TO APRIL 9
Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday morning after what has been one of the most toxic election campaigns in the country’s history.
In a last-minute twist and in what is seen as an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to scoop up voters from other right-wing parties, the Prime Minister dramatically dangled the prospect of his next government — if he forms it — of annexing Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In an interview on Saturday night, Mr Netanyahu was asked if he has plans to annex to Israel parts of the West Bank, including the Gush Etzyon settlement bloc.
He responded that he is and added: “we are talking also about extending sovereignty over Maale Adumim [a large settlement seven kilometers east of Jerusalem] and other things”.
“I will not uproot even one settlement and make sure we rule in the territory west of the Jordan River,” he continued.
After the Six Day War in 1967, the Israeli government annexed east Jerusalem. In 1981, it did the same to the Golan Heights, which were captured from Syria in the same war.
But even though some Likud leaders have spoken in the past of annexing all, or parts of the West Bank, this is the first time since 1977 that a serving prime minister has spoken of taking such a dramatic step.
Mr Netanyahu’s surprise statement caught his partners on the right unprepared.
One minister complained: “Bibi had thirteen years to do this, and suddenly he’s coming up with it three days before the election. It’s pretty transparent, especially as we have yet to even hear any mention of annexation in the cabinet.”
The prime minister seems to be reprising the “gevalt!” strategy that served him well in the last days of the 2015 election, when he in a blitz of interviews, speeches, text messages and Facebook posts and videos, he warned right-wing voters that Likud was about to lose.
He is even using the same language this time: “the rule of the right is in danger.”
In 2015, he managed to manufacture a last minute surge in the Likud vote, mainly at the expense of the Jewish Home party, and opened up a margin of six seats from the then-main opposition party, the Zionist Union.
In this election however, the gevalt strategy may be less effective.
Voters have heard it before and now know that when Mr Netanyahu says he is in danger in losing, that may not be exactly the truth. Even if they do believe him and shift to Likud, they could jeopardise the right-wing coalition.
Mr Netanyahu needs the other right-wing and religious parties to gain a majority in the next Knesset. But some of them, in the polls at least, are hovering perilously close to the electoral threshold of 3.25 per cent.
The prime minister is prepared to endanger them in order to ensure Likud is larger than the opposition Blue & White.
A similar, if less dramatic effort is being made by Blue & White to cannibalise the other parties in the centre-left bloc, especially Labour.
Blue & White’s slogan for the last days of the campaign is “a metre from victory” and its leader, Benny Gantz, said on Wednesday that “[Labour leader Avi] Gabbay has got to understand that the only way not to block the change in government is for us to be the biggest. We need another two seats.”
Both Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gantz are being rather disingenuous as, ultimately, the question of who leads the largest party is largely immaterial.
The only real consideration that will stand before President Reuven Rivlin next week, when he meets the leaders of the parties in the new Knesset and hears their recommendations for the next prime minister, will be which candidate can assemble a majority coalition behind him.
Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu has other things on his mind, besides winning the election and forming a coalition.
He needs to find a way to ensure that his fifth term, if he wins it, will not be cut short by his legal troubles: the indictments for bribery and fraud the attorney general intends to charge him with.
In a recording that made its way to the television channels, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of National Union — one of the parties in the Union of Right Wing Parties list — is heard saying his party already has a deal with Mr Netanyahu in which they have been promised to hold the education and justice ministries in the next election.
Mr Smotrich has already said in the next Knesset, he will propose a law giving the prime minister immunity from prosecution.
While senior Likud figures have denied there is any plan to pass such a law to shield Mr Netanyahu, the prime minister in his interviews himself has not denied it, saying instead that “I am not dealing with this and I believe I will be cleared in the [pre-trial] hearings.”
