis, and the government’s top jobs will be rotated. According to the agreement that formed the current governing coalition one year ago, Mr. Lapid will assume the premiership. He, rather than Mr. Bennett, will host Mr. Biden in his first Mideast trip as president. Hence Mr. Lapid, a centrist politician, hopes for a political boost. Mr. Biden, before announcing his Mideast trip, hemmed for a while and hawed the rest of the time. One reason was White House concerns about the survival of the Israeli coalition, and the fear that if it collapsed the president might appear to be interfering in internal politics. Now, Mr. Biden will be landing just as Israel’s fifth election in less than four years gets in full swing. In an announcement this afternoon, Mr. Bennett said that during the yearlong life of the coalition he had headed — which included right wing politicians, centrists, Leftists, and Arab Islamists — it became clear that Israel “is not as divided as we thought.” “In the 2022 version of Solomon’s judgment , we acted as the mother who cared most about the life of the baby,” Mr. Bennett said, insisting that through the life of the coalition he was concerned more about the existence and advancement of the nation than about his own political career.Mr. Bennett praised the experiment that coalesced the nationalist wing of the Israeli right with centrist and leftist parties, as well as with Mansour Abbas’s Islamist party. The members of that coalition, he said, vowed to put aside their differences and make the country better.Yet, the gaps between those factions ended up too wide for the veneer of unity to survive. A routine law that awards emergency protections for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, renewed every six months since 1967, was the last straw that broke the coalition. Two religious nationalists from Mr. Bennett’s party decided to vote against the renewal despite their support of the settlers. Two Arab legislators from the left-wing Meretz and Mr. Abbas’s Raam party argued the law could become a first step toward annexation of the West Bank. With that, the coalition was done. Over the weekend, coalition leaders tried to keep the faction together. They soon realized that all options for survival were blocked. Mr. Bennett insists that he was the one who decided to cut the cord. Yet Mr. Lapid stands to gain most. Mr. Bennett’s long speech to the nation, complete with thanks to his family, sounded like a swan song. Some predict that his stint as prime minister, the shortest in the country’s history, could be the last act of his political career. Mr. Lapid, by contrast, spoke briefly and started by saying that as the new premier, “I will have many opportunities in the future to address you.”Now Mr. Lapid will try to unite all political forces in Israel’s anti-Bibi camp. That group includes not only centrists, Leftists, and Arabs, but also some of the right who have bolted from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud after having fallen out with the former premier.“The goal in the next election is clear: preventing Netanyahu’s return to power and ending his abuse of the state for his own private needs,” a former Likud member now heading a small right-wing party, Gideon Saar, said, speaking as soon as the news about the Knesset dissolution emerged. Yet, as the failure of the current coalition shows, gluing political forces behind the single principle of opposing one man may not be enough — especially as Mr. Netanyahu remains a power in Israeli politics despite several pending court cases against him on various corruption allegations. “In a one-on-one competition between Lapid and Netanyahu, Bibi wins,” a veteran Israeli political analyst, Hanan Krystal, told the Sun. Yet the Israeli system is not strictly a competition between two candidates. The question is which of the two could gain the support of more than half of the 120 Knesset members. Mr. Netanyahu’s top goal, Mr. Krystal says, is to get 61 Knesset members behind him, and thus put aside all the court cases he faces. His opponents will try to oust Mr. Netanyahu from Israeli politics for good. In that competition, it is quite easy to see where Mr. Biden stands. His challenge would be to avoid showing his palpable aversion to Mr. Netanyahu. Failure to disguise the American preferences could boomerang, and secure Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership for a long, long time.

Biden To Arrive in Jerusalem as the Israeli He Detests — Benjamin Netanyahu — Bids To Return to Power

Biden To Arrive in Jerusalem as the Israeli He Detests — Benjamin Netanyahu — Bids To Return to Power

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