Bennett’s greatest challenge might be Benny Gantz – opinion

In 2014, as Israel was fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Naftali Bennett, then Israel’s minister of economy, got into his white minivan and traveled down to the Gaza border.

As a member of the security cabinet, Bennett wanted to see for himself the deployment of IDF troops along that border, as well as the way the Iron Dome missile defense system was successfully intercepting the rockets that Hamas was firing into Israel.

What Bennett learned on those visits down south turned into the topic of a long State Comptroller report. Speaking to officers – some old friends he had served with during his own military service – Bennett learned that Military Intelligence had information on the location of about 30 tunnels that Hamas had dug from Gaza and under the border into Israel.

Bennett took this information back to the security cabinet and urged then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and chief of staff Benny Gantz to approve a ground invasion to neutralize the tunnels. The two refused. Backed by the head of Military Intelligence at the time (and now chief of staff) Aviv Kohavi, Netanyahu and Gantz argued that Hamas was deterred from using the tunnels and knew that if it did, it would be met by an aggressive Israeli response.

The rest is history. Hamas successfully used its cross-border tunnels in a number of deadly attacks that cost numerous Israeli lives. Bennett convinced the cabinet to approve a limited ground incursion into Gaza, and Operation Protective Edge – Israel’s name for the war – would carry on for 50 days, one of the longest conflicts in the nation’s history.

It would also be the catalyst for the bad blood that exists today between Bennett and Gantz. While some people thought Gantz did not know about the meetings the IDF officers under his command were then holding with Bennett, he did.

One of them, Ofer Winter, served during the war as commander of the Givati Brigade. Gantz knew about his conversations with Bennett but bit his tongue. Confronting a commander who has troops in Gaza in the middle of a war was not the right move. Instead, he waited to reprimand him after the war, and then suspended his promotion for a number of years.

While Gantz might have restrained himself during the war seven years ago, he no longer feels a need to do so. He has not forgotten or forgiven the way Bennett spoke about him then, when he called him weak, passive and ineffective as chief of staff. If the cabinet had listened to Gantz and not acted against the tunnels, Bennett said at the time, Israel would have “woken up to a terrible catastrophe.” He later accused Gantz of trembling when making decisions, and of leading Israel to a disaster.

All of this does not make for a healthy relationship even in politics, where personal insults are frequently swept aside for the good of the nation. Gantz did just that when he joined Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year – and look where it got him. While Netanyahu insulted him before they joined forces and afterward as well, Gantz tried to take the high road and restrained himself. In the end, it led to another election and his losing out on the premiership.

The last place Gantz thought he’d end up is in a government with Bennett as prime minister. Gantz does not like Bennett, and has very little respect for him and his way of management. Which is why everyone in the coalition is concerned about Gantz and what he might do. That he is unhappy is an understatement. What seems to really be happening is that Gantz is actively trying to bring down the government and unseat Bennett as its prime minister.

When the government was first formed, Bennett tried to be careful around his defense minster. It was no secret that Gantz was upset that he had been cheated by Netanyahu, and was now sitting in a coalition led by the chairman of a party that received fewer seats than he did in the election.

Bennett originally thought that showing respect and giving Gantz space and independence would do the trick. But then came reports on how Gantz is continuing to flirt with Likud about establishing an alternative government; and now the revelation about his Sunday night meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Gantz wants to bring down the coalition,” a senior member of the government said this week. “That is without a question.”

When Gantz first told Bennett about the upcoming meeting, the prime minister had two options. One was to come out against his defense minister, who likely would have ignored the protest and gone ahead with the trip to Ramallah. While that protest might have scored Bennett some points with the few right-wing voters he has left, it also would have exposed him, making him look like a prime minister who is not in control of his ministers.

The alternative was to claim that the meeting was coordinated, and then try to minimize its significance. That is why Bennett issued a statement claiming that the meeting was just about security coordination and nothing more. No diplomatic process, he stressed, was about to be launched.

On the one hand, all Gantz needs do to topple the government is vote against the budget, or simply quit the coalition. The problem is that both moves would be too obvious. Instead, his strategy is to constantly challenge the government and get it to crack on its own. That is what he did with the Abbas meeting.

While conventional thinking has it that Bennett was upset about the meeting since it caused him trouble on the Right, it is actually the Left that is his concern.

The Abbas-Gantz tête-à-tête has the potential to create the illusion that a diplomatic process is possible with the Palestinians. If Meretz and Labor members start to feel that progress is conceivable, that would put them in a place to make demands of Bennett – stop settlement construction, for example – which would then lead the government to implode from within.

Ministers admit that Gantz is not the same politician he was just a year ago. Then he was still under the belief that Netanyahu would stick to the coalition agreement between them, pass a budget and rotate out of the Prime Minister’s Office come November. Indeed, until a few weeks before the government fell in December, Gantz was still asking people if they believed Netanyahu was going to stick to the agreement.

That experience was humbling for Gantz. He went into the last election with polls showing that he might not cross the threshold. In the end he garnered eight seats, mostly because people seemed to feel bad for the “nice guy” who just wanted to do good but instead got cheated.

Now is his comeback opportunity, not only against Bennett whom he still doesn’t like since their 2014 encounter, but also against Lapid, whom he feels betrayed him when splitting their party and then pulling the strings that helped take Israel to a fourth election.

Gantz today feels less constrained. Netanyahu was the leader of a party with over 30 seats. Bennett has just six, and under the coalition agreement with Lapid, cannot fire ministers from the other side’s bloc. This means Bennett can’t even threaten Gantz with anything significant.

Can this situation be repaired? Probably not. Gantz feels like he has an opportunity to demonstrate leadership, and challenge a government that is led by a couple of politicians whom he doesn’t particularly like or want to succeed.

So why stay in? Because there is one person he still despises a bit more than Bennett and Lapid: Netanyahu. And as long as that is true, he will be afraid to upset his center-left voters by doing something too public that could bring Netanyahu back.

We all have experienced events in our lives that were predictable, that we just knew were going to happen. This was the case last week when security footage from the southern section of the Western Wall showed people urinating at the site.

It was a symbolic image that illustrated not only how dilapidated is the egalitarian prayer plaza at the site, but also what people think about it: that it is not a prayer site but only a bunch of old stones that you can relieve yourself on if you need to.

Can any of you imagine people urinating in the men’s section of the Kotel? The women’s section? Of course not. Not only are there proper bathrooms and facilities nearby, but the site is holy. Who would do something like that?

While some people might dismiss the above and claim that it was just a couple of hooligans, it was far more than that, and the Israeli government is to blame for this situation. Every day that passes at the southern Kotel whereby the government does not fix the situation and build a respectable prayer plaza for pluralistic-progressive prayer is a day that desecrates the holy site.

This has got to change, and there is no better time than now, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

If Bennett and Lapid really believe that they are leading a “change government,” then it is time to change the shameful situation that was created by former prime minister Netanyahu, who in 2016 approved a plan to upgrade the plaza and formally recognize pluralistic prayer at the Kotel, and then overturned the decision 18 months later.

Not only has the situation at the Kotel alienated millions of Jews in the Diaspora, but it is a continued stain on the State of Israel and its claim to be the Jewish state and the homeland for all Jews. Living up to that status means accepting all Jews no matter what they believe and how they practice. So far, this change government has done very little to change that situation.

All that is needed is five minutes in the cabinet, one vote that would easily pass, and the allocation of a few million shekels. That’s it. Nothing more. Every day that passes and the government does not fix this situation makes Israel’s ministers complicit in the continued desecration of what is one of the holiest sites for the Jewish people.

So, let’s make this a real New Year and upgrade the Kotel. Show the Jewish people that they are all welcome in Israel, and can pray here as they wish. It is time to do the right thing.

Shana Tova!