Seeking Salvation in Court: Is This the Beginning of Netanyahu's Fall?
This week began poorly for the Prime Minister, and the situation has only worsened since. If these are indeed the twilight hours of his rule, the first week of August will be remembered as the time when the first signs of his empire's collapse appeared.
How do you know an era has ended? Sports fans know the warning signs well. It is not necessarily a surprising loss by the outgoing champion to a bottom-tier team or a disappointing draw in a decisive game, but rather things that are hard to identify at first glance: for example, referees' whistles, which once would have gone in your favor, suddenly go with the opponent.
Sometimes it is unnecessary gossip coming out of the locker room or a star who is removed from the squad under the guise of an "injury" — the points between which the line will pass that will draw the final picture: this empire must be dismantled and rebuilt.
Something else that sports fans know well is that it is a self-feeding process: did the referees in a given game whistle all the "small things" against you? In the next round, they will also award a non-existent penalty against you or send off a player.
News that two stars fought in the locker room found its way to the media? Tomorrow a leak against the coach will come out from there too — and so the bar will keep rising, until the final realization that an era has ended.
"The Netanyahu era has ended" is a sentence that has been written so many times — and almost every time the writer has had to eat the pages (sorry for the outdated image, but it is hard to eat a smartphone screen) on which the things were published.
And yet, with all the necessary caution, it is possible that looking back, anyone who holds the true results on the night between October 27-28 will identify the first week of August as the one in which the signs indicating a fall multiplied.
Gaza First
Netanyahu did not enter this week in high spirits: Donald Trump did not attack in Iran as expected. It is true that he might still do so, but even if that happens, the time gap between the meeting in Washington and the actual attack will make it difficult for Netanyahu to claim credit for persuading the president.
More from Washington — not only did Trump refrain from attacking in Iran, he also complicated Netanyahu's situation by promoting the agreement in Gaza to the next stage.
This agreement is bad for Netanyahu in almost every possible aspect: the partners on the right can, freed from possible blame for toppling a right-wing government, portray him as yielding and spineless.
On the left, they will remind him how he promised the people of Israel that total victory was just around the corner, including hats from Channel 14's gadget department.
Residents of the Gaza envelope will shout (rightly!) that we are being returned to the lines of October 6, 2023, not only on the ground but mainly in the containment that allowed for the worst of disasters.
Worst of all for Netanyahu: adopting an adversarial line to the agreement, which is required from an electoral perspective, could put him on a collision course with the White House, the only lifeline left for Israel in the world, given what is happening in the internal American political arena.
Defectors in the Polls
Even the polls do not shine on him: 70 Knesset members make up the camp that opposes the continuation of his rule. The attempt to portray the "democrats" as "new Arabs" (meaning outcasts due to disgust, regarding the formation of a coalition majority) is not gaining traction on the ground. Other tricks are also not succeeding, such as the pathetic announcement that he will act (starting from the next term, of course) to arrest deserters who are not Torah students...
It is bad enough that these things contradict everything we knew about Netanyahu of the last term, they even contradict his actions in those days when he himself leaked the surprising proposal to arrest deserters — activating the Knesset Speaker to allow an extraordinary convening of the Finance Committee, to transfer tens of millions more to bodies that organize the protests for the deserters...
Along the way, his party member, suspected of rape, Hanoch Milwidsky, was exposed in all his ugliness, as he lashed out at the discussants in the committee he was appointed to by the coalition, which brings us to the next topic.
To call the current Likud list "unattractive" would be an insult to the unattractive everywhere. Netanyahu understands (so he also learned from internal polls conducted for him) that part of his voters' disappointment is not necessarily with his functioning as prime minister, but with the fact that he surrounded himself with fools and reckless people, to the point of a non-functioning government.
Even when you broaden the view beyond the Likud ministers, a rather bleak picture is obtained, with clowns of the likes of Nissim Vaturi, screamers like Tally Gotliv, or those who cause nausea even among those who hold similar views to theirs, like Hanoch Milwidsky.
Netanyahu understands that a more attractive list is needed. For this, he demanded (and received) no less than eight slots in the list, of which six are considered "safe" (the seventh and eighth depend on the achievement at the ballot box, which is currently moving further away). This is an especially sweet candy that once was enough to entice people with a high public profile.
And here it turns out that Netanyahu is having trouble recruiting a normal team even outside the classic Likud periphery. In his desperation, he is shooting in every possible direction — from Eli Ohana, ex-Beitar Jerusalem, to Avida Bachar, ex-field crop coordinator of Kibbutz Be'eri — and at least for now, is not having great success, to say the least.
Smell of Failure
Do the various candidates for "strengthening" the list feel with their sharp senses that they are about to join someone who is going to lose — and are fleeing for their lives?
And if all this is not enough, the Likud court also came — and stuck a small knife in Netanyahu's back, with the decision not to allow MKs and ministers to run for a place on the list through the districts.
Apparently, this is a purely procedural matter, an interpretation of the bylaws. But it is not: it is a display of independence by those who were considered submissive, a bite from small fry who suddenly remembered to grow teeth.
Such a decision would not have been made in a political movement that was not already living in the consciousness of "the day after", that is — the first day of the rest of the Likud's life after the end of the Netanyahu era.
The continuation is almost epic: Netanyahu, frustrated by the decision (and mainly wanting to show Haim Katz, the initiator of the bypass route for incumbent MKs, that he is fighting for him) decided to turn to external legal relief.
Where is Netanyahu seeking relief? You won't believe it: at the Tel Aviv District Court... Yes, the man who dedicated almost his entire current term to undermining the status of the judicial system is now turning to it to ask for protection against the Likud court... Admit that such a script could not have been written!
It is true that many have already predicted the end of the Netanyahu era and were forced to read with embarrassment articles, reports, and tweets that did not age well... since Netanyahu has already proven that he is capable of turning even a shadow of a chance into a political victory.
And yet, an appeal is sent from here to the reader from the future, in three months: if the Netanyahu era does indeed end, as almost every poll now predicts, please remember the first week of August, the one in which the cracks in the wall of the empire were first seen.
