Israeli leader on official visit to Moscow as cabinet snarls and legal troubles deepen at home
[Jerusalem] Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left for Moscow early Monday morning, for what will be his fourth tête-à-tête with Russian President Vladimir Putin within the period of a year.
In a statement issued before his departure, Netanyahu’s office said the two leaders would discuss “the global fight against terrorism, the situation in and around Syria and the diplomatic horizon between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as bilateral economic and trade cooperation and the strengthening of cultural and humanitarian ties.”
Netanyahu said that positive ties with Russia, which has the most active military presence of any foreign state in the region, especially in Syria, and supplies weapons to Israel’s nemesis, Iran, have proven important for Israel’s “national security and prevented unnecessary violence along our borders.”
The statement didn’t make any mention of the many political complications the prime minister was leaving behind, if only for two days.
With Avigdor Lieberman, the controversial, Soviet-born new minister of defense, in his cabinet and the concomitant stability afforded Netanyahu’s coalition by the integration of Lieberman’s six parliament (Knesset) seats, expectations in Jerusalem were that Netanyahu might enjoy a few months of calm.
Yet, late on Sunday, as the day commemorating Israel’s victory in Jerusalem in the 1967 “Six-Day War” drew to a close, Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, the leader of the religious-nationalist Jewish Home party, blasted the prime minister. Speaking at a religious seminary, Bennett asserted that Israel would never accept the Arab Peace Initiative, a Saudi-led proposal that has floated around the Middle East for sixteen years, to which Netanyahu has made positive references in recent days.
Accusing Netanyahu of speaking out of both sides of his mouth, Bennett said, “The time has come to say in a clear voice: the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel! It is not possible to support the Land of Israel in Hebrew and the establishment of a Palestinian state in English.”
Senior members of the prime minister’s party rushed to Netanyahu’s defense on Monday, slamming Bennett for his “hypocrisy.”
“Bennett’s hypocritical campaign knows no bounds,” a party official told Walla! News. Bennett, the anonymous Likud member continued, “has suddenly seen the light, by an amazing coincidence just as Lieberman is appointed defense minister.”
Bennett, who leads a larger faction than Lieberman, made an unsuccessful bid for the powerful defense ministry post.
In recent weeks, as Netanyahu desperately chased a broader coalition, he dismissed Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, a former chief-of-staff of the Israeli army and a senior member of his own party. While slamming the Paris peace initiative, which took place over the weekend without Israeli or Palestinian presence, Netanyahu hinted that he might be interested in negotiating with the Palestinians on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative which, he said, “includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations.” The initiative stipulates a return to the pre-1967 ceasefire lines with east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
Speaking to a packed audience on Sunday, Bennett thundered that “there are those in Israel and around the world joining forces for various Arab initiatives, according to which we’ll divide the Land [of Israel], God forbid divide Jerusalem, and return to the ’67 lines. Because of the world media, there’s a [supposed] need to appease it. To them I say tonight: never!”
“We all stand together like a rock for the wholeness of our land,” Bennett continued. “We don’t stutter, we don’t get confused, we don’t exaggerate.”
Alluding to the troubles plaguing this government, and to the leverage he holds as a coalition member, Bennett promised that “as long as we are here [in the government], a Palestinian state will not be established… and Jerusalem will not be divided.”
Bennett could topple the government by leaving the coalition and taking his eight-seat party with him.
Netanyahu currently has a majority of 66 out of 120 Knesset seats.
“This is an absurd situation,” a senior Likud official vented. “The biggest threat to a broad right-wing government headed by Likud is the chairman of Jewish Home. If Bennett insists on taking Jewish Home out of the government for personal motives, he’ll be solely responsible for the results.”
It fell to the newest minister at the cabinet table, Lieberman, to call Bennett to task for his opposition to the Arab Peace Initiative. “Relax,” Lieberman said. “I call on my good friend Naftali Bennett to calm down. We need less public statements and more coordinated, synchronized and quiet work.”
Then, hinting at the possibility of further changes in the government, including the possible ejection of Bennett himself, Lieberman announced that he supported a “wide coalition” to take on Israel’s “regional challenges.”
In recent days, opposition chairman and Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog opened the door to joining Netanyahu’s coalition were Bennett to leave. “Netanyahu chose to go with the extremists,” he said over the weekend. “If Netanyahu separates from the extreme right we will meet and decide.”
Tal Schneider, Israel’s most prominent political blogger, told The Media Line that “the government is more stable, but at the same time anything could happen. Netanyahu’s success has been in shutting down dissent within his own party and fracturing the Jewish Home and Labor parties. That’s what he has going for him right now.”
Members of both Bennett’s party, in the government, and Herzog’s outside of it, have been torn about the intentions of their leaders and each has a strong internal opposition.
The Likud, too, faced some turmoil from the loss of the respected Ya’alon, though Arik Ziv, the editor-in-chief of the website www.likudnik.co.il, an independent forum for all things party-related and an influential analyst on the Israeli scene, told The Media Line that matters had settled—and settled on the side of the prime minister.
“There is no problem within the party,” he said. “From the time Ya’alon left everything returned to calm. Remember that many within the party were angry at Ya’alon for leaving, they felt like the commander had abandoned soldiers in the field.”
“There are limits,” he said, pointing out that Ya’alon had been offered the foreign ministry, currently held by Netanyahu, but preferred to slam the door. “No one wants to feel they’ve been left behind.
US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro is slated to meet with Bennett’s faction to discuss US-Israel ties, including issues relating to the ongoing negotiation of the ten-year memorandum of understanding that ensures the American commitment to Israel’s security needs.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is visiting Moscow’s Armored Corps Museum where an Israeli tank from the battle of Sultan Yacoub is currently on display. The tank, from which three Israeli soldiers went missing in action in June 1982, during the First Lebanon War, is scheduled to be returned to Israel after Netanyahu’s personal request for its repatriation was granted by Putin last week. The fate of the soldiers has never been learned.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shakes hands with the head of the Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, as they arrive at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on May 6, 2015. (Photo: GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)