There was something rather anticlimactic about Joe Biden’s arrival in Israel on Wednesday afternoon. The ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport conformed to all rules of protocol, with the president descending from Air Force One at half past three exactly. But there was something strained about the proceedings. Three Israelis greeted Mr Biden: President Isaac Herzog, the formal host; Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the real host who needed every second in the presidential frame; and alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, standing awkwardly to the side, in his uncertain role.
Standing in the middle, the sun reflecting off his shiny forehead, was a slightly weary looking 79-year-old, trying hard not to grimace from the glare.
From the beginning, the speeches were short and the programme for the visit condensed. The planned visit to Palmachim Air Force Base was cancelled and the air-defence systems that the President was supposed to review there, including Iron Dome, were quickly shipped to the airport as scenery for a terse security briefing in an air-conditioned tent on the tarmac.
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Israel's President Isaac Herzog (L) and caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid (C) listen to US President Joe Biden (R) as he addresses his hosts upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport (Photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
Biden’s warm words – in his speech, in his words of greeting, in his jokes – all seemed sincere. This was his 10th visit to Israel in the space of 49 years, and his love for the country is real and clear. But he’s suffering. From the plummeting ratings in the polls back home. From the news of the highest monthly inflation rate in the United States, which arrived just before he landed. From the knowledge that 48 hours later, he would be back at Ben Gurion, boarding Air Force One, this time for a flight to Jeddah where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man he promised two years earlier to make a “pariah” for the kingdom’s human rights abuses, would be waiting.
There was something else that seemed to be causing him discomfort. In his short speech, Mr Biden, as expected, mentioned his enduring support for the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But perhaps the key words were, “even though I know it’s not in the near term”. It was almost as if he was saying, “but not in my term”.
Every American president to arrive in Israel since Jimmy Carter has promised to solve the conflict, all the way to Donald Trump with his “deal of the century”. The oldest president to come to Israel, and the one with the most experience of its affairs, is the first to admit that he won’t be the one to bring peace.
What to do, Naftali?
In the final failing weeks of the government, Naftali Bennett told members of his Yamina party who threatened to defect from the coalition to give him at least one more short period of grace so that he would still be prime minister for President Biden’s arrival. Yair Lapid, he reminded them, was not a right-winger and who knows what diplomatic concessions he may make to the President.
The argument failed to win through and Mr Bennett decided, together with Mr Lapid, to announce the coalition’s demise. The handover between the two political allies was graceful and friendly but the sudden downfall from being prime minister to the rather empty role of alternate prime minister was rapid and disconcerting. Mr Bennett could have taken another ministerial role in the interim but decided that with four months to the election, there was little point.
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Happier times: Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett sharing a smile at a Cabinet meeting before the government collapsed last month (Photo by ABIR SULTAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Mr Lapid, over his year as alternate-prime minister, had his grand office as foreign minister to use. Mr Bennett now has only the subterranean and rather bare Knesset office Mr Lapid vacated. There isn’t even room for the bodyguards he still goes around with as a former prime minister. And there isn’t much to occupy his time, as he has announced he won’t be running in the election. Yamina has been handed over to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, who is struggling to keep the remnants of the party together.
While frustrated at the lack of a clear role – he didn’t even make it this week to the cabinet meeting chaired by his replacement – Mr Bennett insists in private conversations that he did the right thing. He is as convinced as he was a year ago, when he decided to join the new coalition and replace Benjamin Netanyahu, that his old boss should no longer be Israel’s leader. Mr Netanyahu, he believes, can no longer tell the difference between Israel’s national interest and his own quest for political survival.
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Caretaker prime minister Yair Lapid leads a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, that his predecessor, Naftali Bennett, did not attend (Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)
One of the big mistakes he made in his year as prime minister, he says, was to assume that Mr Netanyahu and his proxies would accept their defeat, allowing the campaign against him and his government to subside. Instead, what he calls the “poison machine” was revved-up, both in angry protests on the streets and on social media.
He hasn’t yet made up his mind what he plans to do next, once the election is held and he is no longer even alternate prime minister. One option is to utilise his political and business experience, the contacts he made as leader and those he still has from his days as a high-tech entrepreneur, to launch a project that will fight “fake news” online.
What future now?
Yamina is not the only party to replace its leader in the run-up to the election. On Tuesday, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announced his resignation as leader of left-wing Meretz, though he intends to run for a spot on its Knesset list. A day earlier, Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that their parties, Blue and White and New Hope respectively, would be merging their lists and running together with Mr Sa’ar as number two.
All three — Yamina, Meretz and New Hope — are concerned that they may not pass the electoral threshold of 3.25 per cent, though none of the leaders admit this in public. New Hope has in effect been saved from that outcome by the merger with Blue and White. For Meretz, the obvious course would be to merge with Labour, and many of the party’s members are in favour. There remains the small matter of first electing a new leader, then the greater obstacle of Labour Leader Merav Michaeli, who is in principle against mergers. She still believes that the party which founded Israel and ruled it for half of its existence can regain its old position as the holder of power. The polls showing Labour barely hovering over the threshold have yet to convince her otherwise.
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Labor party leader Merav Michaeli attending a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on June 27, 2022 (Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Ms Michaeli and her old friend Yair Lapid are not as close as they used to be. She understandably resents the way Mr Lapid’s Yesh Atid has usurped Labour’s traditional constituency, Israel’s middle-ground. But politics aren’t fair and Mr Lapid intends in this election to hoover up any voters still wavering between the centre and the left. Ms Michaeli has until 15 August – the deadline for filing lists of candidates with the Central Election Commission – to make a decision that could decide the fate of the Israeli left. A rampant Yesh Atid could force both Labour and Meretz under the threshold.
The situation on the right is even murkier. With Mr Bennett’s departure, Yamina is also plummeting in the polls. New leader Ayelet Shaked hopes that with New Hope’s merger with the more centrist Blue and White, there will be potential for a right-wing party that isn’t Mr Netanyahu’s Likud, but the polls are not in her favour so far. In the last Knesset, 13 parties crossed the threshold, the highest number since the 1984 election (when the threshold was only one percent).
In the coming election, there may be far fewer parties.
