Does Benny Gantz lead--or fail?

(Last update: April 22, 2020)

 This essay is now a re-write.

It's been seven weeks since Israel's most recent national election. Now, as of mid-afternoon on April 20, 2020, in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic crisis, Israel still must fight that pandemic without an agreed-upon government in place.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Israel’s President had chosen Benny Gantz to form a government with opponent Benjamin Netanyahu because he (the President) had felt that Gantz had the best chance to form a new government, not Netanyahu. But Gantz hasn’t succeeded. He struggles. He hasn’t shown that he can work together with Netanyahu.

That's the sticking point. Gantz can't get an agreement. He flirts with failure, not a new government.

Gantz has failed. He promised success. But by 6 pm today, April 20, 2020, we still have no new PM. 

After weeks of 'negotiations', unity talks have succeeded only in creating a kind of dizzying quintuple-turn; that is, these 'talks' haven't led to a formal decision of any kind; they've led instead to (at least) five surprises.

The first surprise wasn't much of a surprise at all. That was when, on April 11, 2020, Gantz officially declared that his attempt to create a ‘unity government’ had stalled. This was his first failure. After all his promises to the contrary, he simply couldn't do what he'd promised. He couldn't negotiate an agreement with Netanyahu.

Many in Israel weren’t surprised by this failure. Over weeks of negotiations, the talks, if you remember, were constantly rumored to be tipping towards failure, not success. In the end, that’s exactly what happened--failure.

Failed, Gantz did two things. First, he acknowledged he’d failed. But he also, second, requested a 14-day extension from Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin (here). The only way Gantz could continue his effort to form a coalition government was with the President’s permission.

 But this was when Israel got its second surprise. This surprise was nothing short of startling.

At that point, President Rivlin had several options regarding how to proceed. But the most obvious choice for him was the customary choice. That is, when the first man (here, Gantz) fails to form a government after an election, the President would typically choose that man’s major opponent to try his hand at forming a government. In this particular case, Gantz's opponent (Netanyahu) would start his own quest for success only 3 seats short of his goal. 

Choosing Netanyahu seemed the logical choice. It seemed the right choice. Why not give to Netanyahu the opportunity to find those 3 seats? Netanyahu had certainly done it before.  Why not now?

This is when the second surprise hit: Rivlin didn't give Netanyahu a chance to do anything. Instead, Rivlin gave this 'chance' back to the Knesset. He told the Knesset, essentially, 'you figure this out'.

This wasn’t just an unexpected turn. It was a startling shock.

As soon as Rivlin made this decision, Netanyahu had his own surprise for Israel. This was surprise number three. 

The surprise was, even as members of Netanyahu's own Likud were "poised" to oppose that extension request (ibid),  Netanyahu surprised everyone . He invited Gantz not to stop talking (ibid). 

Nobody expected that to occur. The conventional wisdom was, Gantz was finished; let someone else try.  With that invitation, Gantz stayed in the talks. 

Now, it’s April 20^th. Talks appear to have stalled yet again. Now, we witness our fourth--and fifth--surprises.

The introduction to surprise number four was, Gantz was reported on April 20th to have 'stormed out' of negotiations with Netanyahu, apparently fed up with frustration (here). This doesn’t speak well of a man who’d been specifically tasked by the President to form a unity government with Netanyahu. Nevertheless, this ‘storming’ out’ story didn’t surprise anyone because over the preceding week we’d learned that Gantz seemed much better at threatening Netanyahu than negotiating with him. 

These threats coming during a 'unity negotiation' were troubling. They didn't promise a 'unity' outcome. But they did make sense.

Remember, Gantz had spent a career in the military. Negotiating is not how a military works. As Israel's most recent top military man, Gantz understood how to order--and, perhaps, bully--those around him. He wasn't accustomed to negotiating anything with anybody. Certainly now, as a civilian, he lacked the power to command a decision from Netanyahu. It seemed to make sense that such a man could indeed storm out of a meeting in frustration.

To be fair, we don't know if this report of his having 'stormed out' of talks was fake news or not. But then, it didn't matter because once Gantz left that meeting, he was the one to give us our fourth surprise: he was reported to be going from talks of “unity” with Netanyahu straight to the Knesset to start legislation to outlaw Netanyahu from government service (ibid). That would lock Netanyahu out from running again for office, particularly while he was under indictment--and soon to be at trial. Such legislation, with Netanyahu out of the way, would also give Gantz his Premiership on a silver platter. 

Such a move was as far from 'unity' as one could get. Yet,  this was the exact moment when Israel got perhaps the biggest surprise of all, surprise number five.  As Gantz headed to the Knesset to destroy Netanyahu by passing special anti-Netanyahu legislation, two earstwhile Gantz allies announced they would not support such legislation (here). First, Moshe Ya'alon said it. Then, even more damaging for Gantz was what Leftist MK Yair Golan (ibid) told the media: he was quoted as saying that  the Left would only support this anti-Netanyahu legislation if Gantz immediately resigned from Speaker of the Knesset and handed that job over to someone more experienced in guiding legislation through the Knesset (ibid).

This last announcement wasn't just startling. It was a stunning rebuke of Gantz's competence.

Ya'alon's and Golan's unexpected rejection of Gantz was another failure for Gantz—his biggest failure yet because it ended his ace-in-the-hole: he’d threatened multiple times that if Netanyahu didn’t surrender to what Gantz wanted from these talks, Gantz would go to the Knesset and secure his anti-Netanyahu law.

Now, MK Golan had turned that threat to dust. Without the Left’s support, and without Ya'alon's support, Gantz was finished. His anti-Netanyahu legislation wouldn’t have the support it needed to pass. 

Gantz suddenly looked like a loser--with an ill-serving temper to boot. Even his friends and allies were turning on him.

Gantz had gone from being the darling of the Knesset to complete loser. Would anyone in the Knesset support him? 

This seemed a good question. In fact, this question may have been the reason Gantz went immediately back to talks with Netanyahu (just a couple of hours after this rebuke). Did he return to talks with his tail tucked protectively between his legs? Nobody said.

This public humiliation seemed almost embarrassing. What was supposed to be Gantz’s moment to show himself to be a man of true PM timbre became instead the moment when he appeared to be nothing more than a 'would-be emperor who had no clothes’--meaning that the great military General had, in the end, nothing to give Israel except failure.

The unity talks aren’t over. There's still hope. But so far, Gantz doesn't show how he leads. He shows how he fails.

This is not a good sign.

UPDATE: At app 7:38 pm tonight, (8 minutes ago) April 20, 2020, there appears to be a unity government.  Does this mean Gantz had finally won--or is this just the first step to his next failure?

Stay tuned.