February 26 2020 Netanyahu and Gantz Have Reversed Their Roles

Israel and the Middle East News Update

Wednesday, February 26

Headlines:

• Israel Form Agency to Prepare for Violence if Settlements Are Annexed • Ex-Mossad Chief: Threat from Gaza Worse Now Than During 2014 War • UN Calls for Two State Solution to be Respected in Middle East • Netanyahu, Ashkenazi Accuse Each Other of Lying, Getting Personal • Netanyahu Associate Hires Intel Firm to Dig Up Dirt on Gantz • 2020 Candidates Debate Reversing Relocation of U.S. Embassy in Israel • Pence, Pompeo to Speak at AIPAC Policy Conference • Egypt Declares Three Days of Mourning for Mubarak

Commentary:

• Ha’aretz: “These 50,000 Israelis Can Send Netanyahu Packing Next Week” - By Anshel Pfeffer, commentator at Ha’aretz • Yedioth Ahronoth: “Netanyahu and Gantz have Reversed Their Roles” - By Yuval Karny, commentator at Yedioth Ahronoth

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 www.centerpeace.org ● Yoni Komorov, Editor

News Excerpts February 26, 2020 Ha’aretz Israel Form Agency to Prepare for Violence if Settlements Are Annexed The defense establishment has begun preparing for escalating civil and military unrest should the state impose Israeli sovereignty over West Bank settlements in the wake of next week's election. The Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Police, the Shin Bet security service and other defense agencies, together with representatives from government ministries, have begun to establish a joint body to coordinate a unified response in the event of a major outbreak of violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other fronts. The scenarios the body is preparing for include major terror attacks in the West Bank and inside Israel; Palestinians breaking into West Bank settlements. See also, “Netanyahu Revives Settlement Construction Plan That Critics Say Would Split West Bank” (Ha’aretz)

Jerusalem Post Ex-Mossad Chief: Threat from Gaza Worse Now Than During 2014 War The rocket fire which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad can rain down on Israel today is far greater now than it was in 2014, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said on Tuesday. Speaking from an IDC Institute for Policy and Strategy Conference launching a new book by Amos Gilead and Yediot Ahronot diplomatic-political correspondent Shimon Shiffer, Pardo said: “We have failed to come up with an end game for either Gaza or any of the Palestinian chapter.” Since he had explained that the security situation has gotten worse, Pardo said he is disturbed by Israel failing to define its goals and acting as if time was on its side. See also “Threat Gaza poses to Israel growing, ex-spy chief warns” (Israel Hayom)

AFP UN Calls for Two State Solution to be Respected in Middle East The UN Security Council made a rare show of unity Monday when it called on all parties to maintain their support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. "Council Members reiterated their support for a negotiated two-state solution ... where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders," said a statement released by Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency, and supported by all 14 other members, including the United States. "All parties should refrain from undermining the viability of the two states solution in order to maintain the prospects for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace," the statement added. See also, “UNSC issues unanimous statement of support for two-state solution” (JNS)

Time of Israel Netanyahu, Ashkenazi Accuse Each Other of Lying, Getting Personal PM Netanyahu sparred Tuesday with the rival Blue and White party’s MK Gabi Ashkenazi, as attention increasingly focused on the former army general, who is being touted as a defense minister in a potential future government headed by Benny Gantz. After Gantz on Monday repeated his pledge to make Ashkenazi defense chief if Blue and White wins next week’s Knesset elections, Netanyahu attacked Ashkenazi over transcripts — currently barred from publication by a court gag order — of the latter’s phone calls with Avichai Mandelblit, now the attorney general, related to the decade-old “Harpaz affair.” Netanyahu’s Likud party has launched a large-scale campaign for the transcripts to be cleared for publication. See also “Netanyahu slams former IDF chief of staff: Apologize to the Druze” (JPost)

Ha’aretz Netanyahu Associate Hires Intel Firm to Dig Up Dirt on Gantz The business intelligence firm CGI Group was recently hired by an associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to collect incriminating or embarrassing information about Kahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz, an investigation by The Marker revealed. CGI, owned by Zvi Naveh and former Shin Bet security service head and Yesh Atid MK Jacob Perry, was engaged a few weeks ago to obtain documents relating to Kahol Lavan's connection with the Tzur Communications firm, owned by Gantz’s campaign adviser Ronen Tzur. CGI was also asked to check claims that an unidentified person was being employed by the media firm, which could have served the Likud campaign if found to be true, in addition to searching for a copy of the contract between Kahol Lavan and Tzur Communications. See also “ Netanyahu campaign said to hire intel firm that sparred with Blue and White” (TOI)

PBS 2020 Candidates Debate Reversing Relocation of U.S. Embassy in Israel Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he would study the issue of relocating the American Embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem but wouldn’t commit to commanding the change. The Vermont senator said during Tuesday night’s debate in Charleston, South Carolina, that he is “very proud of being Jewish” but also pressed that “you cannot ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people.” In 2018, the Trump administration reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy by siding more blatantly with Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the American Embassy there. President Donald Trump also closed Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and cut funding to Palestinian aid programs. The, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, said, “You can’t move the embassy back.” Instead, he said, “The answer is to obviously split it up.” See also “Would Sanders, Bloomberg or Warren move the US embassy back to Tel Aviv?” (JPost)

Times of Israel Pence, Pompeo to Speak at AIPAC Policy Conference US Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will address the 2020 AIPAC Policy Conference next week, representing the Trump administration, the powerful pro-Israel lobby announced Monday. Both Pence and Pompeo have spoken at the last three policy conferences since joining the administration of US President Donald Trump. Trump himself addressed the gathering in 2016 as a candidate, but has not returned to the annual venue since. While the addition of Pence would appear to rule out an appearance by Trump, who is running for re-election in November, an official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee did not rule out the president joining the confab.

Times of Israel Egypt Declares Three Days of Mourning for Mubarak Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who ruled for 30 years until he was ousted in a popular uprising against corruption and autocracy, died on Tuesday at the age of 91. Three days of public mourning were declared and state television played clips of Mubarak with a black ribbon at the corner of the screen. He is expected to be buried on Wednesday. He died in intensive care a few weeks after undergoing surgery. Egypt’s presidency and armed forces mourned him as a hero. There was no immediate reaction from Western capitals, which had valued Mubarak for preserving the 1979 peace treaty with Israel signed by his predecessor Anwar al-Sadat. See also “Hosni Mubarak Is Dead, and His Downfall Is His Legacy” (Foreign Policy)

Ha’aretz – February 25, 2020 These 50,000 Israelis Can Send Netanyahu Packing Next Week

By Anshel Pfeffer, commentator at Ha’aretz

• Israelis are returning to vote a week from today. The final result will almost certainly be the same as in last year’s two elections. The parties supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not have a majority in the 23rd Knesset, and the parties opposing him will not be able to create a coalition capable of winning the vote of confidence to approve the proposed government. Virtually every single election poll conducted in the past few months has confirmed this. There is not one poll in which the four parties in Netanyahu’s potential coalition – Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Yamina – have more than 58 seats, leaving them three seats short of the necessary Knesset majority. • Benny Gantz doesn’t need 61 seats to depose Netanyahu and become Israel’s new prime minister within weeks. Since Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party and the right-wing flank of his own Kahol Lavan party won’t sit in the same coalition as the Joint List, or even in a coalition supported by the Joint List from the outside, Gantz’s likeliest path to governing is if Kahol Lavan, the Labor-Gesher-Meretz alliance and Yisrael Beiteinu win more seats than Netanyahu’s bloc and the Joint List abstains on the vote of confidence (which the predominantly Arab alliance probably will do – even though Kahol Lavan politicians have taken to calling this option “the Jewish majority”). • Gantz’s problem is that he also lacks three seats to make this scenario a reality. The polling averages over the past month have the three parties of Gantz’s notional minority government totaling 51 seats, while Netanyahu’s four-party bloc is averaging 56 seats. Last September, the number of votes needed per seat was 35,917; last April, it was 32,860. Assuming next week’s turnout will be similar to the last two elections (69.8 percent in September; 68.5 percent in April), three seats are worth about 100,000 votes – or about 2.3 percent of the total vote. On paper, that means Gantz’s path to victory is shorter than Netanyahu’s right now: The latter needs five extra seats, or about 160,000 votes, to make it to the necessary 61. But even Gantz’s task seems insurmountable. • Talk to the pollsters and they will tell you there is a reason the polls all show political deadlock: At the end of three election campaigns in the space of a year, there are very few floating voters left. Those who do exist are “undecided within the blocs” – deliberating between Kahol Lavan and Labor-Gesher-Meretz; or between Likud and Yamina. If there really are 100,000 voters floating between the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs, the pollsters haven’t detected them. But polling is a science based on limited samples. There is something better than polls: actual elections. • The problem with comparing Israeli election results is that between every election, parties split, merge or even change allegiances. Some parties can win significant chunks of votes, but those votes won’t be counted if they don’t cross the electoral threshold of 3.25 percent. But the comparisons can still be useful. If we split the parties into three groups – those who would choose to be in a coalition with Netanyahu; those who would not be; and those in neither camp (the Arab parties) – we can see an interesting trend over the past three elections.

• After the March 2015 election, there were seven right-wing or religious parties who could serve in a coalition with Netanyahu, and did (though Yisrael Beiteinu joined the coalition for only part of that term). These parties – including the far-right Yachad slate that didn’t pass the threshold – won 56.4 percent of the total vote. The four parties that wouldn’t be part of a Netanyahu coalition (including the pro-marijuana legalization Green Leaf) won only 32.5 percent. The four separate Arab parties, which ran together for the first time as the Joint List, won 10.6 percent. • In April 2019, the parties that had supported the Netanyahu coalition in the past (including two right-wing parties that failed to cross the threshold – Hayamin Hehadash and Zehut) won 55.4 percent of the total vote, one percentage point less than in 2015. This may seem a tiny dip, but two things should be taken into account. First, the reservoir of “Jewish votes” in this election was larger, as the Joint List had split and the Arab parties ran in two separate slates that won a combined total of just 7.8 percent – almost 3 percentage points lower than in 2015. • Second, the demographics of Israel – with higher proportions of religious and right-leaning Israelis becoming eligible to vote – should have benefited the Netanyahu coalition. Parties that wouldn’t sit in a Netanyahu coalition (including Gesher, which failed to pass the electoral threshold) won 35.9 percent of the vote, up almost 3.5 percentage points from four years earlier. • Five months later, in the September 2019 election, the pendulum between the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs swung much further. The Likud coalition parties (including Otzma Yehudit, which didn’t pass the threshold) slumped by a further 9 percentage points, to 46.3 percent of the vote. The anti-Netanyahu parties bloc jumped by more than seven points to 42.1 percent and the Joint List, once again running on a united Arab slate, won 10.6 percent, identical to its 2015 result. In other words, the “Jewish vote” – about 89 percent in both March 2015 and September 2019, and which split 56 to 32 percent in favor of Netanyahu-supporting parties in 2015 – is now far closer at 46 to 42 percent. And once the votes of Otzma Yehudit are taken out of the equation (since it didn’t cross the electoral threshold), the margin is down to 2.3 percentage points and almost tied. • This isn’t just a result of voters turning against Netanyahu. It has as much to do with Lieberman moving Yisrael Beiteinu from the pro-Netanyahu column to the “anti” one, and center- and right- wing parties being absorbed into larger ones (Kulanu and Zehut into Likud; Gesher into Labor). But the result is the same: The Netanyahu bloc is only 2.3 percentage points bigger than the anti-Netanyahu bloc (not including the Joint List). That is only 100,000 voters – half of whom, if they switch sides, can give Gantz the necessary seats to form a minority coalition government. • This election will hinge on whether the swing away from pro-Netanyahu parties continues on March 2, even by just a couple of degrees that the pollsters haven’t detected – and then Gantz could eke out those last necessary votes. Or, as the pollsters currently predict, the momentum has been arrested and we’ll be facing another deadlock next week. The only options then would be a national unity government or a dreaded fourth election. • Where can those 50,000 votes come from? Potentially only from Netanyahu’s own party (they won’t come from the ultra-Orthodox Shas or United Torah Judaism parties, or from far-right Otzma Yehudit. And while there seems to be a slight drift from Naftali Bennett’s religious-Zionist Yamina party, it amounts only to a few thousand votes. Likud won 1,113,617 votes in September, down 26,753 from the 1,140,370 it received in April. But Likud’s loss was actually much greater, as between the two elections it had absorbed both Kulanu and Zehut, who collectively had

received a total of 270,787 votes last spring. Kulanu did even better in 2015 with 315,360 votes – all of which have now evaporated elsewhere. • Five months ago, Likud lost 297,540 potentially pro-Netanyahu votes from the April election – mainly of former Kulanu supporters but also former Likudniks. These likely went mainly to Yisrael Beiteinu (which nearly doubled the number of its votes), the crossover party for right- wingers fed up with Netanyahu, and to Kahol Lavan (whose gains were offset by voters returning to Labor and Meretz, which is why Kahol Lavan only increased its vote by some 25,000), and others who stayed home. The “soft-right” flank of the Likud camp – voters who are frustrated by Netanyahu’s alliance with ultra-Orthodox parties and do not support his campaign against the judiciary and law enforcement agencies – isn’t a myth. Lieberman and Gantz dipped deep into that well of voters last September. And if there are just 50,000 left there, they can still send Netanyahu packing next week.

Summary: This election will hinge on whether the swing away from pro-Netanyahu parties continues on March 2, even by just a couple of degrees that the pollsters haven’t detected – and then Gantz could eke out those last necessary votes. Or, as the pollsters currently predict, the momentum has been arrested and we’ll be facing another deadlock next week. The only options then would be a national unity government or a dreaded fourth election. Where can those 50,000 votes come from? Potentially only from Netanyahu’s own party (they won’t come from the ultra-Orthodox Shas or United Torah Judaism parties, or from far-right Otzma Yehudit. And while there seems to be a slight drift from Naftali Bennett’s religious- Zionist Yamina party, it amounts only to a few thousand votes. Likud won 1,113,617 votes in September, down 26,753 from the 1,140,370 it received in April. But Likud’s loss was actually much greater, as between the two elections it had absorbed both Kulanu and Zehut, who collectively had received a total of 270,787 votes last spring. Kulanu did even better in 2015 with 315,360 votes – all of which have now evaporated elsewhere.

Yedioth Ahronoth – February 26 2020 Netanyahu and Gantz have Reversed Their Roles

By Yuval Karny, commentator at Yedioth Ahronoth

• With five days left until the citizens of Israel head out to the polling stations, it seems that Binyamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz have reversed the traditional roles in this third election: Netanyahu is now the front-runner who is favored to win, whereas Benny Gantz is fighting negative momentum and has launched a “the end is nigh” campaign. Who would have thought? • In the September election, Netanyahu and Gantz each mounted the same campaign that they had mounted in the April election. Netanyahu played the role of the persecuted candidate, who warned that the “right wing’s rule is in danger.” Netanyahu’s narrative in April and September was identical: we’re about to lose, and if you don’t go out to vote the “left will form a government that is dangerous for Israel.” Gantz, despite being a political novice, twice led his party to be the largest party in the Knesset. He broadcast confidence and told the public: “We’re close to victory.” Despite his lack of political experience and after forming a party almost from scratch, Gantz came to be the first candidate in a decade to pose a real threat to Netanyahu’s continued hold on power. • What has happened in the third campaign? Netanyahu recognized that his “the end is nigh” campaign was no longer perceived as credible. He also realized that his ability to “enlist” the Arab Israelis to his campaign—first with the “Arabs are coming out in droves to the polling stations” and then with his ludicrous effort to pass legislation to install cameras at polling stations—wasn’t working on the Likudniks and his other supporters any longer. Some of his advisers also urged him to stop, telling him that those tactics had only served to inspire more Arab citizens to go out to vote. Netanyahu also picked up another message from his voters: they didn’t like his “loser” campaign that begged the voters to help him because he was liable to lose the election. Judging by the outcome, the change in Netanyahu’s tactics in this third campaign has worked fairly well for the time being: the allegations and charges pending against him notwithstanding, he has succeeded in becoming the front-runner in the race, and he appears to be closer to clinching victory than his adversary, Gantz. • And what has happened to Gantz? It isn’t clear. Ironically, when he was a political novice who was just starting out, he fared far better than most were predicting he would, But after two elections Gantz’s glitter began to tarnish and the criticism began to take its toll. Paradoxically, the experience he garnered actually hurt him. Gantz, for instance, opted to mount a campaign that focused on him personally, and not on the other members of his “cockpit,” partially in response to Lapid’s decision to forgo the alternating leadership agreement with Gantz. In real moments of crisis, Gantz didn’t quite know how to fight back and he seemed unwilling to get his hands dirty, as in the case of the Fifth Dimension affair. In the days left until the election, Blue and White officials are going to do exactly what Netanyahu did in the elections in April and September: they’re going to warn that the end is nigh. • And with all of the above having been said, we all should keep our sense of proportion. While the Likud’s new-found lead over Blue and White by a seat has certainly put wind in the sails of the Likud’s—or, more accurately—in Netanyahu’s campaign, the path to victory is still long and arduous. The two blocs are still in a deadlock, and the political impasse hasn’t gone anywhere.