Don't get Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu wrong again. He is intentionally targeting Israel's political "center," and no, this is not just a tactic. At the end of the day, once the election outcome is clear, he may prefer that same "center" to his loyal partners on the ideological right and toss aside those who crossed the opposition desert with him over the last year.
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How do we know this is the case? It's simple, really. Netanyahu has been here before. He has preferred left-wingers and centrists to his natural and loyal allies on the right in past coalitions he has formed.
In 2009, Netanyahu partnered with the Labor party in the coalition, appointed then-Labor leader Ehud Barak to the role of defense minister, and left the right-wing National Union in the opposition. In 2013, he integrated Hatnua's Tzipi Livni in the coalition and put her in charge of the Justice Ministry and diplomatic talks. Netanyahu tried to leave Habayit Hayehudi and its leader Naftali Bennett outside of the government, but an alliance between Bennett and Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid thwarted that plan.
He came close to forming a coalition with one-time Labor head Avi Gabbay. His emissaries said he would have been willing to make Labor's Shelly Yachimovich justice minister and appoint Amir Peretz Israel's president. In 2017, he offered Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog to join a unity government on the basis of a peace initiative centered on significant restrictions on construction in Judea and Samaria, territorial compromise, and the two-state solution.
Netanyahu is capable of mercilessly attacking people like Livni and Barak and labeling them as members of the "dangerous Left," and justifiable so. Once the elections are over, though, he is able to find various excuses for integrating them into key positions in his government and sidelining the ideological Right.
Netanyahu is a lot of things, some of them good and some of them less so. He is a multi-talented phenomenon that has known both achievement and failure. Netanyahu is not, however, representative of the ideological Right.
Not convinced? Recall his support for the disastrous plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and the fact that he signed on to the Wye River Memorandum and evicted most of Hebron. Recall how he missed the opportunity of the century when he refrained from applying sovereignty to 30% of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley and the fact that he released over 1,000 terrorists with blood on their hands in a deal to free Gilad Schalit and afterward.
In his speech at Bar-Ilan University in 2009, Netanyahu supported the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Over the years, he has either frozen or slowed Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, and in the framework of talks with then-US Secretary John Kerry, was willing to cede large portions of Judea and Samaria, as revealed by Israel Hayom's Ariel Kahana.
Do what you will with this information. You can excuse it, explain it away, or justify it, but whatever you do, don't call Netanyahu right-wing because a right-winger he is not.
It may be that with the personal and political complications he has gotten himself into, the 2022 version of Netanyahu will not have an opportunity to choose between the Right and the center-left. If, however, by some miracle, he manages to secure 61 Knesset seats, don't be surprised if he once again abandons the genuine Right. Because for Netanyahu, targeting the "center" is more than a tactic, it is the very essence of the matter.
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