A16 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019
ven Rivlin, who in the coming
days will offer either Netanyahu
or Gantz the first chance at form-
ing a government. Rivlin gave no
indication which way he would
go. In April, he gave Netanyahu
the first crack after the spring
election.
When N etanyahu f ailed to form
a coalition after that vote, he trig-
gered the unprecedented second
election. Now Likud operatives
are even discussing the prospect
of a third vote i n coming m onths.
In a statement, Rivlin’s office
made clear that a third election
was to be avoided at a ll costs.
“The president will be guided
by the need to form a government
in Israel as quickly as possible and
to implement the will of the peo-
ple,” t he statement read.
One potential history-making
outcome is the possibility that
Odeh, the Arab party leader,
would consider taking t he unprec-
edented step of heading the coun-
try’s formal opposition, some-
thing that has never been done by
an Arab party in Israel. That
would give him the o pportunity to
meet with high-level visiting dig-
nitaries and gain access to some
sensitive security information.
But it was still unclear if Odeh’s
faction would take such steps. In-
cluded in his Joint List are fac-
tions that would have a hard time
showing any support for Gantz, a
former army chief of staff who led
Israel in the 2014 war with the
militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu placed fear of Arab
control near the center of his cam-
paign, and t he idea of Arabs in the
government unnerved some of his
supporters.
“The country is not going to
tolerate Arab parties being p art of
the government because of all the
bombings coming in from Gaza,
Syria and Lebanon,” said Bruce
Lilling, 65, a dual citizen of Israel
and the United States who was
running errands in West Jerusa-
lem. He had voted for the Yamina
party, an ultranationalist right-
wing faction. Of Netanyahu, he
said, “Sometimes he forgets his
right-wing r oots.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]heard, and what they want is to
stop a right-wing government
headed by Netanyahu,” Odeh said
Wednesday in a news conference
outside his home in Haifa.
Faring not so well in the elec-
tion were two right-wing and
ultra-Orthodox parties Netanya-
hu had hoped would contribute to
his majority. They lost seats, leav-
ing him with no clear path to
victory and leading many analysts
to declare his storied political ca-
reer i mperiled.
One scenario is a “unity govern-
ment” in which Likud and Blue
and White share power, possibly
with a rotating schedule f or prime
minister and o ther t op jobs. Many
centrists, including Gantz, said
they would consider such an ar-
rangement only if someone other
than Netanyahu leads Likud.
“It will take some time, but this
increases the probability of Likud
moving Netanyahu a side and j oin-
ing a unity government with Blue
and White,” s aid Dan Shapiro, for-
mer U.S. ambassador to Israel and
research fellow at t he Institute for
National Security Studies in Te l
Aviv. “Of a ll t he possible scenarios,
I think that’s now t he most likely.”
Speaking outside his home in
the West Bank settlement of
Nokdim, Avigdor Liberman, Ne-
tanyahu’s former ally and leader
of the secular nationalist Yisrael
Beiteinu faction, told Israeli me-
dia that Netanyahu and Gantz
have n o choice b ut to form a broad
coalition if they want to avert a
democratic crisis.
“It is a shame to waste more
time; we need to get on this track
as soon as possible,” Liberman
said. His party h as garnered a bout
nine seats, giving him a potential
kingmaker role in any coalition.
He used the same power to deny
Netanyahu a governing majority
after April’s election, leading to
the do-over vote.
At the center of the maneuver-
ing now is Israeli President Reu-campaigned so fiercely, appeared
Wednesday with other right-wing
parties at a Jerusalem news con-
ference, still defiantly pledging to
assemble the seats in the Knesset,
or parliament, h e needs to prevail.
He warned, as he did through the
election, that the alternative was a
government beholden to danger-
ous leftist and Arab parties.
“A government that relies on
the anti-Zionist Arab parties must
not be created,” Netanyahu said.
He appointed To urism Minister
Yariv Levin to lead his coalition
negotiations.
The stakes for Netanyahu are
high. Israel’s attorney general, Av-
ichai Mandelblit, is scheduled to
hold a hearing Oct. 3 on three
criminal cases in which police
have recommended indicting Ne-
tanyahu. The prime minister has
been seeking to win majority sup-
port for legislation granting him
immunity.
Based on preliminary results
expected to be finalized on Thurs-
day, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud
party trailed the centrist Blue and
White faction, headed by his chief
rival, Benny Gantz, by one parlia-
mentary seat, 32 to 33. Both were
far short of a 61-seat majority in
the 120-seat Knesset.
Gantz met reporters Wednes-
day, having already begun explor-
ing partnerships with secular
center-left p arties.
“In a day or two, we will know,
and then we will create a strong
and broad unity coalition in the
state of Israel,” Gantz, dressed
casually, said outside his home
near Te l Aviv.
Gantz had also already reached
out to Ayman Odeh, leader of the
Joint List, the conglomeration of
four Arab parties that scored well
in Tuesday’s election, securing 12
seats.
“The main thing is that Israeli
Arabs have made their voices
ISRAEL FROM A
BY ANNE GEARANPresident Trump appeared to
distance himself from embattled
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu on Wednesday, de-
clining to offer either encourage-
ment or praise to h is most enthu-
siastically loyal foreign ally now
that he faces potential electoral
defeat.
Speaking a day after Israeli
elections that at best leave Ne-
tanyahu weakened, Trump
seemed cool to the Israeli con-
servative who has touted his
ideological lockstep with Trump
as a chief reelection credential.
Trump said he had not spoken
to Netanyahu, a man he has
described as a close friend. He
then noted that the election is
close while playing down Netan-
yahu’s importance to the alliance
between the United States and
Israel.
“Our relations are with Israel,
so we’ll see what happens,”
Trump told reporters traveling
with him in California.
Netanyahu failed to win a
clear majority in national elec-
tions Tuesday that the long-serv-
ing conservative leader had
hoped would give him a strong
mandate for another term and
armor against a looming corrup-
tion case.
During his presidency, Trump
has tightly embraced Netanyahu
and his hawkish views on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fre-
quently winning praise from the
prime m inister f or such things as
moving the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem and announcing that
the United States would recog-
nize Israeli sovereignty over the
Golan Heights. But his com-
ments Wednesday underscored
Trump’s penchant for separating
himself from political allies once
they become weakened or could
serve as a liability to him.
“Ice cold,” Brookings Institu-
tion Middle East specialist Ta -
mara Cofman Wittes observed
on Twitter.
Now Trump will have to de-
cide how t o deal with a weakened
Netanyahu or a new prime min-
ister whose views may be more
dovish than Trump’s on the Mid-
dle East.
The calculation for Trump —
who has said that American Jews
who vote for Democrats are be-
ing “disloyal” t o Israel — will be
as much about domestic politics
ahead of the 2020 election as it is
about foreign policy. The presi-
dent’s hard-line approach has
served not only as an attempt to
win o ver s ome Jewish voters who
have previously supported Dem-
ocrats but to appeal to evangeli-
cals, who are among his staunch-
est supporters and revere Israelfor its role in the biblical story.
Netanyahu may be able to
survive if he can cobble together
a coalition or power-sharing gov-
ernment, and numerous analysts
suggest he has a better chance to
do so than his chief challenger,
former Army officer Benny
Gantz. Any such arrangement
would leave Netanyahu with less
autonomy.
Trump’s comments Wednes-
day showed that he smelled
weakness and wanted to give
himself some insulation from
Netanyahu, said Dan Shapiro, a
former American ambassador to
Israel.
Trump, Shapiro said, wants
little to do with a “loser.”
Last week, Trump declined to
publicly endorse Netanyahu’s
pledge to annex parts of the West
Bank if he were reelected.
That stood in contrast to the
warm words surrounding Netan-
yahu’s election bid five months
ago, when Trump announced the
United States’s new policy stance
on the Golan Heights and
seemed happy to have Netanya-
hu make a show of their close
relationship.
In a small gesture, Trump did
announce last weekend that he
and Netanyahu would explore a
mutual defense treaty. Such a
pact would change little about
the two nations’ military rela-tionship, and Trump said only
that the idea was under review.
Trump had bet on Netanyahu
as a canny politician and fellow
tough guy, remarking to friends
that Netanyahu was a “survivor”
who beat the odds, people who
have spoken with Trump about
Israeli politics said, discussing
the private conversations under
the condition of anonymity.
But Trump never saw Netan-
yahu as the only key to his own
political fortunes with Jewish
voters or c onservatives for w hom
Iran’s ability to threaten Israel is
a primary concern, these people
said.
Rather, Trump saw Netanyahu
as a partner in b uilding a consen-
sus against the legacy of former
president Barack Obama, who
had a troubled relationship with
Netanyahu and broke with him
over pursuit of an international
agreement limiting Iran’s nu-
clear ambitions. Both Netanyahu
and Trump argue that the 2015
deal was full of holes.
The two bonded over Tr ump’s
adoption of Netanyahu-like rhet-
oric about the nuclear deal,
which was inked just as Trump’s
outsider candidacy was taking
off.
Trump has run down a check-
list of pro-Israel actions as presi-
dent, most coordinated with Ne-
tanyahu.Netanyahu tried t o leverage all
of that, with Trump’s blessing.
But that did not mean Trump
viewed the entire relationship
with Israel as hinged to Netanya-
hu, a senior administration offi-
cial said.
“The president is right” to say
that the U.S. relationship is with
Israel, not its leader, the official
said. “Our relationship is bigger
than individuals. We had the
worst possible relationship be-
tween Obama and Netanyahu,
and that did not mean the rela-
tionship itself was at risk,” said
the o fficial, who like o thers spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because they were not author-
ized to discuss the matter on the
record.
Trump has chafed at Netanya-
hu’s opposition to potential new
diplomacy with Iran, a project
Trump sees as a chance to build
his legacy as a peacemaker, cur-
rent and former administration
officials said.
Shared opposition to the nu-
clear deal with Iran helped ce-
ment Trump’s close relationship
with Netanyahu, but Trump’s
objection to the agreement was
tied to h is b elief t hat he could get
a better bargain. Netanyahu op-
poses anything that Iran could
spin as a concession, including
overtures from the American
president.Netanyahu’s office announced
Wednesday that in light of the
political disarray, he would not
attend the annual United Na-
tions General Assembly next
week, an appearance he has
regularly used to make the case
for international unity against
what he calls an existential
threat from Iran.
But Netanyahu’s decision also
forecloses a meeting with Trump,
which both nations had said was
likely if Netanyahu attended.
That may be a relief to Trump,
who is already looking beyond
Netanyahu to what a future Is-
raeli government m ight mean f or
his hopes to launch an Ar-
ab-Israeli peace plan this year,
two people familiar w ith the p lan
said.
A coalition government that
clips Netanyahu’s wings might
improve chances for that plan,
which will ask concessions of
Israel, one former senior admin-
istration official said.
A Israeli official summed it up
this way: “Yes, he is friends with
Bibi, but he also likes winners
and he does want to move his
peace plan forward no matter
who the prime minister is.”
[email protected]Steve Hendrix in Jerusalem and
Souad Mekhennet in Washington
contributed to this report.As Netanyahu faces possible defeat, Trump appears to turn cold shoulder
Israeli parties jockey
for coalition partners
AMMAR AWAD/REUTERSCORINNA KERN/REUTERS
TOP: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks Wednesday in Tel Aviv after election results
indicated a dead heat. ABOVE: Netanyahu’s top rival is Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, center.(202) 816-
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