Haviv Rettig Gur is the chief analyst for the Times of Israel.
It’s just this: there’s no substantial explanation for why that can explain.
Netanyahu and Gantz signed a coalition agreement in May that stipulates the adoption of a two-year budget for 2020 and 2021. Since then, Netanyahu has demanded a one-year budget, and neither the ministers of Likud nor Netanyahu himself. – has not even been offering political explanations or explanations.
The call has a more prosaic explanation of why: a one-year budget valid only until the end of 2020 allows Netanyahu to decide on a new budget fight in early 2021, and use this moment of combat to force new elections, thus avoiding the exasperating perspective. to allow Gantz to take up his post as prime minister in his rotation in November 2021, or even to serve as Acting Prime Minister Array, a privilege that the coalition agreement grants Gantz if Netanyahu overthrows the government for an explanation other than the budget.
In other words, the agreement negotiated through Gantz and Netanyahu leaves Netanyahu with a single way to prevent Gantz from taking Netanyahu’s seat: betting deeply destructive games with the state budget. would have the brazen of taking.
But Netanyahu took the opening and renegade of his two-year budget commitment, and has only resisted since the formation of the government in May, but even as a component of Monday’s engagement he delayed the election, delaying only the approval of the budget until December. .
It must be said that although Netanyahu is the side that is giving up his commitments, Gantz also refuses to approve a budget, remaining company for the past few months in his call for Netanyahu to respect the coalition agreement and adopt a two-year budget. Go ahead, two arguments: first, as stagnation approaches the end of the year, a 2020 budget for singles makes less and less sense; Second, it is of long-term interest to Israel, even in charge of more time without a coherent state budget, not to allow Netanyahu to hold the budget hostage to a non-public political rider to bear fruit.
Either way, Gantz’s position is also helping to make sure he can be prime minister someday, if only for a short time.
Netanyahu took his annual budget to the brink, bold Gantz, to stand firm even with the almost certain prospect of an electoral dissolution.
Gantz blinked.
This fact could have something to do with Gantz’s notorious serenity, the quiet habit that last year’s election campaigns mocked several times, but which was also part of his unwavering taste for control when he was the army’s general staff leader.
Again, it could have something to do with the fact that Netanyahu left him nothing to lose. Gantz has voted in the last few weeks in 8-11 seats in Knesset. Si Gantz would have given in, even the seats would have stayed with him?? The brutal Netanyahu selection: bowing to the will of the Likud leader, approving a budget by 2020 alone, and surrendering to political oblivion when negotiations on the 2021 budget inevitably fail in March and elections are held in June. for a two-year budget even in the face of the threat of the dissolution of the Knesset on Monday and an election in 3 months, but have a decent chance of retaining enough seats to return to the Knesset, and perhaps perhaps even call Netanyahu’s election election. bragging and getting more powerful about it.
Yes, it’s confusing. The result: Netanyahu is so busy depriving Gantz of opportunities that he left the challenge for the end as Gantz’s most productive action plan.
Gantz now has a long series of victories in his war to force Netanyahu to fulfill his commitments, but in the latter case, it was Netanyahu who gave Gantz the victory.
During the process, Netanyahu also discovered how much he had stumbled and how even his own electorate felt betrayed.
Netanyahu was forced to withdraw from the cliff on Monday because he fit in difficult, even among his supporters, to forget the fact that he had embarked on a political maneuver without worrying about how damaging it would be to the welfare of Israelis.
The lack of a budget has imposed painful new realities in Israeli households; working-class families lost the after-school childcare systems they needed to keep their jobs; schools have abolished summer camps and some of the country’s largest programs for people at risk. The youth have sent their staff to protest the Knesset outdoors as they closed their doors. Even the military has faced billions of dollars in budget shortages and plans to lay off officers.
Such contempt for the welfare of the public has political costs.
A poll conducted Monday through Channel Thirteen asked the Israelis who they would find guilty of if the day ended with early elections. In total, 59% said Netanyahu, only 20% said Gantz.
When asked what motivated Netanyahu’s behavior, 50% cited their attempts to escape their legal unrest by taking care of the prime minister’s chair. Only 18% chose the “good of the country” option. (The rest: 14% cited “ideological differences with Kakhol lavan”, 10% did know it and 8% proposed a different response to the proposal. )
These figures must be achieved without profoundly affecting Netanyahu’s electoral base.
The fact that he kept his state budget suspended for months in the service of his political maneuvers helped drive a pivot of right-wing aid for Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party, which went from a six-seat performance in May to as many as 19 seats at the ballot box over the following month. During this period, the effects of Likud surveys rose from 40 seats to 27.
Even those who have stood firm in the Likud in recent weeks have been agitated.
On Sunday morning, a day before the budget deadline, a Likud official issued an opinion on the WhatsApp organization for Likud parliamentarians, and told party lawmakers that they will all run for a vote on the postponement of the budget the next day. “It’s [an amendment”. a] a basic law, so we have to pass it with 61 [votes],” the official said. Members were asked to verify that they had won the message.
In other words, even when Netanyahu took the country to the precipice, he made the votes in a position to retreat from the abyss at the last minute.
That’s when MK Kati Sheetrit gave voice in the band to what he thought.
“Confirmed,” he wrote to the official, then added, “I hope everyone will come forward and save us those unnecessary elections. The base is very angry with us! I know the [political] scenario is very difficult, but our scenario. “on the floor is very bad. (A screenshot of comments filtered through a member of the organization to Channel 12).
On Monday night, Netanyahu relented. He may not simply threaten an election when so many Israelis had criticized him for the vote; In fact, he was criticized for the broader stalemate. After all, it wasn’t just the budget crisis that led the electorate to Bennett. control of a coronavirus rescue program amid the severe economic downturn. Budget stagnation is perceived in many as a symptom of further abandonment.
Since his ancestry, Netanyahu has tried to prove that he is a punished guy, but without, even now, advancing the budget the country urgently wants. the wishes of all those who have irritated, while avoiding a budget that can force him to leave the Presidency of the Prime Minister.
On Tuesday, he issued two classified advertisements designed to respond to the wrath of his constituents.
“I have with Finance Minister Israel Katz and Education Minister Yoav Gallant to spend three hundred million shekels to fund after-school childcare scholarships until the end of next school year. We will continue to help them, parents, with [efforts to] inspire employment and reduce the burden of living, especially now that we are facing the coronavirus crisis. “
No painting preceded 3 p. m. Ad. No budget official had raised the factor in the Knesset. Netanyahu gave the impression that he had been surprised by the seriousness of his surveys, how he had been thoroughly charged, and returned to his to ask where he had made a mistake.
As the Times of Israel has already pointed out, the after-school childcare subsidy is one of the tangible ultimate tactics in which many working-class families have been crushed through budget stagnation, a tension that began long before the pandemic.
Later on Tuesday, he issued another statement: “Now I’m talking to the Finance Minister about creating new systems, adding a negative source of income tax to inspire and compensate for work. And we have other systems along the way,” he said, promised.
Shocking polls and a humiliating defeat at the hands of Gantz might have been needed to penetrate the fog of political warfare, but Netanyahu had nevertheless detected the suffering Israelis and was now determined to ease their economic suffering. he rediscovered the running class.
Deferral of Monday night’s election bills 11 billing shekels for new investments for departments to fill some of the painful maximum voids opened by lack of a budget Some 3. 3 billing shekels are transferred to the military, 1. 7 to a wide variety of nonprofits and charities, especially Haredi and Religious-Zionist organizations , and many millions more for yeshivas without money.
The budget is intended to quell the anger that is opposed to it in these communities and to ensure that Haredi parties can continue with it if an election is looming: the Haredi parties that have become increasingly angry with Netanyahu as yeshivas, very dependent on government subsidies at best. , sinking dangerously into red numbers due to the freezing of the budget.
There are two key issues to highlight about this new generosity: first, Netanyahu shows no sign of a coherent state budget until 2021, but only to mitigate the maximum painful consequences of a lack of budget. That too.
Netanyahu’s nonsense with the budget accuses him more politically, because he burdens Israelis more in genuine terms than all premature political investigations and corruption of his entire long career.
Secondly, it should not be emphasized, but the lack of such a coherent budget is increasingly serious for the country’s monetary well-being in the short term as spending accumulates, it is not known how each new expenditure will be paid. The new spending is a component of a coherent policy to inspire further expansion into a virus-ravaged economy.
However, this can have disastrous consequences, Israel’s bank governor Amir Yaron warned softly in an interview this week with the commercial newspaper Calcalist.
“The further away we are from an orderly budgetary procedure, such as extrabudgetary spending, markets will place more, if not much, emphasis on governance procedures” to determine whether Israel is a smart investment, he warned.
In other words, the markets that the amount of investment in the Israeli economy will observe how decisions are made through politicians, the same politicians who have ensured political and fiscal stagnation for nearly two years.
“Financial markets don’t behave linearly,” Yaron said. “If there is a sense in the markets that our tax conduct is not responsible,” the replacement for the worst is likely to happen “suddenly, when we do. I didn’t expect it. “
Netanyahu seeks to make his way through the graces of the electorate he has wounded.
You can still repair that by restoring the economic clients of the families you ignored for months.
But political loyalty is a fun thing. Voters who are not involved or even entertained by the emotional anxieties it arouses on the left are not so tired of their own well-being. In the end, Israelis can be very forgiving of their politicians if their policies are successful and the public is well served. Netanyahu’s diligence with the budget has charged him more politically, because he has charged more from ordinary Israelis in genuine terms, than all the corruption and premature politics investigations of his long career.
A survey conducted Thursday morning warned that the fundamental truth has not changed, at least not immediately, with its new set of expenses. The vote conducted through Panels Politics for the Maariv online news page gave Likud only 28 seats. More importantly, his right to the devout coalition won only 60 seats, one less than the majority in the Knesset. Needless to say, even this right-wing coalition is no longer guaranteed, with Yamina (17 seats on the ballot) refusing to say in recent weeks that he will do so in the next election.
According to all official and political factions, it would be smart to ask, adopting an orderly budget covering the remaining 4 months until 2020 and, as insisted through the governor of the Bank of Israel, Yaron this week, 2021 is to blame. Netanyahu can do it at this stage.
It also temporarily adjusts to the politically viable solution it has left. He’s tried everything.