Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz is new to Israeli politics. He has been at it for less than a year, and yet in this short time, he’s already been through two election campaigns. As head of the Blue and White party, he has also managed to position himself as that party’s natural candidate for prime minister.
This is no mean feat. On his way to achieving this objective, he not only had to come out unscathed from an ugly campaign of personal attacks by the Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also had to overcome the skepticism voiced behind his back by his fellow members of the Blue and White leadership. The climax came in the April election campaign when the No. 4 person on the party’s list, former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, said in an interview with Channel 12 that he will have “a hand on the steering wheel.” In other words, he will be supervising Gantz. It was obvious what he was insinuating. Gantz wasn’t happy to hear it, and that’s putting it lightly. Ashkenazi is eying the prime minister’s office for himself, just as is the No. 2 person on the list, Yair Lapid. These voices of skepticism died down after Blue and White’s achievement in the April election when it won 35 seats. They died down even more after the September election when Blue and White became the biggest party in the Knesset.
