If the State of Israel needed any factor that would increase the height of the flames in the fifth election system in the last three years to make it even more vibrant – it got it in the gas agreement (or if you like, in the agreement “demarcation of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon”). This is the debate that is becoming the focus of the upcoming elections, less than 20 days before going to the polls.
No more “yes Bibi, no Bibi”. There is a debate here about something tangible, which already managed to generate headlines even before it was clear what was written and what was agreed between Israel and Lebanon with the help of US President Joe Biden’s emissary on this issue, the American-Israeli mediator Amos Hochstein, who had an important part in reaching the agreement.
As in a well-known script, the Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, painted this agreement as the source of a lot of loot, in order to use it to strike the transitional government. They did not miss and will not miss any platform and opportunity to attack the agreement of the transitional government. This is accompanied by a campaign of intimidation and alarming stories about worrying concessions that this government has made to Lebanon, concessions that they say will enrich Hezbollah and help terrorism supported by the Iranians in the fight against Israel.
Even the fact that the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, and the Israeli military support the agreement and see it as a positive and good agreement – did not change the picture of the situation. For Netanyahu and his campaigners, this agreement becomes the focus of the fifth election, and as it seems – this is what the Likud will focus on in its campaign in the coming days remaining until Election Day. This is in order to tattoo the intention of Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his partners in the transitional government to turn this agreement into a political, security, economic and historical achievement, with important consequences for the future.
In Likud they will try to paint the transition government as an irresponsible government, which succumbed to the pressures and threats of Hezbollah, while giving up Israeli territory and important gas assets worth billions of shekels. On the other hand, the transitional government will turn this agreement into another achievement in the list of achievements it recently presented, during its relatively short term.
In response to the Likud campaign, it will present the agreement as one that meets all the demands that Israel presented to the Lebanese, when the changes that the Lebanese demanded to be included in it were also canceled. The government will emphasize that this is an agreement that protects Israeli interests in all respects, and that is supported by all security forces in Israel.
Of course, this battle of the campaigns will be joined by petitions to the High Court, which will try to prevent or delay the signing of the agreement. The petitioners will argue that beyond the fact that, according to them, this is a bad agreement for Israel, this is an agreement that the transitional government, which does not have a majority of the people, cannot sign.
Even the Lebanese, gatekeepers to the Israeli reality and the struggle between the opposition and the transitional government, realized that this was no time for arguments. That is why they approved the agreement as Israel presented it in order to speed up the process. The Lebanese approval does not work in favor of Netanyahu and his fellow opposition members, who expected the agreement to be shelved until after the elections. Which leads the Likud to a campaign in which it will attack the agreement in a flood of foam.