Even with the Knesset voting to approve legislation to disperse the Knesset in a preliminary reading on Wednesday, the question remains whether Israel is truly headed for another election. The legislative process will take around two to three weeks, an eternity in the political sphere. Dec. 23 is the real deadline for passing a budget. Failure to do by that time would see the Knesset automatically dissolve.
Even with the preliminary approval to move forward toward an election, it seems quite a few people who voted for the move may not actually be in favor of it. After the vote, Blue and White's lawmakers looked like a group fully aware of their bleak political future. Likud party members were split on the matter, with some of the mind that the sooner this government was dissolved, the better, and others arguing it would be a huge mistake to disperse the Knesset at the height of a coronavirus outbreak.
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Netanyahu knows that in the current media climate, he would find it difficult to change the narrative that holds he is the sole person responsible for Israel heading into another election because he has let his personal interests take precedence over those of the nation and he is now holding the budget hostage. Of course, there is some truth to these claims, but the reality is a little more complicated. If Blue and White head Benny Gantz had put the country above everything else, he would have allowed the 2020 budget, which is ready for a vote and could be authorized by the Knesset at any given moment, to pass. Netanyahu's insistence on holding on to his out is no different from Gantz's desire to withhold it from him. They are both holding the budget hostage to the same degree.
The claim that from the start, Netanyahu had no intention of complying with the rotation agreement also seems a dubious one. After all, he was the one who pushed for a clause demanding the authorization of a two-year budget be added to the coalition agreement. Had he planned to allow himself to call elections when it most benefits him, he wouldn't have requested such a clause in the first place.
Gantz is right to think he has been conned by Netanyahu, who despite agreeing to it in writing, has no intention of allowing the former IDF chief of staff to serve as prime minister in his place. Netanyahu is right to note that Blue and White was the first to violate the coalition agreement. They did not violate the agreement by passing bills in violation of the coalition agreement, or by setting up a committee to find a new state attorney or voting this way or another without coordinating with Likud in advance. No, this is the party's general mindset. It's as if Blue and White never concluded their "anyone but Bibi" election campaign. They appear to have only agreed to enter the government to bolster their positions for further, more aggressive attacks.
In the early days of this government, Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen said she had no faith in Netanyahu's leadership. Despite protests from Likud ministers, Gantz never found it necessary to tell her that this is not how we behave in a government and that ministers cannot attack the person at their head. Way before the budgetary issues bubbled to the surface, when Netanyahu attacked the State Attorney's Office at the outset of his trial, Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn did not hesitate to speak out in its name and attack Netanyahu. The same was true when the protests outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem were gaining steam. Despite the lockdown and rising morbidity rates, Blue and White ministers positioned themselves as guardians of the demonstrators, all the while sticking it to Netanyahu.
With or without a rotation agreement, a government cannot function this way. Gantz has been consistently weak in reining in his party's members. From the start, he allowed them to continue to rail against the head of the government unhindered. Contrary to what has been said, non-compliance with the rotation government isn't the beginning of the government's process of disintegration, but the end.
The trading of messages between the Prime Minister's Office and the alternate prime minister was ongoing up until and following the vote to disperse the Knesset. As of now, the differences are too great, and it seems too serious to overcome. Netanyahu wants Gantz to forgo the rotation. Gantz wants Netanyahu to concede his ability to call an election and have it written down in law. Neither of them is willing to give the other what they want. Still, it's not inconceivable to think that additional proposals will soon be on the table. And it may be that with every such offer, the rift will narrow. At the same time, it may yet deepen.
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