Benjamin Netanyahu Humiliated in Failed Knesset Ploy

Benjamin Netanyahu press conference – Haim Zach (GPO) May 2023

The Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu saw his coalition lose an important Knesset vote Wednesday. The defeat came after he tried to push coalition members into voting against their own candidate for a post on the national committee that selects new Supreme Court justices. The attempt, and its failure, may just go down in history as Israel’s “Stinking Maneuver Number Two.”

Opposition candidate MK Karine Elharrar won her vote by a 58 to 56 margin in the 120 seat Knesset, with the support of at least four votes from the coalition. And the coalition members were all supposed to vote against her. (The coalition holds 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset) At the same time, the coalition’s candidate for its committee spot MK Tali Gottlieb was voted down by a wide margin of 59 against and only 15 in favor. The vote was held by secret ballot.

So, what exactly happened? First, the “Stinking Maneuver” was a failed secret attempt by the then leader of the Labor Party Shimon Peres in 1990 to bring down the National Unity Government led by the Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir, of which he was a part, by secretly getting coalition members to agree to support a new government Peres would form without the Likud. A surprise vote was held in which the Labor brought down the government. But then Peres lost the support of smaller parties, failed to form a new government, and Shamir then formed one without Labor in it.

So, Yitzhak Rabin dubbed this the “Stinking Maneuver” and used it as part of his successful campaign two years later to unseat Peres as leader of the Labor Party.

In a similar fashion, Benjamin Netanyahu had a problem, in that, on Wednesday, the Knesset was set to elect the two members who would represent it on the committee for judicial selection – one from the coalition and one from the opposition. But his own people wanted to select a right-wing politician for the committee, and even vote to put their own people in both slots.

Netanyahu, however, needed to preserve his promise to the opposition not to engage in any such political gimmicks while he was negotiating with them over his controversial judicial reform plans. Those plans sparked massive nationwide protests by opponents who say the reforms would harm Israeli democracy. This is because they would, in effect, end judicial review of new laws and government actions.

The demonstrations heated up, and even Israel’s President Isaac Herzog pushed for the government to take a step back and agree to mediation over the matter that he would host and Netanyahu agreed to do so several months ago, just before the Passover holiday.

Part of the reform plan includes a drastic alteration of the judicial selections committee which would give the sitting government a majority of its seats. Today, a majority of the committee is comprised of justices and representatives from Israel’s bar association.

If Benjamin Netanyahu had not suspended the legislative process for his reforms in the Knesset and they had passed, there would not have been any such vote in the Knesset Wednesday. This angered coalition partners who have been critical of Netanyahu’s agreeing to freeze the process in the first place. But the Prime Minister needed to move forward with the traditional vote for the committee, otherwise, the opposition leaders would break off the negotiations on the judicial reforms. And such a move would show yet again that Netanyahu can’t be trusted.

So, to paraphrase Shakespeare, therein lay the rub.

Benjamin Netanyahu was in a damned if he did, damned if he didn’t situation. And what was his solution? He held a meeting of his party’s Knesset faction Wednesday morning before the votes and convinced his people to vote against both candidates.

Why would he do this? If neither candidate won her (both were women) respective vote for the committee seat, then they would, by Knesset rules, need to wait at least 30 days before holding another vote. Netanyahu desperately wanted this 30 day delay to try and at least find a way to pass the judicial selections committee changes he wishes to enact. And this is why the coalition candidate received so few votes.

Benjamin Netanyahu could not see his candidate win and the opposition candidate lose. But both candidates losing was a lesser evil for him.

Unfortunately for Benjamin Netanyahu, at least four of his coalition’s Knesset members did not like his planned maneuver so much and went ahead and voted for the opposition candidate anyway.

This is why Benjamin Netanyahu is in so much hot water these days. If he failed with this maneuver, then how will he get the required 61 votes to pass his judicial reforms? It was grumblings from members of his own Likud Party that forced Netanyahu to agree to suspend the legislation in the first place.

Opposition leaders Benny Gantz – the former Minister of Defense and leader of the State Camp Party – and Yair Lapid – the former Prime Minister – announced their decision to quit the compromise negotiations because of what Benjamin Netanyahu tried to do.

So, how did the Prime Minister react to this? He, of course, blamed Gantz and Lapid of being the ones who did what he was the one who did….

Benjamin Netanyahu released a video Wednesday night saying, “Today it finally became clear that Gantz and Lapid looked for any way to blow up the talks.”

“Today they did a new thing,” added Netanyahu. “Yesterday they said that if their representative was not elected to the committee for appointing judges, they would blow up the talks. But their representative was elected – and yet they blew up the talks. So Gantz and Lapid do not want real negotiations. I promise you that unlike them, we’ll act responsibly for our country.”

So, because Benjamin Netanyahu’s own stinking maneuver backfired, and then only because he lost control over enough members from his own coalition who could torpedo his entire judicial reform plan, it is all somebody else’s fault.