Finishing its fifth election in four years, some international observers appeared dismayed that the results indicated a possible comeback for Binyamin Netanyahu.
What is not indicated by such reporting is that Netanyahu’s Likud Party actually received less of the vote share than in any of those previous elections.
The only vote share increases that will benefit Netanyahu were on the religious right with a doubling of the vote share for the “Religious Zionist” Party and a more than doubling of their seats in the Knesset. Therefore, the leverage has not been won by Netanyahu, but by his potential coalition partners, who themselves are in a position to make extraordinary demands on Netanyahu that he is either incapable or unwilling to fulfill. Many of those demands are so extreme that they would almost certainly lead to a leadership crisis, and thus another subsequent loss of power.
The notion that he will stage a “comeback” is based off of a number of assumptions and stream of conditions that must all go in Netanyahu’s favor, each of which is far from likely.
The first is that he will even be capable of forming a coalition, as he has failed to do multiple times in the past several years in such negotiation processes, likely because of the reputation he has for his tendency to overpromise, and then underdeliver.
If this first assumption is met and he does form a coalition, it then indicates that those parties such as the Religious Zionist and Shas party would likely have demanded ironclad, time-linked concessions by Netanyahu to deliver to them divisive and possibly government ending policies that are likely to alienate the 84% of Israelis that are not ultraorthodox.
The second assumption therefore is that the government would stand the test of either implementation of the increased demands of those parties, or Netanyahu’s inability to implement those policies. Either may lead to the government collapsing and yet another set of elections in which those parties’ majorities would almost certainly be lost.
The third assumption is the most unlikely, and it is necessary to prevent Netanyahu’s potential conviction on bribery charges that might land him in prison. This is not a fringe issue, it has been a major aspect not only for the campaign of Likud but of the Religious Zionist party. The assumption states that his coalition, including moderate members of those parties, would nearly unanimously vote to either fire the attorney general and appoint a new one that would end the trial, or to vote to cancel the trial itself. The constitutional crisis thus generated by such a conflict of interests would then need to be upheld by the Judiciary.
The High Court of Justice has already made clear that they would not tolerate Prime Ministerial interference in an investigation targeting their own office. Further, such a move aiming to avoid trial may inadvertently signal guilt to the public, and could politically damage the coalition, potentially irreparably.
Yair Lapid of the opposition Yesh Atid Party, referenced Religious Zionist’s leader Smotrich’s proposed gutting of the judiciary as aiming to “cancel all the authority of the courts, to destroy the separation of powers in Israel. They don’t even bother to hide this anymore. It’s a deliberate campaign to cancel Netanyahu’s trial.”
Smotrich’s proposed changes essentially constitute skepticism of the entire system of separation of powers in Israel, labelling prosecution of violations of criminal law skeptically as a “‘rule of law system’ [which] can threaten elected officials, halt their activities, and settle the score with politicians who dare to step over those lines,” essentially suggesting that elected officials should not be subject to law. He has also questioned the purpose of a Supreme Court in interpreting the constitutionality of laws, saying this “transfers the right to have the last word in setting the laws of the state from the Knesset [Legislature] to the Supreme Court… which is undemocratic and illegal,” suggesting that the Legislature should instead be the paramount power, essentially immune from oversight.
Whether such erosions of the democratic foundations of the Israeli political system would be amenable to the majority of Knesset members or their voters is another question, and suggest that the lengths that these parties would need to go to to ensure immunity for Netanyahu would jeopardize their own power structures.
As such, suggesting that Netanyahu is back is a bit premature. He may lead Israel again as Prime Minister, but his tenure almost certainly be very short.