Set your watches: About 100 days from now, barring any dramatic development, the Knesset will dissolve itself and Israel will hold an election. The uncertainty about what will happen next, the fragile economic situation, the public health problem have all prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to opt for delaying elections, for now.
It's not that he can already know what things will look like three months from now, but it is possible to know that next November, if there isn't a new election, Benny Gantz will replace Netanyahu as prime minister. At Sunday's press conference, Netanyahu confirmed what until now has been speculation when he refrained from repeating his commitment to handing the prime ministership to Gantz as per the coalition deal.
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"It depends on Blue and White," he said, thereby pulling the rug on which Gantz was standing when he signed the coalition agreement out from under his feet.
The disagreement over the state budget was always just an excuse. The real issue was key appointments in the legal system, and his big win was another chance to declare an election, this time, at the end of this coming November. We can assume that Netanyahu will agree to as many compromises and postponements as he needs to, as long as he keeps the option of an "our" before the rotation is implemented November 2021 – which will now most likely never happen.
When Netanyahu was asked if Blue and White had adopted the compromise as it was proposed, and he responded that he had heard in the media that they had, it revealed the enormity of the barrier between the coalition partners. Ministers sit in the same cabinet, under a combined leadership of a prime minister and a prime minister-designate, and barely speak to each other. Blue and White only heard about the press conference and its subject from media reports.
Netanyahu's demand to change the system by which senior law enforcement officials are appointed is a minor correction to the total concession the Likud made in the coalition agreement when it came to legal matters, and nothing could be more just or vital. The current system of search committees and tenders is rotten to the core and perpetuates a rule by functionaries, which for the most part is very far off from the stances of most of the public and its values.
It's not clear to what extent the establishment of a committee to handle these appointments, as stated in the coalition deal, would solve the problem, but anything less would be a scandal. Blue and White's insistence on this matter, after they got everything they wanted in terms of the legal system, will be the ultimate reason to call a new election.
When Netanyahu mentioned the affair of Avi Nissankoren's case being closed, the leaders of the righteous got up and argued that the prime minister was twisting what really happened. But Netanyahu was accurate. It doesn't matter whether or not the police decided to close the Nissankoren investigation two years ago, but there is no dispute that the State Attorney's Office finally closed it in May of this year, just before he was named justice minister.
That is what the Justice Ministry was told in his official response. The closing of the case was intended to pave Nissankoren's way to the Justice Ministry. We can only assume what would have happened with the case if Nissankoren had said anything that would have offended the ears of the decision-makers at the top of the legal system. Maybe his case would have been closed then, too. But the word "maybe" at the start of the sentence tells the whole problematic story.
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