Avigdor Liberman's life mission: to topple Netanyahu
Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman’s paramount mission is to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even if it means setting aside his prime ministerial ambitions.
Three Israeli politicians are competing to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They are Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party that is polling in second place after Netanyahu’s Likud; Gideon Saar, chair of the New Hope party that he formed recently as a right-wing alternative to the Likud party he quit; and Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, who insists Netanyahu must be replaced but refuses to promise that he will not join a Netanyahu-led government.
These three contenders know they will have to cooperate at the moment of truth, to constitute a blocking bloc against Netanyahu. Still, no one came up with a formula to untangle the growing complexities and contradicting ambitions ahead of the March 23 elections. That is, until Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beitenu party, delivered a simple proposal. Whichever one of us gets the most votes, he told the others, will be the candidate of the anti-Netanyahu bloc to form Israel’s next government.
Long after he was relegated to the status of a political wreck, with his party labeled a total loss, Liberman is now emerging as the operations officer of the “anyone-but-Netanyahu” camp, the linchpin and responsible adult of the political center. No one believed that the veteran hawk, whose constituency was initially based solely on immigrants from the former Soviet Union, could break the glass ceiling and conquer new territory. In the 2015 elections, his party barely made it over the electoral threshold, garnering the equivalent of five Knesset seats. However, Liberman has managed to inject new blood into his waning constituency of immigrants that is aging and dying off.
Those responsible to a large extent for the regeneration of his base are the ultra-Orthodox parties. Liberman is now riding a tsunami of hatred toward the two ultra-Orthodox parties over their interference in many aspects of daily life, tight control of budgets and top government positions, and monopoly over too many issues that shape Israeli society.
