The message Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered to his coalition partners on Tuesday essentially dismissed recent speculation that he wants to go to elections. The signal was clear: The prime minister wants to remain in office at least another year. If his coalition partners backtrack from their recent threats to dismantle the government, he will go along with them. There is also a threat here, however: If they continue making things difficult and Netanyahu concludes resolution of the current crisis will only mark the beginning of the next one – then he will likely prefer going to elections now rather than sputtering along for another month or two in a debilitating atmosphere of uncertainty.
Lest there be any mistakes: The current coalition crisis is not about the IDF enlistment law. This coalition has already passed one enlistment law, it can pass one more. This is not the problem. The issue is that in an election scenario, none of the partners want to come out looking foolish. The ultra-Orthodox are not willing to cede ground to the High Court of Justice; Israel Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman refuses to concede to Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid; Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon won't give an inch to Lieberman; and even the Likud, which has thus far made concessions for everyone, won't be the whipping boy for the coalition if elections are imminent.
Therefore, all Netanyahu has to do upon his return to Israel from Washington is to sit down with the coalition heads and convince them he isn't interested in elections. If he succeeds, the crisis will be over. If he fails, the Knesset will disperse even before the current parliamentary session ends in two weeks.
To the disappointment of many, mainly in the opposition, Netanyahu will continue conducting affairs on the political level completely detached from what is happening simultaneously on the parallel criminal tract. Even his closest aides say the stringent faith he has in the righteousness of his path has led to the abnormal situation in which all of the reports, analyses and accusations leveled against him day and night in bombastic headlines don't trouble him in the least and have not led him to consider altering his plans in the slighwwww. From his perspective, once Kahlon devised the idea to pass the 2019 national budget as early as March 2018, in order to ensure another year of coalition stability, nothing has changed. State's witnesses come and go, but in the eyes of the prime minister, he is here to stay.
But that's not all. Netanyahu doesn't want elections because despite the flattering polls election campaigns tend to drag on almost forever in political terms. Any election campaign now will make the previous one in 2015 seem like a pleasant stroll in the park. Although it ended in victory, Netanyahu apparently doesn't really miss the experience.
