The Jewish grandmothers, peace be upon them, used to say that if you entered Belboste’s house and saw her living room neglected, dirty and scattered, there was no reason to think that the kitchen or the interior rooms would be neat and shiny. If this is what the living room looks like, this is what the house looks like.
If this is what Bennett looks like in the plenum, this is how he looks in the closed rooms in the cabinet, in the Prime Minister’s Office and everywhere else. Who may still have thought this man deserved the chair he was sitting on.
Losing your temper in a moment of turmoil in the plenum is not an esoteric event, it is not just a passing event or a one-time incident and this incident must not be allowed to pass as if it were a successful joke about the prime minister. He did not just make fun of himself, he revealed here in a moment of weakness, his greatest weakness.
People close to him have been talking for quite some time about the trembling hands, impatience and atomic pressure he transmits around him. One can be optimistic and think that at critical moments when he sits in front of senior security or health officials and is required to make decisions, he takes a deep breath, thinks logically and then makes the decision. But that is only if we are optimistic. We do not know what is happening in his kitchen, we only saw the living room and according to the grandmothers it is enough.
There is no event that symbolizes more the lack of stateliness and lack of understanding of reality and status, than such a loss of mind in the plenum. No leader who understands the meaning of the chair he is sitting on would allow himself to degenerate into these awkward moments. It’s the same Bennett who turned his back on Putin and his outstretched hand left in the air and it’s the same Bennett who just before boarding the plane, with all the communication cameras on him, bent down to tie his shoelace. And it’s not that he’s trying to be a naughty leader who does not respect the rules of the ceremony, he’s not Trump, Bennett does aspire to be the state leader, the tie and the diplomat, but he does not understand how to do it.
But for that it was still possible to forgive. How did another prime minister once fail in his own right? “Not nice, leader.” If that was Bennett’s downside, it would be possible to live with it, smile contemptuously and move on. But here the event is quite different. In this outburst of rage Bennett testified that he is unable to think and unable to act logically when he is under pressure and this is already worrying.
We all feel this loss of mind even in the spread of the omicron. Bennett and his ministers boast that they are succeeding in keeping the economy open, but we all understand that this is not an informed decision but a lack of choice, a drag after the situation. Netanyahu had a policy that was made by decision. One could disagree, argue and criticize because she was not without faults, but at least there was a decision, there was something that could be agreed or disagreed with. But in this government there is no decision, so even arguing is impossible.
The spread of the omicron and the collapse of the testing system are the best evidence that no one had any policy but let things flow in the well-known and old Israeli ‘near’ method and so we got where we were. Bennett understands this well and it may have been one of the triggers that caused him to lose control of himself in the plenum.
My right hand is not clean
This loss of temper also characterizes to some extent the leadership of the opposition. Bennett’s eruption took place at the center of a stormy and tense vote on the Electricity Act, the disgraceful law that grants legal plumba to thousands of delinquently built homes in the Arab sector. The attack on Bennett by members of the opposition was massive and ruthless, in light of his and Shaked’s surrender to most of the dictates of Ram and as a result he got up, started screaming back at them until Knesset Speaker Miki Levy and Deputy Minister Avir Kara almost forcibly returned him, with the help of ushers. .
The unrest, the like of which has not been seen in the history of the Knesset and almost led to a physical melee, took place in the middle of the Semitic vote on the only reservation to the law that the opposition voted for and did not boycott. The reservation sought to include in the Electricity Law also the thousands of houses in the young settlement, in the Jewish localities in Judea and Samaria that are also considered illegal and do not enjoy an orderly connection to electricity.
This reservation is intended to sharpen the right-wing conflict and embarrass them. They call themselves right-wingers but are about to vote for the connection of Arab criminal construction to electricity and against such a connection to the illegal Jewish construction in which many of their voters live.
To cover up the embarrassment, members of the right used the argument that Netanyahu also did not regulate the young settlement during his years. In the boxed article, as far as is known in the period after the disengagement, when Regev decided to enter politics, she tried to be accepted into the Labor Party and only when she failed did she move to try in the Likud, and the rest is history.
Although Bennett and his friends on the right are dangerous to the values of the right and out of complete submission to Mansour Abbas and Walid Taha, if we are fair, they cannot be blamed for risking the entire right. They do evacuate Chumash but this place is evacuated many times in previous governments, the young settlement has never been recognized by any right-wing government, nor has the promiscuous Arab construction in the Negev, Galilee and anywhere in the country happened in one day.
The loss of governance in the Bedouin sector, in the Negev, in the Arab villages and in particular in the Arab concentrations in Judea and Samaria is a result of long-term neglect, during which the Arabs did as much as they could in the right-wing governments here. Conducted with caution and cowardice in the face of the Arab sector, which under the auspices of the terrorist threat that constantly hovered in the air, managed to establish facts and do what was on its mind.
The only initiative that somehow tried to stop the criminal Arab construction was the enactment of the Kaminitz Law, a law that was never implemented in practice but the opposite, it is always laid on the table as a negotiating card with the Arab parties. Every achievement and every agreement with them involves the payment of a cash price of the suspension of the implementation of the law and the continued abandonment of Arab construction.
Dozens of illegal outposts in Judea and Samaria were evacuated by governments of which there were also members who today attack Bennett out of religious Zionism. The current one does not dismantle the settlement enterprise and does not put an end to the settlements as its members from the extreme left aspire to.In terms of the facts on the ground, the differences are quite cosmetic.
The main difference then is in discourse, visibility and communication. Within the ideological right there is a difficult dispute and it turns out that despite everything, there are quite a few who still support Bennett and even claim against Smutrich and his friends that they should have joined the Bennett and Lapid government instead of RAAM and thus avoid many embarrassments that occurred.
The boycott returns like a boomerang
And on top of this disturbing and unclear situation, the opposition reached the last line of the Electricity Law this week, when on the one hand there is a real basis for controversy here, a law that will really cause something bad on the ground but on the other with unclear truth about the general essence. Even on the heads of the Likud and religious Zionism is smeared some butter in the context of concern for the right and settlement and they can not focus their war on these arguments. The saga around Chumash began because of the disengagement that Netanyahu voted for.
Add to this the fact that as time goes on, the understanding at the top of the opposition that this government really does not intend to go anywhere begins to seep in, there is no abyss that Bennett will not go down to save the government and prolong its life, no budget, no electricity law and no missiles to Gush Dan , Nothing will crumble the artificial glue that holds the parts of the government.
The optimism that Likud leaders tried to sow in the beginning is fading. Statements like ‘O-to-to-government falls’ no longer catch on but on the other hand there is still not the luxury of coming to terms with the situation. In the office of the head of the opposition, there is a certain embarrassment on this issue, and this week’s conduct in the plenum testified that a kind of loss of temper can also be felt there.
After the approval of the Electricity Law in the Interior Committee, the opposition tried to do a filibuster and stick the debate in the plenum for a few days, but the Knesset committee managed to activate Article 98 contrary to the legal advice position and thus limit the proceedings and reduce them to one night. The opposition gave up the pleasure and boycotted the entire debate, including the vote.
Instead, the Likud announced that the opposition is now deepening the boycott of the coalition and should consider doing again what Bozi Herzog did when he was head of the opposition in the government of Bibi and the Bennett and Lapid brothers, so he convened all opposition members in the Knesset auditorium. Days to emphasize his boycott of the plenum.
Opposition party leaders convened for a hearing after the law was approved, but no clear decision was made. An alternative plenum is not yet on the table, but the continuation of the boycott is also in doubt. The opposition boycott of the committees still continues, as a protest against the predation of the coalition that did not agree to include the members of the opposition in the committees considered and did not respect the accepted distribution key in any government formation. This means that in the meantime the coalition is doing whatever it wants in the committees without interruption.
The ultra-Orthodox parties have tried several times to persuade the opposition leadership to end the boycott and reach some sort of agreement with the coalition. In any normal Knesset, there is a majority in the coalition committees but the members of the opposition are present, arguing and raising difficulties, they force the coalition parties to sweat, work hard and constantly recruit members who will be on the committees so as not to lose votes. The current government has an easy life, the opposition does not have the right to vote so that 7 committees can be run simultaneously and in all of them decisions are made, which are fateful, by a majority of one or two supporters against zero opponents.
The opposition does not like this situation, there were those who claimed that some of the laws would not be passed if the opposition was present in the committees, there were those who argued that even raising prices for sugary drinks could have been avoided because there were also those who opposed, and if there was opposition opposition on the ground It is possible to embroider the deal and prevent the decree. It does not yet exist.
The pressure on the opposition leaders is doing its thing, they too understand that the boycott cannot last for long, on the other hand it is impossible to surrender and come to terms with the situation so easily. This dilemma caused the meeting that took place after the approval of the Electricity Law to end without a decision, with on the one hand continuing to seize the boycott and on the other hand sending emissaries to grope with the coalition for compromise in the committees and beginning cooperation. In the meantime, this frustration will lead to shouts in the plenum, which has led to Bennett’s loss of temper.
Ganz understood the formula
And behind the collective insanity, if Bennett has a few minutes of rest in which he can think in common sense, he may have a situation assessment with himself, a re-mapping of his political situation but not really advised to do so. Because if he does that he will lose his mind again.
Shortly after the stormy vote in the Knesset ended, Defense Minister Bnei Gantz was already sitting on the helicopter on his way to Jordan. The Jordanian royal house received him with royal respect and took the trouble to publish a picture from the meeting between Ganz and King Abdullah, in contrast to meetings with other leaders after which no picture was published.
The same Ganz who sat that morning and voted with the coalition, met last week with Abu Mazen at his home in Rosh HaAyin without considering too much Bennett. Next to him in the plenum sat Lapid, who also voted with Bennett but did not really bother after the embarrassing incident to back the Prime Minister in public and certainly not to criticize him for his conduct.
Bennett again finds himself alone, it turns out that his friends who formed a government with him are not really friends, they also agree that he is not suitable for the job but what to do, he is the one who fills for them the slot that allowed them to form the government. From the very first moment when the fourth wave began, Bennett realized that he was alone, Lapid was flying around the world and posing for pictures with leaders, Lieberman officially breezes from the cabinet discussions, everyone is rolling the responsibility on him.
This week it sharpened even more when they were silent and did not take part in the show, here or there. Bennett snatches from his former friends on the right and when he escapes he discovers he has nowhere to run. Even his party members who follow him ask for explanations or at least backing up in the face of the criticism they snatch, they officially support him but do not really extend a supportive and understanding shoulder to him. Bennett became a lone man with his enemies not necessarily those who shouted at him in the plenum but those who laid out a refreshing red carpet for him in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Ganz continues to do justice to himself and this in itself is a fascinating subject that if only Bennett notices it, he will again lose his temper. In recent weeks, Gantz has been showing not at all bad sophistication skills as he builds glorious territory for himself while ignoring the rest of his cabinet members.
In most of the pictures published from the Knesset plenum, Bennett, Saar and Lapid are seen huddling and giggling while Gantz sits on the side as if he is not tied up. Such images characterize the balance of power in the government but Ganz was not intimidated by it. He does exactly what his friends do and starts thinking only about himself.
On the one hand, Ganz builds for himself the image of a statesman and leader who meets with leaders, and on the other hand he maintains ambiguity and leaves all options open. Some will say that he is still waiting for a phone call from Bibi that will offer him to form an alternative government in the current Knesset, but Bibi, for his part, is waiting for something dramatic to happen that will also make Gantz’s party members come after him, which would not normally happen. Such a scenario can only happen in the event of a real epidemic or a serious war in Gaza, God forbid.
Ganz finally joined the government cohort precisely because he was emotionally disconnected from its members. He became part of the guys by also starting to think only about himself and his future. The more we see of his independent meetings and moves, the more we will know that he is more likely to decide on dramatic steps later on. Bennett has not noticed this yet, so it might not really be worth revealing to him.
The column was published in the “Peg of the Week” supplement from Yated Ne’eman