Chairman of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz was well prepared the evening of Oct. 23, when President Reuven Rivlin granted him a mandate to form a new government. His speech was proper and met all expectations. It relayed a message of reconciliation, along with a promise to form a liberal unity government. As soon as he was done, Gantz called all the leaders of the various parties in the Knesset and invited them to meet with him. This was organized meticulously as well in order to provide a sense that he was being proactive and that he had a genuine desire to unite everyone.
The Blue and White party knew that they would eventually come up against a wall, in the form of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of 55 seats, the Likud party together with other right-wing parties and the ultra-Orthodox. What they failed to assess correctly was how consolidated that bloc would be. Each of its members responded politely and even cordially, but one by one the leaders of the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties refused to meet with Gantz, suggesting instead that he meet with Netanyahu as the head of their bloc. Gantz had hoped that he would manage to eke out a meeting or two, with the heads of the New Right, for example, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, or with his old army buddy, Chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi Rabbi Rafi Peretz. Instead, he got the same generic answer from all of them. It turns out that the right-wing bloc was carefully briefed and well prepared for when Gantz woulc receive this mandate. Had Gantz managed to get even a single meeting, it would have created the sense that there were cracks in the bloc. Netanyahu has managed to prevent that for now.
