The Stretcher-Bearer

By Pinhas Inbari

The blitz of interviews President Herzog gave on the eve of Yom Kippur revealed that while we were all worrying that Eisenkot would turn out to be the next Gantz, it turns out the stretcher-bearer may be the President.

Two matters were made clear in the interviews. First, he is prepared to intervene in the process of forming the government, “out of responsibility” for its stability and for fear of continued upheaval. Second, he has not backed away from his intention to grant Netanyahu a pardon, but he calls it a “mediation process.”

The announcement that he will intervene in the government-formation process means that he does not necessarily intend to give the mandate to whoever receives the most recommendations. In other words, he will not take the position of the Arab parties into account and will count only the Jewish recommenders. I hope I am not suspecting the innocent, but if it turns out, heaven forbid, that I was right, how sad it is to see how far we have come: the son of the UN ambassador Chaim Herzog, who tore to shreds the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, returns Zionism to the status of a racist movement, since the disqualification of the Arab lists is justified on the grounds of a Zionist government.

If what has been reported is true, that the deal between Eisenkot and Bibi provides for a rotation between them, with two years of premiership for Bibi and afterwards he becomes president, then the circle is closed: from a rapist president, to a president who charges a defendant in a corruption case with forming a government, to a president who extricates him from the trial, to a president who will turn the presidential residence into a city of refuge for criminals.

True or not, Eisenkot carelessly met with Deri and set off this race of rumors. And again, to remove any doubt, it was Bibi who sent Deri. If the deal succeeds, well and good; if not, Bibi will leak it and severely damage Eisenkot.

To understand why the President is now running with the stretcher, one must understand what troubles the prime minister more than anything else: that the Arab parties will give outside support to a minority government headed by Eisenkot. Foiling that scenario is the main thing Bibi is occupied with these days.

Not Israel’s standing in the world, not the strategic dangers facing Israel. That, and only that.

Only from this point of view should one understand the ingenious move of founding Winter’s party, and of founding the right-wing parties behind the right wing. Their role was not necessarily to pass the electoral threshold, since Bibi knew they would not, but to deepen the right, right, right discourse, which pushes the Arabs, and Yair Golan, outside the consensus. It builds the basis for a right-wing government with Eisenkot, headed by Netanyahu, who will agree to the President’s “mediation.” That is to say: a pardon that leaves Bibi as prime minister, and “for the sake of stability” the President is the one who decides in favor of a Bibi government “with a mediation process,” together with Winter and Eisenkot at the expense of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, on the calculation that Winter will wipe out Smotrich and Eisenkot will disqualify Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir already understands that Bibi will no longer take him, and behaves accordingly.

The President’s willingness to change the rules of the game after the game has begun puts a large question mark over “our beloved president,” Reuven Rivlin. He could have announced that he would not charge a candidate standing trial for corruption with forming a government, and nipped in the bud the dance of demons into which we were hurled. Instead he decided to open this Pandora’s box and flee to the safe harbor of the pampered close of his term.

Then came the High Court’s 11–0 ruling, the “composition of the justices,” and a Shin Bet chief who deserted his foxhole, and we discovered that what we thought were gatekeepers are nothing but brittle cobwebs.

Bibi has always excelled at long-range vision and at planning moves far ahead. The question is whether this time he has tangled himself up. It turns out that, according to the polls, Smotrich has not been wiped out, Bennett and Liberman will not sit under Netanyahu, and Eisenkot must state unequivocally that he will not sit under him. It seems he is speaking in that direction, but not really: he frames his conditions around principles (a Jewish and democratic state, the values of the Declaration of Independence, the duty of service for all) and not around names, thereby leaving an opening. There are those who go further and already speak of a scenario in which Eisenkot himself is the one who will form a unity government with Netanyahu if the elections do not decide between the blocs. All the reports that Liberman and Bennett intend not to recommend Eisenkot to the President originate in suspicions that Eisenkot is receptive to the stretcher solutions, and if that is the situation, here is another success for Bibi, the greatest campaigner in world history.

Bibi’s great success, and the opposition’s great failure, lies in the wonder formula that has led Bibi from victory to victory: the villainous lefty versus the patriotic right. If you are right-wing, you can steal, dodge service, and allegedly betray. If you are a lefty, you can serve and carry the country on your shoulders, but you are a sucker. That there is no longer a left in Israel is beside the point. Bibi is the wizard of images, and the image of lefty versus right has always been his winning move.

The opposition’s failure lies in surrendering without a fight to Bibi’s narrative of images. It had to present a competing narrative, which, for a change, is also true: corruption versus integrity. The camp of thieves against the camp of the honest. But, sadly, the corruption that is the very issue on the national agenda is not an election issue at all.

The camp of thieves against the camp of the honest.

If Yair Lapid looks for the reasons for his decline, he may find them in his statement that he is right-wing while Golan is left-wing. His broad camp of supporters did not buy that he is right-wing, and the distinction he drew between himself and Golan is precisely the crack through which Bibi seeks to slip away. Bibi needs only a “Jewish” tie, or almost a tie. Disqualifying the Arabs will deliver it, when Herzog hands him the stretcher.

Translator’s note: “The stretcher” (alonka) refers here to the compromise formula meant to carry Netanyahu out of his predicament, in this case a pardon presented as “mediation.” The “stretcher-bearer” is whoever carries it.