“Unseating an incumbent prime minister” is not as easy as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his merry band frame the legitimate, legal, democratic process (the March elections) leading to regime change.
A hold on power grants an incumbent a significant advantage over the opposition in setting election campaign agendas. Foreign leaders seek the incumbent’s company, not necessarily out of any unusual admiration for the man, and his wife, Sara Netanyahu. A foreign leader’s handshake with the leader of Israel’s opposition is an option. A photo-op with the prime minister is a real treat that promises headlines at home. The guest often returns home with an arms’ deal in his pocket and the promise of a good word to be whispered in the ear of the friend at the White House.
My colleague Mazal Mualem attributed the Likud party’s improved poll results this week to Netanyahu’s “unprecedented” diplomatic blitz in recent days. The accused No. 1 in the indictment filed against him in the Jerusalem District Court on Jan. 28 took advantage of the World Holocaust Forum he hosted in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, to immortalize himself in the company of presidents and barons. With the help of evangelical friends and a settler-loving US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, the prime minister arranged a display of pomp and circumstance for himself at the White House on Jan. 28 in the guise of a peace plan presentation. On his way home from Washington, he stopped off in Moscow for yet another photo-op with Russian President Vladimir Putin, earning himself a media blitz when he landed back home with the “prisoner of Zion,” Naama Issachar. Issachar, a backpacker caught with a few grams of hash at Moscow airport, was freed from prison and flew home with Netanyahu. Israel paid in hard currency for her release.
His plane engines had barely cooled, and Netanyahu was off to Entebbe, Uganda, where he faced the cameras on Feb. 3, alongside the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. We may well see additional handshakes with foreign leaders in the run-up to the March 2 elections and hear of dramatic developments in Israel’s ties with one or two Persian Gulf principalities.
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