Benjamin Netanyahu: The Empty Center

On a rainy night last week, a ragtag group of right-wing demonstrators gathered outside Jerusalem’s Laromme Hotel, which stands like a huge white fortress at the intersection of two major roads--to Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem and Hebron--into the Holy City. The demonstrators were there to greet U.S. Special Envoy Dennis B. Ross, who had come to put pressure on the Netanyahu government to move forward with Israel’s redeployment from the West Bank. “Ross Go Home” read one of their signs. “Dennis Ross, You are a Disgrace to Your People.” There were almost as many police monitoring the protesters as there were protesters themselves.

Yet, such small forces have a power beyond their numbers in Israel, where coalition politics has long created strange ideological bedfellows. The resignation last Sunday of Foreign Minister David Levy, a man adept at threatening to resign, but historically disinclined actually to quit, has underscored this. Taking with him his five-man faction, Levy, in one fell swoop, pushed the Netanyahu coalition to the brink of dissolution.

The uproar over Levy’s departure has provided a window into the wild workings of the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu’s stewardship. Outside Israel, people have watched with increasing wonder as Netanyahu has flailed and floundered during the first 19 months of his term. Netanyahu in power has always been a two-stepper: He takes back with one hand what he has given with the other. He promises one thing to the Americans and its opposite to members of his coalition. Sometimes, it has seemed this is simply his way of dealing with the explosive situation in the Middle East. But, at other times, his political behavior has seemed erratic, if not utterly mad.

One example: Early in 1997, Netanyahu returned Hebron to Palestinian rule, finally addressing one of the peace process’ thorniest issues. But he immediately proceeded to undermine that concession by breaking ground for a new Israeli settlement on Har Homa near Bethlehem, in violation of the understandings embodied in the Oslo agreement. It made people’s heads spin. Which was he--a slow supporter of peace or a crafty destroyer of Oslo? Netanyahu seemed duplicitous. He wanted to have his peace and destroy it, too.

But now it turns out, as Israeli politicians must have known all along, that the prime minister was just responding to the nervous, fractious, warring coalition that has allowed him to govern thus far--an unhappy patchwork that represents Israel’s most hawkish political views, as well as some more moderate pro-peace forces. Netanyahu does not act on his own political or moral impulses, he is merely forced to act by one or another part of his coalition. He is the empty center of a whirling political vortex.

Thus, in the wake of Levy’s departure, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, a relatively moderate member of the government, is now pushing the prime minister to continue redeploying Israel forces out of the Occupied Territories, which would satisfy the Americans, and has threatened to resign if this is not accomplished within a certain number of days.

Netanyahu is a hostage to his own coalition. He can’t remain in power without them, yet he cannot govern effectively with them. Now that the coalition comprises only 61 members of a 120-person Knesset, each faction has grown even more powerful; each faction’s approval is, for the prime minister, make or break.

For Netanyahu-watchers, the crisis is reaching almost comic proportions. Monday, the prime minister convoked his weekly kitchen Cabinet meeting, only to discover that, minus Levy, who had resigned, and Mordechai, who failed to show, he was forced to meet alone with Ariel Sharon, an outspoken hawk and likely future rival for the office Netanyahu now holds. God help the man whose kitchen Cabinet is Sharon. Especially with Ross in town and Americans nervous about President Bill Clinton’s imminent meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, a broader spectrum of counsel on the peace process would seem crucial.

At any moment, indeed, the entire coalition threatens to come apart. Since Levy left, every faction of the coalition has threatened to follow him, except for Natan Sharansky, who heads the heavily Russian Yisrael B’Aliya Party. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, there is no way to keep them all happy anymore: Mordechai, another possible future rival of Netanyahu’s and more popular in the polls, threatens to leave if Netanyahu does not give Ross what Ross wants, and Force 17 (a group of hard-line lawmakers humorously nicknamed after Arafat’s eponymous security organization) threatens to resign if he does.

Netanyahu has only one real ace up his sleeve, and that is Labor. The idea of the Labor Party back in power gives a coalition man pause. No one in the current government wants to see Labor in the driver’s seat again, no matter how much they may want to dump Netanyahu and replace him with themselves. All factions have profited far more from this administration, in funding for constituencies and in ability to affect policy, than they would under Labor, or so they think.

In Israel, the belief is that Netanyahu has a plan of escape, though it is a daffy one. Supposedly, politicos say, he intends to win Cabinet approval for a withdrawal plan the Americans can live with, and then tie it to conditions unacceptable to the Palestinians, thereby avoiding its implementation.

It’s a perfectly Natanyahuvian plan, comprising as it does both one thing and its opposite. But with his coalition in tatters, it’s unclear that Netanyahu can elicit enough trust among his Cabinet to get them to approve any withdrawal, much less one that, if implemented in spite of the prime minister, would meet U.S. and Palestinian demands. Many coalition members have said they will not surrender another inch of territory.

But the peace process has always been on a roller-coaster, intimately affected by the ups and downs of internal Israeli politics. And sometimes a little thing can change the course of history. Levy has, for years, been characterized among Israelis as a man of neither great political courage nor outsized intellectual capabilities. One Israeli joke has him arriving in Washington and taking a cab to the White House from the airport.

“Oh, you’re Israeli?” the cabby says to him. “Hey, let me tell you the latest David Levy joke.”

“I am David Levy,” Levy replies.

“Oh, OK,” says the cabby. “I’ll tell it really slow.” Yet, by resigning, this little man has exposed Netanyahu, threatened to bring down the Israeli government and, once again, pushed the peace process to the top of the world’s agenda.