Netanyahu’s government is about to collapse

Right, so get the popcorn out folks, Benjamin Netanyahu’s days in charge of Israel look to be decidedly numbered right now and there really doesn’t appear to be much of a way out for him this time.
The Biden peace plan that has been put together, that has actually been claimed by US spokespeople to have been Israel’s idea and not Biden’s has put Netanyahu between a rock and a hard place such is the position he’s put himself in politically by committing the atrocities we’ve witnessed in Gaza for the last 8 months.
No matter which way he goes, his fragile coalition is under threat. If he does the right thing, his government is doomed, if he chooses to continue unabated, turning down yet another peace deal, he will also lose coalition partners and become an even bigger pariah on the international stage, leaving him more isolated than ever before and making it abundantly clear to the world, he will no matter what proposals are put forward, put himself first, but for how much longer can this impasse go on without something giving way and that something clearly will be him and his government?
Right, so Netanyahu’s coalition is doomed, we’re in the endgame now, that’s a pretty bold statement to make Damo, on what basis are you making it? Well, it all comes down to that three point peace plan that Joe Biden has laid out on the table and the decision Israel take on it. Having turned down the previous deal, which Hamas accepted, much of the mainstream narrative has been on Hamas having to accept this one too, but the same arguments are never made against Israel, it so often get’s framed as Hamas being the block, but on this occasion they’ve said they’ll accept the deal as long as Israel does, so the ball is in Netanyahu’s court and it’s a game he really doesn’t want to play because no matter the move he makes, he’s going to lose.
The deal as things stand this time, in case you aren’t aware of the details, is three fairly straightforward stages.
The first stage is a 6 week ceasefire, during which the IDF will withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza.
The second stage would involve an exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners as well as a surge of humanitarian aid into all parts of the Gaza Strip.
The third phase would be to make the ceasefire permanent and facilitate the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, decimated as it has been, by the IDF since October 7th.
Simple, straightforward, obvious. Little detail on how these will be implemented though, which is a bit of a sticking point, the devil is always in the detail and that hasn’t been made public. But given the headline stages there are so inarguable, why is it such a headache for Netanyahu in which case?
Well, let’s imagine for a moment that this time around he finally does the right thing. He agrees to these terms, a ceasefire begins, but that will be heralded by his government falling at the same moment. His two far right coalition partners Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, will pull the plug on the coalition keeping Netanyahu in place. They want Gaza for Israel, they want that land for settlers, they won’t accept anything less.
Ben Gvir has already put Netanyahu on notice of this, before any decisions are made. Here’s what Turkish paper Yeni Safak is saying about the matter:
‘The party of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Wednesday it will not back the ruling coalition in the Knesset (parliament) until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveals the details of a Gaza cease-fire proposal laid out by US President Joe Biden.
"As long as the prime minister continues to hide the details of the deal, Otzma Yehudit will disrupt his coalition," Ben-Gvir wrote on his X account.
On Friday, Biden said Israel presented a three-phase deal that would end hostilities in Gaza and secure the release of hostages held in the coastal enclave. The plan includes a cease-fire, a hostage-prisoner exchange, and reconstruction of Gaza.
Netanyahu, however, said Monday that he was “not ready to stop" the war on Gaza, claiming that Biden's remarks about the cease-fire proposal were “inaccurate.”
His coalition partners, Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have threatened to topple the government if Netanyahu agrees to Biden's cease-fire plan.’
So without details – and frankly anything that doesn’t involve ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Israel taking over won’t be acceptable to them anyway – they will pull the plug. Clearly Netanyahu is playing down the whole, ‘Israel concocted this plan’ narrative that Genocide Joe is promoting and so it’s clear to me at least that his position as Israeli Prime Minister is very much still his first priority.
In which case is it not likelier he will carry on as he has done for 8 months with despotic stubbornness and instead refuse to countenance this ceasefire option as well? Well that might not work out well for him either.
He has already had the clock set on him by his National Unity Party coalition leader, Benny Gantz, a liberal, to come up with a vision for Gaza after the genocide ends and he gave Netanyahu 3 weeks to make public sauch a plan or he was going to withdraw from the coalition. Time is up tomorrow, so will he walk?
If he does, it wouldn’t immediately topple Netanyahu’s government since National Unity’s presence within the coalition is much smaller than the combined share of Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s parties, Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionist Party, but it would heap a lot of pressure on Netanyahu, as his government would then be seen to be even more in the thrall of the hard right.
The problem here, is that Benny Gantz’s Party, if national elections were held now, would according to polling become the largest party, Gantz being preferred to Netanyahu as Prime Minister, so him leaving the coalition now damages Netanyahu more not just as far as this crisis he’s got himself into goes, but electorally for his Likud Party as well, whether he insists on still trying to lead it by that point or not.
That said, there’s no negotiations happening between Netanyahu and Gantz to stay, it’s actually been the Biden administration pleading with Gantz to stay, giving the coalition a thin veneer of having some common sense voices where everyone else appears to be bats**t.
Netanyahu for his part has accused Gantz in offering this ultimatum of trying to end the war, declare defeat for Israel and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza, which is quite the way to sweet talk someone into staying.
From the US perspective, Gantz provides them some cover in my view that there are these more sensible and pragmatic people in the government that can be reasoned with, but without them it becomes even more ridiculous in the eyes of the world that Biden continue to help a party, that without Gantz and his ministers, would effectively lurch even further to the right.
Reinforcing the belief that Gantz will walk this weekend, are the fact that last week his party submitted a bill to dissolve the Knesset and bring forward elections, hardly something you’d expect a dedicated and committed coalition partner to do.
Tomorrow Netanyahu could lose a chunk of his coalition by virtue of having stood still, so even doing nothing and burying his head in the sand is not really an option for him. If he loses Gantz, which he seems to have decided to allow to happen, the pressure for new elections will become even greater, and still the issue of Gaza won’t have been resolved and if he finally does admit defeat and agree to the peace deal on the table right now, in the coming days or weeks, he’ll end up weaker than he would have been if he’d actually shown a shred of leadership and done the right thing before now, as Ben Gvir and Smotrich will still walk, there is nothing that can be said or done to placate such maniacally awful people.
So will Netanyahu do the right thing? Of course not, it’s not in his DNA, he’s a madman. Gantz if he’s worth a dime will walk tomorrow and Biden will find himself in a more difficult position to not shift himself, since the Israeli government will have become even more difficult to negotiate with. The rot will set in, fester, pressure for new elections will grow as Netanyahu’s biggest rival Gantz will capitalise on being free of him in the national interest and a de facto election campaign will be under in effect, Gantz wanting them brought forward anyway. Israel’s government is on it's last legs and is verging on collapse, frankly in my view, the end of Netanyahu the only way the current atrocities will come to an end in Gaza and bring the conversation back onto, as it must now, towards recognising a Palestinian state.
Of course the ongoing events in Gaza are not the only front Israel is having to contend with right now, as rocket fire from Lebanon taking out Iron Dome defence system installations in the north of the country, have seen tens of thousands of more people evacuated, so many people having already had to leave the border regions as Lebanon mounted an offensive in support of Gaza and with a thousand acres of countryside now ablaze as wildfires sweep through the region, all so avoidable if peace was simply an option as this video recommendation will tell you all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.