With Gantz Gone, Netanyahu Is Left With No One to Blame for His Notorious Indecision - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Both leaders of Israel's centrist parties met with Benjamin Netanyahu on the evening of October 7, as the country was still reeling from Hamas' attack and massacre. Yair Lapid, the official leader of the opposition and of the larger Yesh Atid party, had one main condition for entering a wartime coalition: remove the far-right leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from their ministerial positions.
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Benny Gantz, who has half of Lapid's parliamentary strength, was willing to have everyone in Netanyahu's extremist coalition keep their ministries. His condition, the formation of a small war cabinet in which the far-right would not be represented, was more palatable to Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich didn't like it, but they got to keep their jobs and Netanyahu got to keep the majority which returned him to office nine months earlier.
Lapid is still convinced Gantz made a mistake in entering a wartime coalition with Netanyahu and the far right. If Gantz had stayed out, like him, Netanyahu would have soon capitulated under the pressure of having to run the war alone with his pyromaniacal partners. Lapid has been in this position before, when Gantz broke with him back in 2020, to join Netanyahu in an emergency coronavirus government.
Netanyahu and Gantz, 2021.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
Gantz's emergency COVID-19 government with Netanyahu lasted for 221 days before collapsing. The emergency war government lasted for 242 days, until Sunday when Gantz finally resigned. Just three weeks more. For a second time, the Netanyahu-Gantz partnership ended after less than eight months.
Gantz is still convinced he did the right thing both times. He insists that Lapid and anyone else who thinks Netanyahu could have been brought down, in 2020 and after October 7, are delusional, and he's convinced that in both cases his role in the emergency governments was crucial, in preparing Israel's response to the pandemic and in the decision-making in the first months of this war.
Israel's war cabinet gathers in April.
Most of us have put COVID-19 firmly behind us, but the war is still ongoing and Gantz did play a role in two crucial decisions. In the first week in cabinet he stood firm, alongside Netanyahu, in opposing the demands of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the army generals to carry out preemptive attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two months later, it was Gantz and Gallant, along with war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot, who pressured Netanyahu to accept the week-long cease-fire with Hamas, which secured the release of 105 hostages.
But if Gantz and Eisenkot hadn't been there, it may well have happened anyway. In both decisions, it was ultimately President Joe Biden who applied the crucial pressure to prevent a war in Lebanon and to get Netanyahu to go for the hostage agreement.
Gantz's part was important, but we will have to wait many years, until the classified protocols of the war cabinet are released, to get a clearer idea just how pivotal his role was, if at all. If we know anything about Gantz, it is that he is non-confrontational and usually takes the line of the security establishment.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.Credit: National Unity Spokesperson
Without a doubt, together with Eisenkot, he succeeded in convincing the generals, the Shin Bet security service and their fellow ex-general Gallant to support the hostage deals, the one which was carried out in November, and the one that is the basis of the proposal sent to Hamas which was revealed by Joe Biden on May 31. Would it have happened without them? Impossible to say.
And if their presence has been so crucial, why are Gantz and Eisenkot now quitting the war cabinet and leaving Gallant and Netanyahu on their own to deal with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich?
They've reached the conclusion that Netanyahu has been using them as a foil against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, to deflect the far right's criticism for not striking harder in Rafah and not escalating the warfare on the northern border. Netanyahu's mouthpieces on social media and on the Bibi-worshipping channels have been instructed to blame Gantz and Eisenkot for Netanyahu's notorious risk-averse procrastination.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset last month.Credit: Noam Revkin-Fenton
Now Netanyahu will have only Gallant to blame and may finally have to stand up to his extremist allies on his own. Or perhaps he won't – and a wide opposition front will sweep the government away in an unprecedented wave of protests.
Whatever Gantz thought he could gain by being in the government has now run its course. Israel is stuck on all fronts and has been now for months. If even Gantz, the man who always salutes and reports for duty, is now leaving the war cabinet, this government is totally useless.