Can a Protest Movement Topple Netanyahu?

Read: Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer Israel’s indispensable leader

What went wrong was a combination of arrogance and carelessness—the Israeli tendency to squander victories. After prematurely declaring the end of the COVID-19 threat, Netanyahu promptly lost interest. He stopped briefing the media, and no one seemed in charge.

The fateful misstep was reopening schools—along with a decision, spurred by a late-spring heat wave, to relax restrictions on mask wearing. The spike in new cases was immediate and drastic. According to Ronni Gamzu, Israel’s COVID-19 coordinator, the country now has the world’s proportionally highest rate of infections. (The mortality rate, though, remains low.)

It wasn’t all Netanyahu’s fault. Israelis deal well with short-term emergencies, such as the first wave of the coronavirus, but less well with systemic crises. Even after mask wearing was reimposed, many simply ignored the rules. Still, Netanyahu, who deservedly took credit for the country’s initial success, can hardly evade responsibility now.

Netanyahu’s main concern is preventing his trial, by passing a law that would exempt a sitting prime minister from criminal charges. Doing so, though, would require a right-wing majority coalition. In recent days, Netanyahu has seemed intent on dismantling the unity government he formed in May with the centrist Blue and White party, which opposes immunity for the prime minister, and on moving to hold a new election—the fourth in less than two years. While the past three elections ended in a stalemate, this time the opposition is in disarray, and Netanyahu hopes to form a government without centrist partners. Still, his right-wing coalition partners are hardly keen on new elections and are trying to dissuade him.

Read: What is the point of repeat elections?

Netanyahu has another incentive for calling elections now: to preempt his rotation agreement with the Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz, who is scheduled to become prime minister in November 2021. Netanyahu, regarded as a serial liar by politicians across the spectrum, promised Gantz in March that, given the national emergency, there would be no “schticks and tricks” and he would honor the agreement. Public reaction at the time ranged from incredulity to ridicule. Netanyahu, wrote the commentator Ben Caspit in the newspaper Maariv, is so used to lying that he can pass a lie-detector test only when he isn’t telling the truth.

By all accounts, Gantz, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, is an honorable man. But in joining the coalition, he violated his promise to voters never to sit in government with Netanyahu. His reasoning was likewise honorable: He sought to spare the country a fourth round of elections during a time of national crisis. Inevitably, though, Gantz’s popularity has plummeted, and his party has splintered into two factions—one in government, the other in opposition—whose leaders despise each other almost as much as they despise Netanyahu. Having effectively destroyed Blue and White, Netanyahu, the great devourer of Israeli politics, can move to elections, knowing he faces no real opposition, except on the streets outside his home.

Twice before in Israel’s history, protest movements helped bring down prime ministers: Golda Meir in 1974 and Menachem Begin in 1983. Both leaders fell as a result of failure during wartime and resigned in exhaustion and defeat.