The saga of Netanyahu versus Sharon was never going to end well for the Likud and for the country. The catalyst for their eventual split was the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, which Sharon brought to the cabinet for approval on 7 August 2005. The unilateral withdrawal from Gaza represented an admission that the peace process with the Palestinians was not going to lead to any meaningful negotiations in the immediate future.
The Prime Minister argued that evacuating the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza, in which some 8,500 Jewish settlers lived behind fortified fences, surrounded by 1.3 million Arabs, would improve Israel’s security. Others were more sceptical, arguing that the Palestinians would see an Israeli withdrawal as a sign of weakness. There was also concern about the impact on an already fractured Israeli society.
The effects of the withdrawal on Israeli politics were difficult to predict, with commentators talking of a potential realignment of the parties to reflect the political changes. Much of the analysis from talking heads on television, and from columnists in the newspapers, focused on the Sharon versus Netanyahu rivalry, and what each would do in the period following the withdrawal.
Prior to the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu, who appeared so focused and determined in the arena on economic reforms, dithered over the question of the pull-out from Gaza. In the interview with Haaretz in October 2004, extensively on his programme of economic reforms, he was asked at the conclusion whether or not he would be supporting Sharon’s plans for Israel to withdraw from Gaza. His reply appeared to indicate an affirmative with a proviso:
I will support the disengagement, according to the stages agreed in government. After the first stage, if there is a catastrophe, Sharon will stop it, not me. If there’s no catastrophe, we’ll advance to stage two, and then three, and four. The public wants to leave Gaza. Gaza is gone. The question is whether we go with it – in other words, will the county be set ablaze with internal strife. Therefore, we need a referendum in order to reach a wide consensus.1
The proviso of a referendum was a big call. Israel had never had one and with elections due, at the latest by the end of 2006, it appeared a bit superfluous to ask for a referendum on the withdrawal, which enjoyed widespread support among the Israeli public.
Within the Likud, however, it was a different story completely. In 2004, the party had voted overwhelmingly against the pull-out in a non-binding party referendum.2 In short, while Sharon enjoyed support among the majority of the wider Israeli public, in the Likud he was going against the party line. To some extent this had started to translate into the popularity stakes between Sharon and Netanyahu. Roughly speaking Netanyahu was becoming more popular than Sharon in the Likud, while Sharon was much more popular than Netanyahu nationally.
For much of the summer of 2005 Netanyahu had prevaricated on the issue of whether he would support the withdrawal or not. Prior to the final vote, Netanyahu had voted in favour of the withdrawal in two cabinet votes on the issue, and two votes in the Knesset on the same issue. At the same time, he had risked the wrath of Sharon by backing calls in the Knesset to delay the evacuation and supporting a referendum on the issue.3
During the 18 months between Sharon’s declaration of his intention to withdraw from Gaza and the final vote in the cabinet, Netanyahu had steadfastly refused to resign from the government, despite pleas from groups opposing the withdrawal. With his voting record, and his refusal to resign, the indications were that he would support the withdrawal in the final vote on it in the cabinet. There remained, however, a degree of mystery and intrigue as to whether he would be willing to support the Prime Minister.
Nobody, especially Sharon, fully understood Netanyahu’s carefully planned intentions for the cabinet meeting of 7 August 2005. During the course of the meeting he informed Sharon and the rest of the cabinet who were in the room that he was resigning from the government. He handed over his letter of resignation, which read more like the opening salvo in an as yet unannounced contest for the leadership of the Likud. Netanyahu wrote in his letter:
We have reached the moment of truth today . . . There is a way to achieve peace and security, but a unilateral withdrawal under fire and with nothing in return is certainly not the way.4
He then went outside and spoke to the assembled press, and told them that the withdrawal from Gaza would create ‘a base for terror’. He added, ‘this is happening against all the warnings. I can do nothing about this from the inside, so I’ll leave.’ With his letter and short statement, Netanyahu had at that moment prompted a seismic shift in Israeli politics.
Supporters of Sharon and his disengagement plans were quick to turn on Netanyahu, accusing him of resigning simply in order to challenge Sharon. Even many of Netanyahu’s supporters were surprised by the timing of his departure, given the ample opportunity he had to resign in one of the earlier votes on the withdrawal.
David Makovsky, one of Israel’s most astute political commentators, argued that the polls indicated that the timing of Netanyahu’s challenge was motived by his ambitions to replace Sharon, and in this context his timing was spot on. Three days after his resignation a poll published by Haaretz of members of the Likud found that 47 per cent of party members supported Netanyahu to 33 per cent for Sharon. Nationally, however, Sharon and his withdrawal remained popular.5
A poll published on 12 August by a rival Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, indicated that the Israeli public found Sharon more credible than Netanyahu by 40 per cent to 20 per cent, and that 58 per cent supported the policy of withdrawing from Gaza.6 In short, the polls appeared to confirm that Sharon was more popular among the wider public than in the Likud. This important distinction was not lost on the Prime Minister as he and his team of advisors planned their next moves.
Netanyahu’s critics in the media argued that he had stayed in the government long enough to ensure that the withdrawal was carried out, and by quitting he could claim that he had opposed the plan if it went wrong (as it did from an Israeli perspective). Key members of the cabinet rounded on him focusing their attacks on his flip-flopping (changing his position) on the issue. ‘You cannot dither in the wind every morning anew and say my opinion’s changed and now it’s different,’ said the Minister of Defence, Shaul Mofaz.7
Naturally, Sharon offered his own rebuke to Netanyahu. ‘He is someone who runs from responsibility,’8 Sharon told the media. He saved his biggest salvo until Netanyahu announced on 30 August 2005 that he would be challenging Sharon for the leadership of the Likud.
Upon hearing the news, Sharon launched a carefully articulated personal attack against his challenger that was aimed at Netanyahu’s alleged Achilles heel. Sharon said the challenge had not been unexpected and then went on to add:
Netanyahu is pressured easily, gets into a panic, and loses his senses. To run a country like Israel a leader needs to have reason and judgment and nerves of steel, two traits he does not have.9
Sharon repeated what many critics had said about Netanyahu’s character, especially the part about panicking too easily. It was a politically motivated attack, the type of which Sharon and Netanyahu had tried to avoid during their previous leadership campaign. It was also a sign of things to come as Sharon considered his future in the Likud.
Netanyahu’s defence about the timing of his resignation from the cabinet, and decision to once again seek the leadership of the Likud, was not without merit. Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post put the case for the defence of Netanyahu. In a spirited article she wrote what was essentially a riposte to Sharon’s character attack on Netanyahu:
Netanyahu’s willingness to risk his political career rather than share ministerial responsibility for a policy that will wreak strategic disaster on Israel shows a strength of character and a moral backbone that are rare in politics generally and in Israeli politics specifically.
While his detractors were quick to claim that the decision was belated, the fact of the matter is that by holding out in the government for the past year, Netanyahu demonstrated extraordinary responsibility. By remaining in the government he was able to enact the most important economic reforms Israel has ever undergone.
. . . The economic reforms Netanyahu has enacted as finance minister will empower the people to take control of their financial future in a way that was impossible before he entered office. And this will do much to change the way Israelis think of themselves and the government, to the benefit of both.10
The argument that Netanyahu hung on in the government to implement his package of economic reforms gained credibility when Sharon appointed the ex-Mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, as Netanyahu’s replacement as Minister of Finance.
Ehud Olmert did not pursue with the same rigour additional economic reforms. Instead, it was more of a case of normal service being resumed, with the Sharon-led government returning to the old ways of maintaining the economic status quo.
Netanyahu’s resignation and challenge to Sharon’s leadership of the Likud led, in part, to Sharon taking a leaf out of his rival’s book and announcing his own resignation as leader and a member of the Likud on 21 November 2005. At the same time, he dissolved the Knesset and prepared to form a new party, which was eventually named Kadima (Forward) three days later in 24 November.
Sharon tried to make light of the change, claiming that the idea had only come to him one night recently. This was not the case. His key advisors had been working on the plans since the summer months in the realization that he would find it difficult to continue his policy of disengagement in the West Bank. On this issue the opposition in the Likud would have proved even greater than that over the Gaza withdrawal.
The establishment of Kadima and the desertion of several Likud ministers and MKs to the new party threatened to end the Likud’s position as the dominant party in Israeli politics. The party had been in power either as head of a narrow-based coalition, or as part of a national unity government since 1977 (with the exception of the four years of the Rabin–Peres era from 1992 to 1996 and the 18 months of the government led by Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001).
Netanyahu responded to the new situation as best he could, but many of those who remained in the Likud were in a state of shock about the events that had taken place. Sharon and Kadima confirmed their centrist political orientation by attracting several former Labour Party politicians to their ranks, including the former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
Those who joined Kadima from the ranks of the Likud were a curious mixture of Sharon followers, opportunists and political misfits. Like most political splits there was no clean ideological break. At least one of the leading figures who joined was regarded as coming from the right-wing of the Likud. The apparent rationale for many policies that crossed over was career opportunism and the hope that they would be offered a leading job in Sharon’s post-election cabinet.
Netanyahu’s immediate priorities were to stem the flow of desertions to Kadima and to establish his authority over the Likud in time for the leadership primary in the middle of December. Neither task was particularly easy to achieve. Netanyahu soon discovered the two challenges were interrelated with candidates for the leadership of the Likud withdrawing from the race and joining Kadima, including the Minister of Defence, Shaul Mofaz.
The minister had seen his low poll rating in the Likud leadership contest, as well as the Likud’s lowly standing in the Knesset race, and chosen to cross sides in order to try to keep his job in a Sharon-led government after the Knesset elections. This was pure political opportunism, but it left Netanyahu with the fear that any of the candidates he looked like beating in the Likud leadership race could simply leave the party and seek a senior position in Kadima.
Israeli politics experienced something of a second shockwave when, on 18 December, Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke. This was followed on 4 January 2006 by another yet more serious stroke that this time incapacitated the Prime Minister. Given the centrality of Sharon to Kadima, there were concerns that the party’s support, which polls put as giving them around 40 seats in the Knesset, would decline. Ehud Olmert succeeded Sharon as acting Prime Minister, and was elected by Kadima on 16 January to lead the party in the Knesset elections.
In leaving the Likud, Sharon had removed the potential for Netanyahu to succeed him as Prime Minister. Instead, Netanyahu won the Likud leadership primary, held on 19 December 2005, beating Silvan Shalom. Netanyahu won handsomely, securing 44.4 per cent of the vote to Shalom’s credible 33 per cent with the far-right candidate, Moshe Feiglin, taking just over 12 per cent of the vote. In a damning indictment of the state of the Likud at the time, only 40 per cent of party members bothered to cast their ballots in the primary.
So Netanyahu was back at the helm of the party, five and a half years after he had resigned the leadership. The trouble was that there wasn’t much of a party left to lead. To make matters worse for him, many of the politicians and activists who had remained in the Likud were angry with Netanyahu over his economic reforms, which they argued had caused the most pain in traditional Likud constituencies.
Most worrying for the new leader were the opinion polls, which, despite a brief spike following Netanyahu’s victory in the primary election, consistently indicated that the Likud was likely to win no more than 14 or 15 seats in the Knesset elections. At the same time as trying to improve the poll ratings, Netanyahu moved to deepen his control over the party just as he had done following his victory in the 1993 leadership election.
In terms of positioning strategies for the party, Netanyahu argued that Kadima had seized the centre ground so the Likud would have to occupy its traditional right-wing position. The Likud list of candidates for the Knesset included the majority of senior figures in the party who had opposed Sharon’s disengagement plans. There were problems in the lack of candidates that would be able to connect with voters who had suffered as a result of Netanyahu’s economic reforms.11
At the end of January 2006, Netanyahu’s and the Likud’s prospects in the election appeared to get a boost when Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Elections. For Netanyahu, this was confirmation that the withdrawal from Gaza had been wrong and that there should be no implementation of disengagement in the West Bank.
Both Netanyahu and the Likud expected to receive a boost in the polls from the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, but it never materialized. Polls published after Hamas’ victory indicated little change in the levels of support for the Likud. The polls also suggested that Netanyahu’s personal popularity rating was lower than that of either Olmert, of the Kadima Party – or the leader of the Labour Party, Amir Peretz.
There were a number of reasons for his poor showing, ranging from the social costs of the economic reforms, his flip-flopping voting record on the withdrawal from Gaza and public sympathy for his rival, Ariel Sharon, who remained on a life-support machine in hospital.
Any hope that the telegenic candidate Netanyahu could persuade Olmert to take part in an election debate was soon lost, as Kadima made it clear that this wasn’t going to materialize. Ahead in the polls, Olmert had everything to lose in a debate with Netanyahu, so declined on the basis that he was too busy running the country. In the absence of any debate to get over his message, Netanyahu tried a television spot to offer some sympathy to those lower-income groups that had been badly affected by his economic reforms.
Even in doing this Netanyahu was forced to tread carefully. He accepted that his reforms had caused real hardships, but argued that he had inherited a complete mess of an economy from his predecessor as Minister of Finance. The trouble with this was his predecessor was his number two in the Likud, Silvan Shalom. While it might appear sensible politics to trash an inter-party rival, the man who might challenge your leadership once again, there were fears that Shalom might join the exodus to Kadima.
The elections took place on 28 March 2006, and Netanyahu tried his best to lower the already low expectations for the Likud at the polls. In the end the Likud finished in joint third place with Shas (and secured that place by the narrowest of margins over Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu). The Likud lost 26 seats and ended up with only 12 seats in the Knesset.
As expected, Kadima won the election, but with a lower number of seats than at one time they had looked like they were going to win. With 29 seats to the Labour Party’s 19, Kadima were clearly in a strong place to form the government. Netanyahu’s one-time rival from the Likud would serve as Prime Minister and implement the peace and security policies that Ariel Sharon had supported so strongly.
Clearly, no amount of political spin could paint the results as anything other than a spectacular rejection of Netanyahu and the Likud by the electorate. Netanyahu tried his utmost to make the best possible case, by suggesting that the party would return to its once dominant position in Israeli politics. Few people believed him. Netanyahu’s defiant words sounded empty and hollow. Addressing the party faithful he said:
Likud was dealt a body blow . . . Sharon left Likud absolutely fragmented and smashed to smithereens. Israelis ultimately will realize that our path to achieve security and peace is the right path. We will come back to better days.12
He outlined why he thought the party had done so badly in the polls. As he put it:
I spoke with generations of Likud voters and I heard the anger and the frustration over the economic measures that we were compelled to take in order to save the Israeli economy. I intend to continue along the path we have only just begun in order to ensure this movement is rehabilitated and takes its rightful place in the nation’s leadership.13
This was Netanyahu’s way of saying ‘no surrender’ and no deviating from the economic path he had laid out as Minister of Finance. Arguably, one of the most intriguing aspects of Netanyahu the politician was his strong ideological commitment to economics versus his more pragmatic approaches towards peace and security.
The problem for Netanyahu and the Likud was that those members of the public who embraced his economic reforms, the middle class and high-income earners, largely rejected his approach to the peace process as too out of step with the political mainstream.
In geographic terms, the party lost support in its traditional strongholds, like the development towns with their lower-income inhabitants. In many of these areas, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu overtook the Likud. Lieberman, who in the past had managed Netanyahu’s office, was emerging as one of the main rivals to Netanyahu’s leadership of the right in Israel.14
As the new Knesset session opened with the presentation of the new government by Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu found himself in a strange and unwanted position as leader of the opposition in Israel. But were it not for Sharon leaving the Likud, the chances were that it would have been Netanyahu giving the speech of presentation of his government. The political gods had conspired against Netanyahu, but he still believed that his policies on peace and security as well as the socio-economic ones remained correct.
From 2006 to 2009, Netanyahu worked tirelessly to rehabilitate himself and the Likud in Israeli politics. At the centre of his struggle was the building of a new identity for the Likud that distinguished it from Olmert and Kadima. He also strengthened his control over the party, shown by his re-election as party leader on 14 August 2007, when he won 73 per cent of the votes cast.
As leader of the opposition, his most crucial decision came in 2008 after Ehud Olmert had been forced to resign amid multiple allegations of corruption. Tzipi Livni replaced Olmert as leader of the Kadima, and Prime Minister designate. Livni was considered to be dovish on the peace process, and supported making major concessions. Extrovert, engaging and chic, Livni was popular in European capitals and in America. Her critics in Israel argued that she lacked the killer instinct to become Prime Minister.
That was one charge that was never laid at Netanyahu’s door. Reminding the Knesset of his ruthless streak, Netanyahu refused to join her coalition when she was tasked by President Peres to form a new government. Netanyahu didn’t stop there; he spent hours lobbying Shas and other parties not to join her coalition either. In the end, Livni was forced to give up and the Knesset was dissolved with the date of the election set for 10 February 2009.
There were risks to Netanyahu’s strategy of forcing the country into early elections. The opinion polls pointed to the Likud making major gains from the previous elections, but a large part of the electorate remained undecided as to which party they would support in the election.
In the end, Netanyahu’s gamble paid off, but only just. The rewards for him, however, were significant. In returning to power, as the king of all comebacks, Netanyahu surveyed the new political landscape in Israel with a sense that he had fulfilled his destiny to lead Israel for a second time. His rivals for power had fallen by the wayside, one by one, for different reasons.
Ariel Sharon remained in a coma, dying in January 2014. Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, would become the first Prime Minister in Israel’s history to be convicted of corruption. His successor, Tzipi Livni, while still a highly popular figure outside Israel, would see her power base reduced and would eventually team up with the Labour Party in the 2015 elections.
From 2009 onwards, the key competition to Netanyahu came in the form of Avigdor Lieberman, but, while an important figure, he was never able to match Netanyahu’s Machiavellian political skills. The second coming of Netanyahu was to prove very different from his first stint as Prime Minister. In Israel, he effectively became more like ‘King Netanyahu’, such was his hegemony in the country.
Having re-established his control over Israel, he shifted from shaping Israel to trying to shape the Middle East region. At the centre of this attempt was his deeply held will that Israel must do everything possible to stop Iran from developing its nuclear programme. This policy would come to dominate Israeli politics, and its relations with the Obama administration.
By 2015, however, Netanyahu’s grip over power in Israel looked to be loosening, and his ability to convince the United States of the merits of the cornerstone of his foreign policy over the Iranian nuclear programme was close to failure.