Side by side they sat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin at the memorial ceremony for the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Sunday. Despite their notorious relationship, the two figures were able to successfully conceal their mutual hostility and disdain and maintain the type of stately and dignified countenance befitting the status of the occasion. After all, these men are two of the most experienced politicians in the political arena today.
But as we are all aware, behind the scenes, a fiery hatred divides the two men. Rivlin will never be able to convince Netanyahu he is not conspiring to remove him from power – payback for when Netanyahu removed Rivlin as Knesset speaker and tried to torpedo his presidential nomination.
But when it comes to calling early elections, Netanyahu does not need too much evidence to back up his claim. Someone slipped up and said too much. The plot was exposed and the elections were put on hold. There is still no proof of a Rivlin connection, but that is not the case from Netanyahu's standpoint. For him, there is but one truth. Some will call him paranoid. Others will say this is the secret to his political survival.
The Israeli president can exercise discretion when deciding who to task with forming a government, as long as he does so within reason and not as an attempt to engage in political trickery.
This new information and the prime minister's ensuing decision are the missing piece in the puzzle of why the plans to hold early elections were rather suddenly shelved just before the opening of the Knesset's winter session.
This is not about United Torah Judaism's Council of Torah Sages and it has nothing to do with Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman or Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman locking horns over it. This is about Rivlin. Fear of the president is what led Netanyahu to slam the brakes on early elections, so it is not about the haredi conscription law, it's the putsch.
