In terms of electoral arithmetic Netanyahu’s victory in 1996 was based on the failings of the Labour Party. The old adage ‘governments lose elections, and opposition don’t win them’ was never truer. As threatened, thousands of Israeli Arabs failed to show up to vote for Peres; some stayed away from the polls, but others deliberately spoiled their ballot papers in protest over Operation Grapes of Wrath.
By the time Labour Party officials understood the scale of the electoral rebellion on the day of the election, it was too late. Despite frantic helicopter trips to try to convince the leaders of Israel’s Arab communities, Peres and Labour failed to get out the vote. For leader and party this represented total disaster.
Netanyahu’s careful wooing of Israel’s religious leaders proved successful. With the help of Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu devoted considerable energies to convincing them to support him. A number of political cheques were written to these groups, especially the ultra-orthodox Shas movement, pledging more funds for religious schools – and promises of cabinet portfolios.
At the start of the campaign, Peres and Labour had largely ignored the requests of the religious community. The belief was that Peres was a long way ahead in the polls and didn’t need them. Late efforts by Peres to repair this political snub fell on deaf ears. Peres’s campaign strategy had been on his winning the election from the left and centre-ground secular voters in Israel (including the Israeli Arabs).
The basic reason for his defeat was that he failed to win enough of the centre-ground voters who had backed Rabin in 1992 – many of the new immigrant voters who had supported Rabin in 1992 backed Netanyahu in 1996. Although Peres’s margin of defeat appeared small, he lost out in most of the key constituencies that win Israeli elections.
As a result, Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister, without having given major commitments on the peace process. It was a completely different case in internal politics and in putting together his first cabinet, which because of the need to include a large number of small parties in his coalition, would not have as many Likud ministers as the party had hoped.
Netanyahu had a long list of potentially tricky situations to resolve that resulted from the political cheques – also known as promises – he had issued to key senior members of the Likud. At the head of the queue were Dan Meridor and Ariel Sharon, both of whom had proved to be extremely useful to Netanyahu during the campaign. Within the Likud, Meridor and Sharon had large followings and therefore needed to be handled with care.
The left and centre-ground voters saw Meridor as the most credible Likud leader, and so during the campaign he was ushered in to speak to this audience. His most telling intervention in the campaign was his comment arguing that Peres and Labour were becoming more left-wing. ‘If you want to know what Labour will really do in the future, we only have to listen to what Meretz is saying today – this is what happened in 1992,’ he said.1
His comments stuck in the mind of centre-ground voters who were reluctant to openly back Netanyahu, but who were afraid that Peres and the Labour Party would offer too many concessions to Arafat. Meridor acted as Netanyahu’s centrist wingman, putting out fires for Netanyahu and emphasizing that the peace process would move forward under a Netanyahu government, albeit at a slower pace. What is more, centrist Israeli voters believed this to be the case when they heard it from Meridor’s mouth.
In 1996, the relationship between Netanyahu and Meridor was complicated. Despite his electoral victory, Netanyahu still sensed that there were those in the Likud who might be tempted to dump him in favour of Meridor, if things did not go well for the government. He also believed, correctly, that the Americans preferred Meridor to him as Prime Minister. In truth, by this stage, there was little chance that Meridor would mount any credible challenge against Netanyahu. Still the idea stuck in the back of Netanyahu’s mind.
In the end, Netanyahu gave Meridor the Ministry of Finance. Meridor was not Netanyahu’s first choice for the post: he himself harboured hopes of offering it to Yaakov Frenkel, the Governor of the Bank of Israel. Towards the end of the campaign, Netanyahu had outlined an ambitious programme of economic reforms for the Israeli economy and wanted a technocrat such as Frenkel to implement the plan.
Netanyahu’s concerns about Meridor were mirrored in his staggeringly poor treatment of Ariel Sharon. During the campaign, Sharon worked energetically to help Netanyahu to secure the religious constituency. He met religious leaders, assured them of Netanyahu’s credibility to represent their interests and helped to put a gloss on elements of Netanyahu’s private life. In return, Sharon wasn’t even offered a cabinet post. Only after the intervention of David Levy was he offered the lowly Ministry of Energy and Water Resources.
In truth, Netanyahu never stopped running for elections. Once an election was out of the way, his attention and strategic antennae turned to the next one. His treatment of Meridor, to whom he would have liked to offer only a junior portfolio, and of Sharon, was based on his political planning for Likud leadership elections, scheduled for the year 2000. Similar treatment was dished out to Moshe Katsav and Benni Begin, both of whom Netanyahu viewed as potential challengers for the leadership in 2000.
On a deeper level, Netanyahu was attempting to illustrate that, having been elected in direct elections for Prime Minister, his mandate was stronger than those of previous leaders who had not been elected in this way. The introduction of the direct election was meant to strengthen the executive, and Netanyahu was attempting to test the boundaries of this new strength.
In his head, Netanyahu envisaged transforming Israeli politics along the lines of the American model. He wanted to create a powerful Prime Minister’s office that would include its own national security advisor and powerful teams of advisors – answerable to him. What Netanyahu wanted was, in effect, to create a presidential style of government in Israel with enhanced powers for the executive and less power for the cabinet. As he was soon to discover, this would prove to be impossible. Instead of increasing the power of the Prime Minister, the new electoral system had made it harder for him to form a coalition and to govern the country.
Netanyahu’s first job as the winner of the direct election for Prime Minister was to put together a majority of at least 61 members of the Knesset. He approached this task in the spirit of having just been elected ‘Emperor of Israel’. In trying to bring some order to what is usually a highly fraught process of forming a governing coalition, Netanyahu and his team imposed a deadline on the negotiations of 17 June.
The process in 1996 had been complicated by the election results for the Knesset that saw the Likud list win only 32 seats, the religious parties doing well, along with a number of smaller parties establishing themselves. On top of this – under new rules – Netanyahu was only allowed to appoint 18 ministers to the cabinet. He understood from the very start that, given the relative number of parties that were required to form a coalition, he would have to give up a lot of these cabinet posts to non-Likudniks.
At the outset of his premiership, Netanyahu had to say no to a large number of Likudniks who had previously believed they had been in line for a senior position in the government. This did not bode well for him in the future. Netanyahu tried to smooth it over as best he could with key supporters of his who failed to get a job. This did not always work to quell the sense of rebellion in the party.
Some of the Likudniks who were overlooked for a cabinet post were promised chairs of the major committees in the Knesset, others key ambassadorships, but many were simply left out in the political wilderness. Resentment, envy and a sense of betrayal characterized the feelings of the disgruntled Likudniks, many of whom vowed to plot against their leader at the earliest opportunity.
Netanyahu revealed his political inexperience at almost every juncture of the process in forming his government. His seeming over-generosity to the religious parties in offering a large number of cabinet portfolios to them at the expense of his Likud colleagues was a bridge too far for many in his own party. The National Religious Party (NRP) was singled out for particular generosity as Netanyahu felt the need to reward the Likud’s true coalition partners. The NRP had openly called upon its supporters to vote for Netanyahu.
Netanyahu defended his coalition policies to his Likud colleagues, arguing that he had ensured that members of it would occupy the top three ministries in the government: defence, foreign affairs and finance. The Ministry of Defence went to Yitzhak Mordechai, whom Netanyahu had selected for the job after Mordechai retired from the senior ranks of the IDF. Shimon Peres had tried to persuade Mordechai to join the Labour Party, but was unwilling to offer him the promise of a top job in a Labour government.
As a result, Mordechai opened negotiations with Netanyahu who offered him more favourable terms, which Mordechai quickly accepted. In the Likud primaries prior to the start of the official election campaign, Mordechai finished top of the list (as leader, Netanyahu did not have to run). This high poll finish helped confirm that Mordechai would be Minister of Defence in the Netanyahu government. During the election campaign, the presence of Mordechai on the Likud ticket helped deflect attacks from the Labour Party about Netanyahu’s lack of experience on security issues.
Netanyahu was generally content with his appointment of Mordechai, but he had considerable qualms about making David Levy the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In reality, in 1996 Netanyahu had few alternatives other than to appoint his old political nemesis. Prior to the election, Levy and Netanyahu had publicly buried the hatchet. Levy’s Gesher movement joined the Likud list along with another party to the political right of the Likud, Tsomet.
The agreement, between Likud–Gesher–Tsomet and signed on 12 March 1996, was self-serving for Netanyahu. It had removed the two alternative right-wing candidates from the race for Prime Minister (David Levy and the leader of Tsomet, Rafael Eitan). It also meant that it added to the number of seats the joint list could win in the Knesset elections. The 32 seats it eventually won was considered by all to have been a major disappointment.
The agreement did help give the impression of a unified Likud camp, in contrast to the 1992 election – in which the divisions on the right helped give Rabin and the Labour Party its narrow victory, at coalition level. Many in the Likud, however, had flagged concerns as to what Netanyahu was willing to give to Gesher and Tsomet in order to reach the electoral deal.
The agreement led to 14 safe slots in the Likud lists being handed over to Gesher and Tsomet. Several national Likud leaders recorded their unease at the move. Netanyahu brushed off the criticism. His supporters reminded the Likud that if Netanyahu were not elected Prime Minister there would be nobody from the Likud in the government.
Gesher and Tsomet were much happier. They both received good slots for their candidates on the Likud list and the price of the withdrawal, of Levy and Eitan from the race to be Prime Minister, was not high. Neither candidate looked likely to make it past the first round of voting.
The agreement revealed the lengths to which Netanyahu was willing to go to secure his success, even if this meant damaging the prospects of members of the Likud. Indeed, despite his lofty rhetoric on the values and history of the Likud, Netanyahu viewed the party as little more than a vehicle to the premiership.
The pre-election deals with Levy and Eitan, and the post-election process of forming the governing coalition, exposed his intention to circumvent the interest of the parties for his own agenda. At the time this was something quite new in Israel and many people, Likudniks among them, hoped he would fail in this project.
Whatever the motives of Netanyahu in his electoral coalitions, he found himself in what was essentially a marriage of convenience with Levy as Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was a flashback to the end to the Madrid Peace Conference, in that Netanyahu feared Levy would be too soft on the Palestinians. In planning for future talks with Arafat and the PLO, Netanyahu told his advisors he wanted to make sure that all substantive decisions and policymaking in this area emanated from the Prime Minister’s office.
With almost all of the governing coalition jigsaw pieces in place, Netanyahu was faced with having to smooth over things with Levy as he once again threatened to resign if the deal to bring Sharon into the government was not fully implemented. There had been a slight delay, but Levy’s actions were a crisp reminder of the problems that lay ahead for Netanyahu.
While Netanyahu was conducting his complex coalition talks, a joke circulating in the Labour Party had it that Netanyahu had asked Peres to continue to run Israel until he had figured out what to do with the country. It was based on an old joke from 1977, when the Labour Party had made a similar quip about Menachem Begin. There were, however, increasing concerns as to when all the electoral politics would finish and the world would see what Netanyahu was like as a leader, rather than merely a person who knew how to get himself elected.
For Netanyahu, the period following his election victory could be summed up by the phrase ‘lurching from crisis to crisis’. Surely his government would fare better. Or would it?