The Daily - Will Netanyahu Fall?

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has always sold himself as a peerless defender of his country. In the minds of many Israelis, he has become a kind of indispensable leader for the nation’s future.Despite that image, Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, might soon be ousted from office.What has given his rivals the momentum to try to topple him? And who might be his replacement?Guest: David M. Halbfinger, who covered Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and the Middle East as the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. The Daily is doing a live online event: We follow up with students and faculty from our series Odessa. And we hear from the team who made the documentary. Times subscribers can join us June 10.Background reading: Mr. Netanyahu, a dominant figure who has pushed his nation’s politics to the right, is on the verge of losing power.The main players in the latest twist in Israeli politics have very different agendas, but one common goal. Can they change Israel?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Over the next few days, lawmakers in Israel are poised to do what once seemed unthinkable, push out the country's longest-serving leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. The country's longest-serving leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Today, my colleague David Helfinger on why it's happening and who is behind it. It's Monday, June 7th. David, the last time we spoke to you, two years ago, we talked about the political longevity of Benjamin Netanyahu,

and you told us that, to many people in Israel, Netanyahu had become a kind of indispensable leader, so ingrained in the country's imagination and its sense of itself that it wasn't really clear how Israel would ever move forward without him. Can you just remind us why that was the case? Why this sense of indispensability had come to exist around Netanyahu? So I think in the same way that much of the rest of the world looks at Israel and sees Benjamin Netanyahu's face, he personifies that country. It's even more so inside Israel. And here's why.

Throughout his career and throughout his tenure as prime minister, he has sold himself to Israelis as the peerless defender of Israel. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. This is a country that has always been and felt besieged. And for Israelis, they first and foremost have always wanted and needed in their leader a protector. Now, on the world stage, no one has ever been a more successful and capable spokesman. Israel is changing the world in India, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, everywhere.

Speaking out and speaking up for Israelis and for their interests. Here's Israel. My finger covers it. On international television. So it's a tiny country surrounded, well, shall we say, living in a very tough neighborhood. On the floor of the United Nations. Iran's rulers promised to destroy my country, murder my people, and the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here, has been absolutely nothing. As a military leader, you know, other prime ministers before him got Israel into some very messy wars. And Netanyahu, although he talks a fierce game, has been extremely reluctant to get into ground wars.

He'll send his commandos out to do covert operations. He'll send his spies out to do all kinds of feats of derring-do and brag about it later. But he's actually been extremely casualty-averse. And as a result, fewer Israeli civilians and soldiers have died under Netanyahu than under any of his predecessors. And that's a really important thing in a small country where almost every family mourns somebody on Memorial Day. mourn somebody on Memorial Day. And finally, within the region, Netanyahu has been saying all along to Israelis that, yes, we have this conflict with the Palestinians, but we don't have to give in. We can hang on. We can deal with this conflict, whether it ends in peace or the Palestinians just give up. Whatever happens, we don't have to worry about it now. We can worry

about it later. And the world will still fall in line. The world will deal with us. And as we've seen, you know, even Arab states in the region are falling in line and making deals with Israel despite the continuance of the occupation. No wonder Netanyahu could credibly tell Israelis, nobody else could do this for you. But of course, the reason we spoke to you back then in the spring of 2019 was because it looked like that indispensability was suddenly being challenged. Netanyahu faced very serious corruption charges and was about to be a free election. So what happened in that election? One of the most important elections in Israel's history and a national referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis are casting their votes right now.

So Netanyahu, who's just been indicted on those corruption charges, nonetheless manages to win the most votes. He gets about 25 percent of the vote. But second by second, the clock ran out last night on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to form a coalition government. He still has to put together a coalition. This is Israel. It's not the United States. They have this complicated multi-party system, you know, with a zillion parties dividing up the electric into tiny slivers. And he has to put together a coalition to get to a simple majority in parliament of 61 seats out of 120. And he couldn't get there.

Sending the country into an unprecedented redo election. So Israel went to a second election that fall. For a second time this year, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has failed to form a government. But again, could not form a government. So does this mean that Israel could head to elections for the third time this year? They went to a third election in March of 2020. But again, could not form a government. They went to a third election in March of 2020. Another stalemate. This time the stalemate leads to forming a government,

but the government falls apart at the end of the year. Israel's parliament was dissolved on Tuesday after two main parties in the unity government failed to pass a budget by a midnight deadline, the fourth election this past March. Israel is holding yet another national election Tuesday. It's fourth in two years. Exit polls show Israel's latest election isn't likely to end the country's political deadlock. And David, what's keeping everyone from being able to create an actual government?

So I think it's just a really big step for this country to take to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu. First of all, Netanyahu himself, he has a very, very animated, loyal base of support. And the people who want to get together and get him out couldn't get together. You have a very disparate group of parties and leaders, some of whom have always been Netanyahu loyalists and have turned on him, some of whom have never been supporters and can't stand him,

some of whom are Arab lawmakers who are kind of new to this whole situation of trying to tip the scales and drive Netanyahu from power. And so you have ideologies and nationalities and religious views and all kinds of other things that are getting in the way of these people getting together. And so nothing happens. And so nothing happens, and Netanyahu stays as a caretaker prime minister. Mm-hmm. And so what ends up changing that dynamic and getting us to the point where we are right now? So I think two things happened between the last election and this one that really changed the way Netanyahu was seen and I think

emboldened the people who finally got together to take him down. Israel has become the first country to announce a second national lockdown. One was the pandemic. It comes after a surge in new infections topping 4,000 a day. Now, Israel was one of the first countries to get the vaccine and really come out of the pandemic in strong fashion fairly early. really come out of the pandemic in strong fashion fairly early. But for Israelis, they remember what happened all last year until the vaccines arrived. Israel currently has the world's highest weekly infection rate per capita.

A poll this week put support for Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the crisis at just 27%. The country was really mismanaged, and not in a general way, but in a specific way that pointed up one of the things that is a big wrap on Netanyahu. Recent surge in cases was fueled by a high rate of infection within ultra-Orthodox communities. He has made a kind of political compact with the very large and fast-growing ultra-Orthodox Jewish population of Israel. And he said kind of hands-off to the ultra-Orthodox as the of Israel. And he said kind of hands off to the ultra-Orthodox as the pandemic was spreading in their communities.

The question of how to reopen schools safely has been perplexing Israel's government for weeks. But in ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods, it's been much simpler. They've just reopened in violation of the law. It was very noticeable and very galling to the rest of Israel. They saw a direct link between his political situation and the way that the ultra-Orthodox were allowed to

flout these rules and in effect prolong and worsen the pandemic. The second thing I think we need to talk about is the war that we just witnessed. Now, Israel has been through rounds of violence with Gaza before. It's kind of used to rockets flying and these exchanges of casualties. But what was different here was the violence that we saw on the streets of Israeli cities between Jewish and Arab neighbors for a few years now, all through these elections, it's been like a go-to move for him to rile up the right-wing Jewish voting base against Arabs as a threat, against Arab lawmakers. He, you know, several times has depicted Arab lawmakers as terrorists themselves. And now people have been saying, like, this is going to tear at Israeli society. like this is going to tear at Israeli society.

And what I think people saw when they saw people being lynched, and when they saw mobs walking and rioting through the streets of cities that had basically gotten along before, was, you know, maybe all of that rhetoric has finally found a match, you know, a spark. And the Israelis looked at this, and I think many of them, including some on the right, said, Bibi, this is your fault. Hmm. Because of his history of inflaming tensions

between Arabs and Jews inside of Israel. That's right. So I think those two things, the pandemic and the way it was mismanaged, and the war and the violence that had spawned in Israeli streets between neighbors, were enough to finally give the people who believed Netanyahu had to go

enough momentum to break the stalemate. We'll be right back. So David, describe this emerging coalition that, because of the changed political climate that you just walked us through might result in Netanyahu being ousted from power? So there are a lot of parties going from the pretty far left to the pretty far right. But I think it's best captured in a photo that's been circulating of three of those leaders sitting at a table

and signing a coalition agreement. Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party, Naftali Bennett of the rightward or Yamina party, and Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List. These are three guys from three wildly different parts of the Israeli political spectrum who've come together for the sole purpose of defeating Benjamin Netanyahu. So tell us more about these three men and what animates they're just like for Netanyahu. So let's talk first about Naftali Bennett, who under this coalition agreement will become the next prime minister of Israel if it holds. Bennett is a right-winger. He's a really

ideological right-winger. He used to represent the settlers on the West Bank. He's somebody who worked as chief of staff to Netanyahu himself and idolized him, I think. It's safe to say he named his son Yoni after Netanyahu's hero brother who was killed in that famous raid on Entebbe, freeing Israeli hostages in the 70s. But ultimately, he was banished by Netanyahu. As Netanyahu does, he tends to identify people who pose threats to him and marginalize them. But even as Bennett has wanted to succeed Netanyahu for years, you could sense that he couldn't quite set aside his admiration for Netanyahu. Fascinating. And then last year, during the pandemic, Bennett, who was once, for a few years,

was an entrepreneur and made a lot of money in software. And so he has this business experience. He saw what was going on and he went out there and started saying, this is how this thing should be managed. Here's what we need to do. He put a book out saying how the country needed to be run. And he really saw that Netanyahu, for all of his hype and the image, was really kind of botching

the job. My goal is to retain a national government while parting from Netanyahu. Not because he's a bad guy. He's not. He's not a bad guy. But after 32 years in politics, 32 years, it's not working. You know, and I think he came around to believing that Netanyahu was not capable of governing Israel in the way that it needed to be governed. Okay, so that's bad. Who should we talk about next? I think Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List. Citizens of Israel, good evening. As an Arab lawmaker, what I think animates him is that, you know, the 20% of Israelis who are Arabs

have been marginalized. They've been ignored by Israel's government. But worse, under Netanyahu over the years, particularly at election time, they have been demonized. They have been assailed. They have had their loyalty to Israel questioned. And they've been pit against Jewish citizens in this attempt to divide and conquer

to help get Netanyahu elected every time. So you have that as the backdrop. And if we are not wise to bring down the ignorance and racism, we will leave to the next generation a complex situation, a dangerous and above all impossible reality. And then you have this incredible personal narrative between Netanyahu and Abbas himself, because before this last election, Netanyahu stunningly reached out to Abbas and tried to make some accommodations with him. You know, this was seen as this incredible move. And other Arab lawmakers looked at Abbas as kind

of a turncoat who was betraying the Arab population by playing footsie with Netanyahu. But what ended up happening was this incredible turnabout. He takes what footsie with Netanyahu. But what ended up happening was this incredible turnabout. He takes what he can get from Netanyahu politically, which is this legitimacy that Bibi has given him, and then he tosses him in the trash by going in with the forces seeking to knock Bibi out. And if Abbas and the coalition succeed, if they pull it off, this would be the first time in the 73-year history of the state of Israel that an independent Arab party becomes part of the government of the state. And that would be a huge breakthrough for Arabs in Israel.

So whereas Bennett was deeply disillusioned by Netanyahu's handling of the pandemic, Abbas would have been deeply disillusioned by the way Netanyahu handled this war and the domestic violence that it inspired. Yes, and he's really spoken out against the violence between Jews and Arabs on the streets. So that brings us to the third man in this photo. Yeah, Ira Lapid of the Yesh Atid, or There Is a Future Party. Lapid is a centrist. He's a politician who's been around for a while now. He had a rap early on as somewhat superficial. I think it's because he started out as a host of a television talk show. But he stands for a demographic of, you know, sort of the very center, obviously,

the middle of the road Israelis, but also he's become like the best hope of the left. Israelis who disapprove of the way that Netanyahu has treated the Palestinians, who would love for there to be a real peace process, although most of them have given up on there ever being one anytime soon, but who even more really loathe the way they've seen Netanyahu divide the country and exploit the differences between the different sectors of Israeli society. People who see Netanyahu not as really protecting Israel, but as threatening to destroy the Israel they thought they knew.

They don't think it represents values, they don't think it's relevant to their lives, and they're one million percent correct. Politics takes their money and gives them nothing in exchange. There is no link between politics and a real life of real people. And more and more, the guy who was seen as an empty suit has kind of filled it out in the last couple of years through all these elections, being a pragmatist

and really promising just to bring good management, clean government, and trying to focus on the things that Israelis can agree on rather than those things that they just can't. In the real world of real people, when you're under three indictments, you can't be the principal of a school. You can't be a doctor.

You can't even be a minister's driver. So thinking about these three men in the photo, David, in many ways, this feels like a coalition that Bibi himself helped to build, perhaps not intentionally, but through the way he handled those two crises, the pandemic and the war, and through his overall approach

to government and to politics. For instance, by legitimizing this Arab party for his own benefit, he makes someone like Abbas a potent force who can turn on him. By alienating a protege like Bennett, he encourages Bennett to turn on him. And by inflaming left-wing Israelis in all sorts of ways, including his approach to the Palestinians, he loses or further loses someone like Lapid. Yes, I think a lot of people look at this coalition and see Netanyahu's fingerprints all over it. David, how is it that a coalition this

ideologically diverse? Because what you just described is not a group of people who would seem to share a lot of opinions. You have a centrist left-wing figure, you have an Arab leader, and you have someone who comes from the right. How are they all supposed to work within one governing coalition and get stuff done? So that's like the most interesting question as we look ahead, right? I mean, really, when you look at this group and the range ideologically that it encompasses, really, there's only one thing that they can all agree on, and that's the mission of ousting Netanyahu. But there are quite a lot of things that beyond that, they may be able to get done. I mean, the conceit here is that I think 80% of Israelis agree on 80% of the issues.

And it's the noisy, acrimonious, divisive 20% of the issues that nobody can agree on. But this country is, you know, for two years now, more than two years, has been stuck. It's been unable to pass a budget to fund basic things. It's just kind of going on autopilot, renewed budgets. The roads are clogged with traffic. They need to build new highways. They need to build new trains. They want to build airports. The hospitals, the ICUs of Israeli hospitals were overflowing, overwhelmed, really, before the pandemic. They need to build hospitals in the north and south. You know, the educational system is actually, it might seem surprising for the startup

nation, but the educational system is among the worst in the developed world. And really, that startup nation is being sustained by a sliver of the most high-achieving students that come out of Israeli schools. They have a lot of things that they need to do, and there's a lot of those things that they could agree on, but they have to get this thing out of the way first. But what you're saying is some very basic work of government, not the sexiest work, but the really essential work of building roads, hospitals, schools, that could get done through his coalition. And that combined with getting rid of Netanyahu might be enough for this coalition and its voters. Yeah, I think what you haven't heard me talk about are things like the Palestinians, right? I mean, and settlements and all these things

which are in that other 20%, right? Those are the things that the left wing and the right wing cannot agree on. And those are the things that all of these leaders who are coming together in this coalition are assuring their voters, listen, we're not gonna go there. We're not gonna do anything more.

They're not gonna expand the settlement enterprise. The right wingers have to tell their voters, listen, we're not going to go there. We're not going to do anything more. They're not going to expand the settlement enterprise. The right-wingers have to tell their voters, we can't, right? For the sake of this government, we can't. And the left wing is going to have to say to its voters, we're not going to really get anywhere in rolling back the settlements or in making peace with the Palestinians anytime soon. You know, those divisive issues are going to be set aside and they're going to focus on really the nuts and bolts, the kind of pocketbook issues on which Israelis are really impatient to see some problems get solved. Hmm. But for those who might have thought that ousting Netanyahu, this far-right leader, might create a new dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians, might perhaps mean a new phase in the very long stalled peace process.

You're suggesting that's not really likely to happen. This coalition will almost by definition not be able to touch an issue like the establishment of two states, one for Israelis, one for Palestinians. I think more than anything, this is going to be the agree to disagree coalition on deeply divisive issues like that. They're going to agree to just say, we're not going to get anywhere on this. Let's talk about what we can make progress on. And those are practical issues. I mean, intractable issues are going to be left for another day and probably another government. So David, what will the next few days end up looking like as this coalition tries to get rid of Netanyahu and get just enough votes to put itself in power? So Netanyahu hasn't gone anywhere, first of all. He still is sitting

in the prime minister's residence and office. And he is still doing what he does, which is mobilizing a not too small army of supporters to do everything that they can to put pressure on the weakest links in that coalition to bolt and to break it apart. So he's fighting this? He's fighting this tooth and nail. I mean, he's fighting this like his political life depends on it, because it does. You know, remember, if this coalition breaks apart, and it's fragile, if it breaks apart, he's still the prime minister.

And another election would call, then that'd be months from now, and he'd be prime minister until then. But, you know, what we're going to see until this thing actually comes to pass is a really ugly pitched battle over trying to break off any member of this coalition who's a weak link. We've already seen Netanyahu give these very impassioned speeches assailing the coalition, basically as traitors perpetrating a fraud. He's also encouraging his supporters to do what they do in Israel, which is to go to the homes of the lawmakers they have in their sites and do demonstrations outside their front doors. They're calling out these members of the coalition online. Things are so angry.

You know, when the prime minister encourages supporters to protest, it doesn't take long before some people start taking that to violent rhetoric. You've already seen several key members of the coalition be assigned security. You've seen online threats against members of the coalition and even to harm their children. I mean, really, really ugly things are happening, and they're going to continue happening until this is resolved. But David, in doing that, isn't Netanyahu just proving his opponent's point that he is too divisive a figure to run this country that it's time to turn the page? I think that's what their argument is. He is doing their work for them to some degree.

But really, he doesn't have another tactic to play at this point. So we're kind of back where we started in this conversation, which is with the question of indispensability. Will Netanyahu be able to make the case that he remains indispensable and therefore pick off a member or two of his coalition and make it collapse?

Or will the coalition be able to hold it together and therefore kind of prove that he's really not that indispensable? Yeah, I mean, Netanyahu is still making the argument that only he can lead Israel, that anybody else would be too grave a risk to its security, that he is indispensable. But for this coalition, they've turned the corner already. I think many of them would say that Netanyahu himself is the biggest threat that the country faces and therefore that he needs to go. Well, David, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Facebook said that its suspension of former President Trump would last at least two years, meaning that the earliest he could return to the platform would be January of 2023, about a year before the next presidential election. Last month, Facebook's oversight board

ruled that banning Trump indefinitely was inappropriate, prompting the company to announce the two-year time frame. And the Times reports that several of the world's poorest nations, including Argentina, Malaysia, and Botswana, are struggling to obtain COVID-19 vaccines despite experiencing major outbreaks of the virus. The shortages of the vaccine are most acute in Africa, where about 3% of people have received at least one dose and infections are surging. In the United States, by comparison, 60% of people have received at least one dose, and infections are plunging.

Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon-Johnson, Nina Potok, and Stella Tan. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Lisa Chow, and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilbaro. See you tomorrow.