A Hundred Days of Getting Used to Bennett

The coalition that was formed to replace Benjamin Netanyahu in power—and, make no mistake, this was the main goal of its establishment and the main motivation that made it possible—has been in power for about a hundred days. And I must confess that I became aware of this insignificant number only when Yoav Krakovski, a leading political analyst, invited me (and a few more figures) to a TV interview to honor this date. 

One hundred is a symbolic, round number. A hundred days in power is also a common cliché, as if something must happen by this date, or cannot happen when the date passes, as if a hundred days hold the key to a term, as if—and that’s the most ridiculous notion—there is still a customary hundred days of grace. 

There is not. 

Certainly, no grace. And nothing that must happen to a new government in its first hundred days except survival. Supported by the most unlikely and most narrow coalition of 61 Members of Knesset—the minimum number that is still a majority—the government indeed survives. 

Less than three years ago Naftali Bennett was getting ready to retire his political career. The year was 2019. The round of election was still not called “the first”; it was just an election, and Israel did not yet realize that another election, and another one, and another one, was quickly coming. And Bennett was the big loser. Just weeks prior to Election Day, Bennett, the leader of a mid-size religious party, decided to jump ship and launch an independent startup. As a former high tech entrepreneur and a young, bold, some would say rash politician, this was not out of character. Bennett got tired of the old party, and desired a shinier vehicle from which to begin his rise to the top. 

So, he made a gamble, and crushed. He was 1454 votes short—a tiny number—and his party did not cross the electoral threshold. Many Israelis assumed he was done. His main political ally, Ayelet Shaked, was slated to begin a stint as a TV commentator. Bennett himself was mulling another round in the high tech sector. But then, something strange happened. Bennett’s loss became Netanyahu’s. Because of the missing votes, that tiny fraction, Netanyahu could not form a coalition. Another round of election was called, and then another one. And once the most unlikely loser, Bennett suddenly became the most unlikely winner.   

In this process, from nearly having to quit politics to becoming Israel’s Prime Minister Bennett, amazingly, collected very few additional votes—from just short of four seats in the Knesset in 2019, to just above six in 2021. Two seats made the difference. Two seats, and four rounds of election, and a multiplicity of parties who no longer accepted Netanyahu as a viable candidate to be the PM. 

The rest of the story is well-known. Like the basketball shot on the buzzer, it is a reminder that no game is over until it’s really over, and that dramatic turnarounds occur more than we tend to think, especially in sports and politics. Using the wild card of heading the only party that could sit in both camps, Bennett was able to demand and get the top job. To become the PM, he shattered more than one precedent, and has reneged on more than one pre-election promise. Many Israelis who belong to the camp that lost power can neither forgive nor accept him as a legitimate leader of the country. For them, the first hundred days were days of first hope—“this cannot go on for very long”—then a sober realization—“this seems a little more stable than we expected.” 

Other Israelis, who support the government, can’t wipe the smile off their faces. Prime Minister Bennett, Prime Minister Bennett, Prime Minister Bennett. It is still not quite natural to say “prime minister” without a “Benjamin” to follow. And yet, there it is. 

Earlier this week, Bennett made his second trip in a short time to the United States. His first was to the White House, on miserable timing. As the U.S. was evacuating Afghanistan in haste, and dramatic reports projected chaos, the Israeli PM shows up at the door. President Joe Biden’s mind was elsewhere. The nation’s mind was elsewhere. The novelty of the visit—here’s an Israeli PM you’ve never heard of—was mugged by other realities. 

The goal of Bennett’s second visit was to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly. That is, to conquer the stage on which his predecessor used to shine. Bennett has excellent English, a youthful, energetic appearance, and a reasonable delivery. But he is no Netanyahu. Neither as a public speaker nor when it comes to the gravitas that a leader could only accumulates with experience and time. 

That said, in his UN speech on Monday, just minutes before the holiday in Israel, Bennett scored an important political point: he proved that there’s an Israeli other than Netanyahu who can speak a decent English and deliver a respectable speech on the world stage. His message to the international community was twofold: first, Iran is very much on my mind; and second, I am not even going to pretend that the Palestinian issue is a priority for me. The issue of Iran is urgent, and Bennett was not far from threatening that Israel is about to act. By being so forthright, he was in synch with the U.S. The Biden administration needs a credible threat with which to draw Iran back to the negotiating table. Bennett, without criticizing the JCPOA, was trying to hand the U.S. such a tool.

Bennett is a fresh face, he is a promise of a different future, he is a possible remedy for some of the ills that inflicted Israel in the last couple of years. But the truth is that 100 days is a very short time. It is still too early to say for how long it will feel fresh, and whether the promise can be realized. But there are some things we can already say about his government.

First, it is a government like no other before it. A government without a real head, and without a real boss. Each and every leader of each and every party is king in his own field.

First, it is a government like no other before it. A government without a real head, and without a real boss. Each and every leader of each and every party is king in his own field. Benny Gantz is king of Defence, Yair Lapid king of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman king of Finance. From time to time, there is tension between the leaders, especially when there is an overlap in areas of responsibility. But they all know that they either get along, or go home. One Member of Knesset could put an end to the coalition. 

That’s why this is also a government that is run with great caution. Every political mistake could be a fatal mistake. Every insult could be detrimental to the government’s longevity. So the ministers are relatively polite, and collegial. They try to stay away from provocation. This is an atmosphere to which Israelis are not used, as the later years under the Netanyahu governments were years of constant rift and provocation. 

Since there’s no true feasibility of provocation and infighting, the Bennett-Lapid government must be business-like. Within the obvious constraints of politics and the occasional mishap, the government is busier with work and less busy with political maneuver. That’s not because of a personal tendency of all of its components to matter-of-factness, but because everything that is not matter-of-fact undermines the stability of a fragile construct.

Finally, it is a government whose main glue is the long shadow on the cunning opponent. In fact, while there is affection between members of the coalition—and a constant stream of heartwarming scenes of leaders whose views aren’t compatible having a civil, friendly, even amused, dialogue—there should be no illusion: if Bibi’s gone, there will remain very little glue that could hold this coalition of rivals together. 

What has the government done in a hundred days? Its main practical achievement is the budget. The first vote was tense, but the package moved to the next stage—the one of deliberation. Surely, changes will be made, and frustrations will be many. But Finance Minister Lieberman, with his own power to preserve or topple the coalition, and with his eye on the ball, is likely to accomplish his goal using the tactics that Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, a long time ago, described as follows: “I compromise and I compromise—until I get what I want”.

Funny that passing a budget is perceived as such an achievement. Having a budget is supposed to be a trivial act, the basic governmental duty. But after a few years of not having a budget, because of political instability and chaos, suddenly even the routine seems unusual. True—there is an attempt to pass some real reforms in this budget, some of which are only possible because the ultra-Orthodox parties are no longer members of the coalition. But two reservations need to be attached to these reforms. First, they have not yet passed the Knesset committees and the second and third readings. Second, they are impressive compared to the inaction of recent years, but a considerable number of them are almost banal. I mean, maybe the retirement age for women will finally really go up. This is an important move. Even revolutionary. But how much can one applaud for something so obvious, so late to come?

The government managed to get us used to life without Netanyahu on Balfour Street, where the PM lives.

What else has the government done in a hundred days? Alongside the practical achievement there is also a psychological achievement. The government managed to get us used to life without Netanyahu on Balfour Street, where the PM lives. It has managed, to a lesser degree, but not entirely through its own fault, to dim the chorus of incessant political shrieks that has deafened us in the past few years. It brought some quiet. Not enough, but some. The “only Netanyahu” chorus is almost silent. The “no Netanyahu” chorus lost its zeal and reason. From time to time, some spasms of broken cries still terrify the Knesset. Like a curiosity from distant days. In fact, this may be a most important achievement of the coalition. Because the political and social price that Israel has paid for the uproar of recent years has, in the aggregate, been much higher than the price of the delay in passing the budget.

There are also areas in which the new government is hardly impressive. It is no more successful in the battle against the Corona than its predecessor. As in the case of the previous one, its only salvation is the vaccines. There is no strict governance, no ability to enforce rules and no sense of efficient maintenance of law and order. Israel still seem to lack the ability to make and implement decisions that require complex execution. Any parent who sends children to school, and must grapple with the daily tweaks of policies, can give a variety of examples of the government’s lack of coherence.

It is also important to note that the government has not yet stood a real security test. The situation on the Gaza border is tense, but still not out of control. The situation on the Lebanon border hasn’t changed much since Israel moved from Bibi to Bennett. A short-lived eruption of violence in the West Bank, following the escape of Palestinian prisoners from the Israeli jail, did not turn into a wave (and the escapees were quickly captured). 

This is important because every government’s real test is a crisis. This is especially important because this specific government is designed in a way that could turn a security crisis into a political test that it could not pass. But even that isn’t as clear as the opposition might hope. True, the coalition relies on an Arab party, Raam, with all the obvious complications that such alliance entails when Israel has to fight against Palestinian militias. Just a few days ago, MK Walid Taha of the Raam party told an interviewer that an operation in Gaza will not necessarily undermine the stability of the current coalition and isn’t going to lead to a resignation of party leaders from the government. Hamas leaders in Gaza could not believe their ears. “This is a position that does not reflect the opinion of the Palestinian people living in the occupied state,” a Hamas spokesman said in a statement. 

After a hundred days, is the new government a success?   Obviously it’s too early to have a clear verdict, but one thing is clear. At this point, a government that includes the supporters of the Judea annexation from New Hope, alongside the two-staters of Meretz, is no longer a passing curiosity; a government that includes the neoliberal members of Yamina alongside the semi-socialist members of Labor no longer seems an impossibility; a government in which power is shared with an Islamist Arab party is no longer a crazy idea. In other words, a hundred days is long enough for us, Israelis, to get used to something that not very long ago would have been considered a looney proposition—such as a Prime Minister from a party with six Knesset seats.  

The Bennett government is hardly consensual, and is certainly unique, unusual, even bizarre. And yet, it looks like something resembling a government. In recent weeks, as we were testing what the public thinks about the stability of the government, we discovered that there is only a small percentage of Israelis who assume that the government will fall before the end of 2021. This is mostly the wishful thinking of right-wing voters, who still can’t quite fathom how political calamity inflicted a camp—the rightwing—who has the ideological advantage on almost every issue. Still, half of the respondents to our survey believe that the government will survive at least until the end of 2022. About a quarter believe that it is likely to survive beyond 2023. Not bad for a man on the verge of quitting politics. Not bad for a country on the verge of having a fifth consecutive election.

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.