What’s happened to Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu? He used to be considered the most brilliant politician Israel ever had, a magician, a guy who couldn’t be beaten.
He’s become the biggest blunderer in Israeli politics. He’s not just a loser, he’s a spectacular loser.
All he’s going to do for the next year is get beaten by Ariel Sharon. It’s understood now that his surprise resignation as finance minister a month ago, followed by his challenge to Sharon for chairmanship of Likud and leadership of the country, was a colossal mistake.
The polls have already turned around. They now say Netanyahu is going to lose his battle with Sharon at the Likud Central Committee on Sept. 26, and the Likud primaries will not be moved up as Netanyahu wants.
I think it’s going to be a wipeout. I bet Sharon wins by about a 2-1 margin.
The wheeler-dealers who dominate the Central Committee don’t care about Gush Katif, the evacuated Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. They care about taking care of number one, about getting as much juice as they can.
Sharon can deliver much more juice — i.e., Likud Knesset seats — than Netanyahu. That’s a proven fact, and it’s truer now than ever. You don’t need polls to figure it out, you don’t have to be too calculating — and if there’s one thing to be said about Likud Central Committee members, they’re calculating.
So maybe they had a spasm of nationalist guilt on the eve of disengagement, when Netanyahu got it into his head to quit the finance ministry and go for it all. They were screaming for Sharon’s blood.
Netanyahu made the mistake of thinking they meant it. He forgot recent history.
Power vs. ideology
The Central Committee could have stopped the disengagement last December, when it voted on whether to let Sharon stabilize his government by bringing the Labor Party into it. If the committee had denied Sharon, he would have had to call new elections.
Disengagement would have gone into suspended animation.
But even though it meant the end of Gush Katif and partnership with Labor and Shimon Peres, whom they love like cholera, the Likud Central Committee voted 62 percent to 38 percent to keep Sharon in the prime minister’s seat.
That’s how much these people care about power, and how much about ideology.
Netanyahu’s campaign is a regular oldies show. He’s calling Sharon a leftist, accusing him of dividing Jerusalem.
He’s no doubt bringing a twinkle to the eye of many Likudniks, but this is business.
These people are thinking about their futures, and that clearly looks brighter with Sharon.
Netanyahu is going to lose on Sept. 26; and then he’s going to lose the Likud primaries, whenever they’re held, to Sharon; and Sharon will get re-elected prime minister by a landslide in November of next year. Until then, former prime minister Netanyahu will be a Knesset member on the outs.
His decision to quit the cabinet and take on Sharon was the second worst tactical error by an Israeli politician in this millennium, at least. What was the worst?
That would be Netanyahu’s decision at the end of 2000 to forego the race for Likud chairman and thereby hand the job to Sharon, who until then was the harmless elder statesman, the mere “caretaker” of the party.
At the time, it was a foregone conclusion that Netanyahu would have won that primary in a walk and gone on to steamroll the incumbent premier, Ehud Barak, in the February 2001 election.
But Netanyahu figured the Knesset was so deadlocked that he, like other recent prime ministers, would be stymied in power. So he decided to pass on the race and wait until the Right won a solid Knesset majority, and then he would be able to become prime minister for a good, long time.
And so Sharon won the Likud primary, clobbered Barak and took over the country — only he didn’t become stymied in power. With the intifada battering Israel, the public clung to him like a rock.
He had no opposition. When Labor got up the guts to try to bring him down, Sharon won so many seats for Likud that it became Israel’s most dominant political party since the days of Mapai. After that, Sharon made history with the Gaza disengagement.
None of this would have been possible without Netanyahu’s decision in 2000 to pass up a sure ticket back to the prime minister’s office.
What’s happened to the wonder boy who came from 30 points behind in the polls after the Rabin assassination to win the 1996 election?
Some think his personality flaws, mainly arrogance, have gotten the better of him. Others think he’s been taking the ideologically-skewed counsel of his aide Yehiel Leiter, a former spokesman of the Yesha Council which represents the West Bank settlers.
I don’t think Bibi is to blame for either of his missteps. He simply met his match.
Netanyahu had the misfortune to be going up against Sharon, who has turned out to be tougher, shrewder and more popular than any Israeli leader since the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Folks, we live in the Sharon Era.
Netanyahu’s luck is that Sharon is 77. The chances are he’s not going to remain prime minister much longer.
One day he will leave behind a line-up of middling contenders, at best, in Likud. That means the way will be clear for Netanyahu to make another comeback.
He may become prime minister again — just not for now. So long as Sharon is healthy, not only Netanyahu but any Israeli politician who challenges him will come out the loser.
Funny, that’s what they used to say about Bibi.
Larry Derfner writes about Israeli society for U.S. Jewish newspapers and the Jerusalem Post.
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