Netanyahu's election riddle

Campaign slogans do not have a reputation for telling the truth.  But when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ran for re-election in March 2013 under the slogan "Strong on security, strong on economy", he was not so far off reality.

In his previous term in office, between 2009 and 2013, the Israeli economy performed much better than most Western economies hit by the 2008 financial crisis. Disparities within Israeli society remained high, but growth was strong and unemployment was low.

On the security front, these were the quietest years Israel had known for decades. Fewer than 35 civilians were killed, almost all of them in the West Bank, and fewer than 10 soldiers were killed in combat. In the Second Intifada, the uprising that went on from 2000 to 2005 and is still  fresh in the memory of every Israeli, more than 1,000 Israelis were killed, 70% of them civilians.

"I do not remember such a long period of quiet," remarked Moshe Yaalon, Netanyahu's present defense minister in March 2013. He was referring, of course, to quiet for Israelis, not for Palestinians, but he was not boasting.

That sense of quiet is now like a distant memory. The Israeli economy has run out of steam, and for the first time in a decade growth will be lower than the average of the OECD grouping of 34 developed countries (2% in Israel against 2.2.%), barely keeping up with population growth.

Netanyahu is not held directly responsible for these gloomy figures, as he gave the keys to the economic policy to his rival/partner, Finance Minister Yair Lapid from the Yesh Atid party, but discontent is growing, and Netanyahu, of course, also feels the heat.

Defense policy has remained firmly in Netanyahu's hands, so when this is failing he has no one else to blame. And it is definitely failing.

Since the kidnapping and murder of three young Israeli settlers in June, Israel has not known a week of quiet. The cynical way in which Netanyahu tried to use the kidnapping for a large military operation in the West Bank, with the clear aim of dismantling the new Palestinian unity government, blew up in his face. Instead of calming down, the situation keeps boiling.

First came the clashes in East Jerusalem after the murder of a Palestinian teen, then the war with Hamas in Gaza, which cost the lives of 72 Israelis and paralyzed the country for two months. Then unrest came to Jerusalem with deadly attacks on Israelis and attempts to change the status quo on Haram a-Sharif/Temple Mount, followed quickly by a mini-revolt by the Palestinian minority inside Israel after police killed a young man in Kfar Kana.

Many Israelis are losing their sense of personal security, and Netanyahu is losing his biggest political asset.

This crisis is hitting a government that has already been limping for months. Political analysts agree that rarely has the country known such a divided government, with each party and sometimes leaders within the same party pushing in different directions: Naftaly Bennet with an annexation policy, opposed to any negotiation and supported by large sections of Netanyahu's Likud; Lapid bent on aiding the "middle class", whatever this term means, and feeding his declared dream to replace Netanyahu; Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman driven by a personal grudge against Netanyahu and looking for new coalitions that would enable him to stay in politics; and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni in constant pursuit of a non-existent peace process.

Even before the bloody events of the past few weeks, it seemed almost impossible that the government will be able to pass the 2015 Budget.

Netanyahu demanded greatly increased defense spending after Operation Protective Edge (the attack on Gaza), Lapid refused. Lapid wanted to cancel value-added tax on new apartments in order to curb rising house prices, Netanyahu refused. The compromise was to do both, thus raising the deficit to a dangerous point.

Yet even this compromise has not been kept and new obstacles appear every week. The Budget is still far from being approved.

The conventional wisdom is that incumbent prime ministers call for early elections only when they are confident of winning. In Netanyahu's case, the picture is not clear, and he still has, potentially, three years to decide. In all polls, he is considered most fit for the job, while all other leaders, including Bennet and Labor party chairman Yitzhak Hertzog, trail far behind.

But in Israeli you vote for parties, and Netanyahu's Likud party gets an average of 20 seats in the polls. Not a very promising result in a parliament of 120 seats. Yet Netanyahu may see things differently.

Using a metaphor from aviation jargon, a former close aide to Netanyahu explained that the prime minister feels his plane is diving and he prefers to jump while he is still high in the sky, before the plane is too low and  about to crash. This explains why he hurried to set a date for early elections within Likud to choose its next chairman - that is, the party head. The election is now set for 8 January. This may also explain why Netanyahu has radicalised his statements against the Palestinians in the past few weeks.

In the annual memorial ceremony last week marking the 1995 murder of prime minister Yithak Rabin, Netanyahu claimed that Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was directly responsible for the recent deadly attacks on Jews in Jerusalem. After the violent demonstrations held by Israeli Arabs following the deadly incident in Kfar Kana, he went even further, promising an iron fist against those "calling for the destruction of the State of Israel" and advising the protesters "to move to Palestine".

It is evident  that these statements are part of  Netanyahu's effort to realign the right wing behind him, after he was subject of harsh criticism for not "finishing off" Hamas during Operation Protective Edge. But it also evident that Netanyahu acts out of frustration. He has no one in Israel to blame for the deterioration in personal security, so he is blaming Abu Mazen and the Palestinians inside Israel.

His partners in the coalition see that Netanyahu is cornered and are acting accordingly by building up more pressure on him. Yet up untill this week, it seemed that they were too afraid to take an extra step and topple the government.

In the opinion polls, Lapid gets less than half of his present 19 seats. Livni is in the same position. She knows that there is no chance for the peace negotiations to restart, the raison d'etre for her joining Netanyahu's government in the first place, but she is aware that she will be crushed if elections will be held in the near future.

The resignation this week of Amir Peretz, a member of Livni's Hatnu'a party, from his post as minister for environmental protection, may pull the Israeli political system out of this stalemate. Without Peretz, a former chairman of the Labor party and a strong supporter of a peace process with the Palestinians, Livni will find it hard to justify her staying in the government, while Netanyahu himself will only intensify his attacks on Abu Mazen.

If Livni leaves the government, Lapid will hate to be the one to save it from falling. Half of his party parliamentarians are left-leaning, waiting for a chance to leave Netanyahu's government.

This sense of unrest is not only in the opposition; even senior Likud members are predicting that Israelis will go to the polls in mid-2015. But nothing is certain yet. The coalition parties today have 68 seats in parliament. In opinion polls, they garner 58 seats, less than the needed majority.

This means that for the ruling parties, an early election would be a jump in the dark. But when the present seems to darken by the day, jumping early might still be better than jumping late.

Meron Rapoport is an Israeli journalist and writer, winner of the Napoli International Prize for Journalism for a inquiry about the stealing of olive trees from their Palestinian owners. He is ex-head of the News Department in Haaertz, and now an independent journalist.