Despite holding just 7 Knesset seats, Yisrael Beytenu leader claims he’s the ‘only person’ able to run against premier; calls Netanyahu press conference an ‘election speech’
Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday claimed that based on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s press conference the previous evening, Israel was heading to its fourth election in less than two years — and declared himself the only alternative to Netanyahu’s leadership.
“I think whoever looks at what has happened thus far knows: The only person capable of competing with Netanyahu is Avigdor Liberman,” the right-wing secularist politician told the Ynet news site in an interview.
“I want to create a leadership alternative,” Liberman added, claiming that Netanyahu was clearly planning to use the High Court battle over his coalition deal with Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz to cancel the agreement and call a Knesset vote for the summer.
Liberman, whose party won just seven seats in the 120-member Knesset, indicated he wouldn’t join forces with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid-Telem or any other party, arguing that recent mergers “usually did not prove themselves.”
Commenting on the lengthy press conference the premier held Monday night on the coronavirus, Liberman branded it an “election speech.”
“The prime minister is preparing the ground for elections. He probably came to the conclusion that that is best for him against the backdrop of the confrontation with the High Court,” he said.
Standing in front of a graph showing the decline in new cases of COVID-19 in recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces the easing or many lockdown restrictions, at a press conference in Jerusalem on May 4, 2020 (GPO)
Liberman said he believed Netanyahu’s Likud, its allies and Blue and White would hand President Reuven Rivlin at least 61 signatures from lawmakers to avoid elections being called immediately, with Blue and White controlling the Knesset’s key Arrangements Committee.
But he said that during the following two weeks until the government must be formally announced, Netanyahu would “find a pretext” to annul the deal and trigger elections, hoping for a better result that would allow him to pass laws shielding himself from prosecution in three corruption cases.
Recent polls have suggested that Netanyahu’s Likud party would benefit from another election, though such a move is also seen as risky amid the current pandemic, since no one knows what condition the country will be in in three months’ time.
“He is thinking only about himself… trying to evade both a trial and a state commission of inquiry on the subject of the coronavirus,” he said, referring to Netanyahu’s corruption trial, which is scheduled to open on May 24.
Likud minister Tzahi Hanegbi dismissed the claim in a Ynet interview, quipping that based on Liberman’s past predictions — which include an unfulfilled vow to kill Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh within 48 hours of becoming defense minister — “whatever he says will happen — the opposite happens.”
Liberman also claimed that despite Israel’s relative achievements in containing the pandemic, it had failed to give adequate aid to most of those who are self-employed and the education system was in disarray. He also accused Netanyahu of turning the battle against the coronavirus “into a one-man theater show.”
He added that in the event the Netanyahu-Gantz deal indeed falls apart, he would no longer cooperate politically with the Blue and White chairman to pass a law barring the indicted Netanyahu from forming a government, a plan thwarted when Gantz opted for a unity government with the Likud leader.
In that event, Liberman said, Gantz could “go cry at the Western Wall,” adding that Gantz had fallen into every pitfall Netanyahu had put in his path.
Liberman is a former Netanyahu ally but fell out with him last year, refusing to join his right-wing government after elections in April and helping trigger two more votes that have plunged the country into its worst-ever political crisis.
Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, entered politics early last year and formed an alliance with Lapid and former Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon. Their Blue and White party fought three elections on a promise never to sit in government with Netanyahu so long as he is facing corruption allegations, branding him divisive, corrupt and dangerous to Israel.
Having narrowly failed to defeat Netanyahu and his right-wing and ultra-Orthodox allies, however, Gantz in late March announced that he was prepared to join a government with the Likud leader after all — to battle the coronavirus pandemic and help protect Israeli democracy. He sought to do so alongside Lapid and Ya’alon, but they bitterly opposed the move, and their alliance with Gantz collapsed, with Lapid now set to lead the Knesset opposition.
Gantz on April 20 signed a coalition deal with Netanyahu to form a government, with the incumbent premier serving for 18 months and then handing Gantz the reins. The Knesset is currently discussing a number of law changes aimed at guaranteeing that the rotation would happen and also that Netanyahu, under criminal indictment, would not be legally disqualified from leadership.
Both matters are at the center of this week’s deliberations at the High Court of Justice, which has signaled it will okay Netanyahu forming a government but not accept several of the clauses in the coalition deal unless they are altered.
(Times of Israel)