Netanyahu and Likud's Leaders by Gil Samsonov

Author:Gil Samsonov [Samsonov, Gil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429640469
Google: Db3RDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-02-20T03:50:18+00:00

Netanyahu enlists reinforcements – and comes back from the brink

With the intensification of the bloodbath, Netanyahu changed his election strategy. Although his opposition to Oslo had turned out to be correct, and although he had issued withering criticism of the “peace government”, he avoided visiting the sites where terror attacks had taken place, did not encourage demonstrations, and did not attack the government. He knew that any word of criticism on his part would be interpreted as “exploiting blood”.

In view of the national shock and trauma, Netanyahu decided to adhere to a statesmanlike position. He appeared on television but took care to convey a message of encouragement and fortitude, and to offer hope for a safer future. He called press conferences but used them to call for national unity and cooperation against Israel’s enemies. He appeared day after day in the world media but expressed only the Israeli consensus against terror. The public noted and appreciated the messages of solidarity issuing from the head of the opposition. This was a confidence-building measure on the part of a responsible politician who was not seeking to rock the boat during a storm. Netanyahu soon regained his image as a legitimate leader – at least in the eyes of half of the nation.

The 1996 elections were to be the first in Israel where the Prime Minister was elected by direct ballot (along with a separate ballot for a Knesset party list). To the entire country it was clear that despite the slight improvement in his situation, Netanyahu was heading for a colossal loss against Peres. This was evident to all with the exception of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. Not only did he believe that he could put up a good fight; he fought for every percentage point on the way to a seemingly impossible aim: to climb somewhere close to parity against Peres, who was clearly going to be the next Prime Minster, voted in by a very wide margin.

Netanyahu sought to run as the representative of the entire Right. In other words, he pressed the message that members of each right-wing or religious party could vote for that party’s Knesset list while at the same time voting for Netanyahu as Prime Minister. To this end he had to persuade the other right-wing candidates for Prime Minister – former Chief-of-Staff Refael (Raful) Eitan, head of the Tzomet right-wing party, and David Levy, who had left the Likud and started his own party, Gesher – against submitting their candidacy and thereby taking precious votes.

The threat posed by Eitan was not so much quantitative (the potential number of votes) as qualitative (critical votes). Netanyahu managed to talk him out of running and rewarded him most generously, relative to his electoral power: he gave him second place on the Likud list and six places reserved for his faction among the first forty places. The Likud thereby lost some Knesset seats, but its leader gained some critical percentage points in the contest against Peres.

David Levy was, of course, a harder nut to crack.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.