Netanyahu Fires Two Top Ministers, Setting Stage for Fresh Israeli Elections

Wall Street Journal – by NICHOLAS CASEY and JOSHUA MITNICK

JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday fired two top cabinet ministers, bringing about the collapse of his coalition government and calling for fresh parliamentary elections.

The ministers, Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni, ran the finance and justice ministries respectively. They came from parties that were increasingly coming to blows with the conservative Mr. Netanyahu over a growing list of subjects—from the country’s budget to a proposed law that would declare Israel a Jewish state.  

“In recent weeks, including over the last day, ministers Lapid and Livni sharply attacked the government that I head,’’ said Mr. Netanyahu. “I will no longer tolerate an opposition within the government.”

Mr. Lapid is leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, while Ms. Livni heads up the dovish Ha’tnuah party.

Government officials said the dismissals didn’t come a surprise. They were part of push by Mr. Netanyahu to end his government’s rocky 20-months and the shortest Israeli parliament in generations.

“No one thinks that going to elections after 20 months in power is a good thing; it’s a very bad thing,” said Moshe Feiglin, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right of center Likud party in an interview with Israel Radio. “But the situation was impossible. I called on Netanyahu to go for elections several days ago. The firings were definitely necessary I don’t think he had another choice.”

Mr. Feiglin said the government collapsed because a lack of a common agenda between Mr. Netanyahu’s nationalist Likud party and dovish parties pushing for a land for peace compromise with the Palestinians.

On Monday night, Mr. Netanyahu summoned Mr. Lapid, for a meeting to discuss their differences, an encounter that didn’t go well, according to both sides. Mr. Netanyahu presented Mr. Lapid a list of five concessions on domestic issues, including an ultimatum on the budget and a demand Mr. Lapid stop “constantly attacking the government” in public, according to a statement from Mr. Netanyahu.

After he was dismissed on Tuesday, Mr. Lapid said: “The firing of ministers is an act of cowardice and loss of control.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s move sets Israel on course for an election in the coming months that observers say has no clear agenda other than the political dispute among the coalition parties. That leaves some in Israel seeing a new vulnerability in the longtime prime minister.

Mr. Netanyahu’s appeal is sinking domestically. On Sunday a public-opinion poll published in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz showed his approval rating has fallen to 38% from the 50% at the end of the Gaza conflict in August and 77% during the height of that conflict.

The numbers “are very low, compared to his own position even six months ago and compared to what you expect from an incumbent,” said Eyal Arad, a former campaign consultant to Mr. Netanyahu and other candidates. Mr. Arad said lacking other issues, the main issue of the campaign may be Mr. Netanyahu’s performance.

“If we have a referendum on the incumbent in a couple of months and his numbers are in the ’30s, I would say he’s jumping from the 10th floor without a safety net,” Mr. Arad said.

Mr. Netanyahu has come under pressure from all directions this year. Sparring over the domestic agenda suddenly reached a fever pitch several weeks ago, tearing through Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. The 50-day war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip was soon followed by riots in Jerusalem by Israeli Arabs, leading politicians and analysts across the spectrum to say the prime minister lacked a strategy to deal with Palestinian attacks.

“The conventional wisdom that became dominant here that there is no alternative that Bibi, is no longer solid,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst, referring to the prime minister by his nickname. “We can definitely see anti-Bibi sentiment all over the political map this year.”

Frustration with the prime minister has also has also come into view on the Knesset floor recently, leading some once-loyal lawmakers abandoning Mr. Netanyahu. On Nov. 12, members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition lined up to force a free newspaper called Yisrael Hayom to charge money, a move the premier vehemently opposed. The prime minister’s critics note that the newspaper is financed by American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson , a close backer of Mr. Netanyahu.

While analysts say there is a long list of those with grievances against Mr. Netanyahu, there is a lack of names that could strongly challenge him directly. Mr. Lapid’s party only commands 19 of 120 Knesset seats, a number expected to drop in the next election. And Naftali Bennett, who heads the right-wing Israel Our Home party that is the coalition’s third-largest member, controls 12 seats. Still, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party controls just 20 seats.

Gadi Wolfsfeld, a political scientist at Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, an Israeli college near Tel Aviv, puts it this way: “My thesis is that people don’t like Netanyahu, but they like the others even less.”

However Mr. Wolfsfeld says the prime minister in recent months had become the head of a government which “was not functioning,” leaving some in his own party to question him. “He has had reasons to worry about the Likud,” Mr. Wolfsfeld said.

Susan Hattis Rolef, a former member of the Knesset’s research committee, says recent violence in Jerusalem has left Mr. Netanyahu trying to chart a course that has satisfied neither hard-liners on the right nor his centrist coalition partners.

As clashes erupted this fall between Palestinians and Israeli security forces at the Temple Mount, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to protect Muslim prayer rights there while allowing visits by prominent right wing activists pressing Israel government to lift a long-standing ban Jewish prayer at the site. . “He’s gotten himself into more tangles,” Ms. Hattis said. “He hasn’t decided to put his foot down on the extremists” in the Knesset.

While it was be too early to say what form the election will take, Aviv Bushinsky, a former spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, said the prime minister’s opponents were likely to attack him personally rather than focusing on a policy critique, a technique which helped unseat him in 1999 when Ehud Barak took control.

Mr. Bushinsky also said Mr. Netanyahu’s longevity could also be used against him. Only one prime minister has served longer than Mr. Netanyahu, the country’s founder David Ben-Gurion, to whom few in Israel compare their current prime minister.

“You say that Netanyahu was prime minister for three terms—what was his greatest achievement?” said Mr. Bushinsky. “What did he do for the country? You can’t point to something specific.”

Write to Nicholas Casey at nicholas.casey@wsj.com

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