The Speaker of the Knesset Reuven “Rubi” Rivlin was ousted by Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu last week. He was the last of the Likud blue bloods to survive at the top of the party. Like former Knesset Members Dan Meridor, Benny Begin, and Michael Eitan, Rivlin personified [founder of the revisionist movement] Ze'ev Jabotinsky’s original concept of hadar (“personal nobility”) which has become part of the Likud's DNA, and provided it to the party even at its lowest ebb.
The dynastic ties of those other three men were not enough to keep them at the party’s helm. They were expunged from its Knesset list last November by the rising power of the extreme right among Likud party members. It was an act of revenge, taken after these legacy candidates tried to block legislative efforts that they deemed anti-democratic: they defended the Supreme Court and called on the government to respect its ruling to evacuate illegal outposts in the West Bank.
Their disappearance from party life reflects deep-rooted sociopolitical changes within the Likud over the past few years. It has metamorphosed from being the party of the development towns to the political base of the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria. The latter took over the party’s institutions in a well-organized and systematic manner and ultimately determined its destiny. The process began years ago, but it was only realized fully in the last elections, when the Likud was transformed from a moderately rightwing party that focused on social issues into a party whose dominant core is identified with the extreme right, both ideologically and politically.
Certainly there are personal reasons behind Rivlin’s ouster by the prime minister. Netanyahu simply didn’t like him very much. It was the ouster of former Minister without portfolio Ze'ev Binyamin "Benny" Begin that symbolized more than anything the decline of the Likud in the periphery, once the source of its electoral strength. It was the periphery that propelled the party toward its most dramatic achievement: the “Turnover” of 1977.
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