Samuel Kullmann

Bottom line: Eisenkot has failed. The group of four parties he leads, a group that spans the spectrum from the far-left to the “hard right but hates Netanyahu and Haredim”, will not have the votes to unseat him unless they do the unthinkable and do so with the aid of not just the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Mansour Abbas (who, like the BBC, refuses to call Hamas “terrorists”) but also the Jihad-sympathetic members of the Arab Joint List. If they were to do this, they could get their scalp and kick Netanyahu out of office for a little while until their coalition collapsed under the contradiction of leading a war against Hamas while being propped up by allies of Hamas. Kick out Zionists over political issues by using the clout of literal Hamas allies, who would then crow about how they “defeated Netanyahu and Likud as revenge on behalf of Hamas”? This graph explains why Netanyahu survived yesterday’s election: he has a reliable core coalition. The opposition, for decades now, has been a shapeshifting mess of mergers, all trying but failing to tempt a few seats off the right. The only time it worked was when Bennett ran as right-wing and earned six seats, and then transferred them to the opposition coalition in return for being Prime Minister. In game-theoretical terms, Israeli politics isn’t a simple game; it’s an “iterated game”, where “reputation effects” are key. So, if Yair Golan gets his way, and the votes or absence of Hamas fans in the Joint List are used to oust the Zionist Right, rather than form some compromise unity coalition, when that inevitably collapses after a few months (at best), all the people involved will face the judgement of the voters in a new game, with collapsed reputations. Apart from that, they wouldn’t be able to do it, since Lieberman and others are smart enough to realise this. It’s pie in the sky, but would be Netanyahu’s dream. Six months out of power as a martyr to what he will present as an amoral left-Islamist alliance to write his memoirs while all his enemies discredit themselves. A portion of their base might accept this, but a large portion would not. Obtuse attempts to argue that Netanyahu “also relies on anti-Zionists” by allying with Haredim over decades won’t help. There is a difference between opposing Zionism on arcane technical grounds and demanding the destruction, by violence if needed, of the Jewish State. This is merely the latest iterative failed phase of the “not Netanyahu” alliance. The problem again and again has been that the underlying political views of the Jewish population do not allow it. This has been going on since 1999 and Ehud Barak, and has failed continuously since. The last time they managed to unseat him was only by a ruse, when Bennett, whose hard-right voters anticipated he would sit in a Netanyahu coalition, traded his political credibility with his base for being the Prime Minister of a rainbow coalition for a year. The problem is that the core of the Jewish electorate is, for various reasons, loyal to Netanyahu. Even the failures of October 7 didn’t dampen that. Once the 5% of right-wing votes “wasted” on various small right-wing parties are included, approximately half of Israel’s population (and 60%+ of its Jews) picked Netanyahu, directly or by proxy, as their chosen leader. Netanyahu “survived” the judgement of the people over October 7. Either that or the people decided that while he has culpability, the generals, represented in the election by his chief rivals, former chief of staff until 2019, Eisenkot, and former deputy chief of staff until 2018, Yair Golan, allies and friends of Netanyahu’s arch-enemy Ehud Barak, are more culpable. Ten years of prosecutions didn’t change the math; the failures of October 7 didn’t change the math; a majority of Israel’s Jews still prefer Netanyahu. His rivals ran an obsessively negative campaign of “centrist populism”, mostly on the Haredi draft issue and on Netanyahu’s personality.

Eisenkot’s dilemma: 1. His failed “change coalition” will be crushed at a second election if they use the Jihadi-supporting Joint List to “stick it to the right” and temporarily get their Bibi scalp. 2. If he doesn’t, but also doesn’t partake in some form of unity coalition, Netanyahu, from the comfort of the Prime Minister’s chair, will run out the clock and call new elections in May, in which he will do better, since he lost 5% of the right-wing votes to Winter’s and Hendel’s failed start-up parties. Also, events in the region—war with Iran, and perhaps peace with the Saudis—will likely play to Netanyahu’s favour. 3. So the smart play for him is to offer Netanyahu his party in a unity coalition, but he comes with a very weak hand, since he won’t be able to bring the leftists under Golan with him, or Liberman’s party (whose entire career is focused on unseating Netanyahu). And what would be in it for Netanyahu? Netanyahu is aware of points 1 and 2 above. He could simply play out the clock, let the negotiations fail, blame Eisenkot, and come back with the extra few seats he needs in May. Would he betray his reliable hard-right and Haredi allies for what could be a short-term coalition? Unlikely. The problem is that when someone has the choice of who gets to extort them, nobody gets to do it. And that is the definition of power. Optionality. All Eisenkot’s options are bad, all Netanyahu’s are good.