Benjamin Netanyahu’s Referendum Has Arrived

0:02 Bloomberg Audio Studios.

0:04 Podcasts. Radio. News. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who's contesting this election and hopes to extend his already record reign with another term, has sought effectively to change his public image from that of Chamberlain to that of Churchill.

0:25 I'm David Gurra, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, I talk to Bloomberg's Dan Williams, who covers Israel. about what's at stake when Israelis head to the polls for the first time since the October 7th attacks. What could this pivotal election mean for Israel's future and the future of the region? Dan, I go back to the days and weeks after October 7th, and there was this kind of widespread belief that Benjamin Netanyahu couldn't weather what had happened in the aftermath of it.

0:57 This is the first time the Israeli electorate has a chance to register their approval or disapproval of the job that he has done, how he handled that attack and the war that followed. What have the polls said about Netanyahu's popularity?

1:10 It's worth remembering that no party in the history of Israel, no single party, has ever gained enough seats to dominate parliament and go it alone in government. These are always coalition governments. As a result, he and presumably his main challenger, Gadi Eizenkot, which polls showing running fairly neck and neck, will both be tasked one at a time. And the first will presumably be the one that does better in the election with forming a government. I think Israelis are tired.

1:39 We're not seeing major street protests, demonstrations, scuffles and the like. Even the posters put up in alleyways, streets, highways are pretty lackluster in their appeal, I.

1:51 Have to say.

1:52 But I think it comes down to the fact that people have been fighting an actual war. and those streets and highways have been decked by posters remembering hostages assailing Netanyahu over October 7th, trying to mobilize or maintain the mobilization of popular support for a war many Israelis deem as necessary and existential. So the energy has been drained from that, but that does not mean there will be a low turnout. There are indications there will be an unusually high turnout, indeed, with people having already decided long ago how they're going to vote, finally getting a chance to cast that ballot.

2:28 Dan, it sounds like there is a real urge here to look back. That's what's kind of driving a lot of the momentum to the polls in the coming days. Can you draw the contrast for us between Gadi Eisenkot's vision for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu's?

2:41 At large, when you actually look at what they say, there's not much of a difference. And I think this feeds back to the idea that this election is really a referendum on a person. It's really an election over Netanyahu himself. I don't think anyone has a magic formula for Israel's problems in the long run. In terms of policy, when you ask Eisenkot, and he certainly was asked on the campaign trail, he very quickly farms out the certain issues to a staff, running mates, as you were, a slate of Knesset members that he would like to see in parliament alongside him. He's very confident, obviously, on military matters.

3:21 He is an ex-general, Israel's former pop-general. So on that point, he's been very strong, and he's actually parted with consensus. He will state flat out that he wants to see the so-called hilltop youth, extremist settlers, reined in. I'm not sure his rise to the premiership would be good news to Israel's enemies or Palestinians who've suffered under Israeli rule for decades, because he's widely considered by them to be a hawk. who will pursue similar policies if perhaps less in favor of Israeli settlement of the West Bank. We're not about to see a rolling back of Israel's presence in Gaza or Lebanon. He's already stated flat out that within 18 months of him becoming prime minister, if that should happen, Hamas will either be destroyed by Israeli force

4:07 or destroyed by a consensual decision to disarm and be dismantled in the Gaza Strip.

4:13 How often does he talk about one of his sons who died in the Gaza War? How big an issue has that been in this campaign, his very personal connection to the Gaza War?

4:21 It is a very personal connection. It's worth noting that not only his son, he lost two nephews as well. So this was a major blow to him. His son's funeral was attended today. by an ashen-faced Netanyahu. At the time, Gadi Azenkot was actually a member of the war cabinet, so he was running the war. He was informed of his son's death while attending a briefing about the Gaza fighting on the Gaza periphery. He said that the loss of his son is for him a reminder of the need to rein in unnecessary war unnecessarily protracted war. He's accused the prime minister of extending the Gaza war unnecessarily for political reasons. That's obviously something that's been disputed by Netanyahu. However, I think it's beyond dispute that there is an extra

5:12 gravitas about him, a gravitas of grief, which is appealing to many Israelis in the sense that they don't doubt his sincerity.

5:22 October 7th, continuing to loom large, what happened after October 7th as well. When you look at sort of the issues that are animating this campaign, are they mostly having to do with October 7th and foreign policy, or are there others that you had known?

5:35 I think everything flows from October 7th, and I'll give you an example. One major point of dispute between entire camps in Israel, which will come to the fore in this election, is the waiver from military conscription that has been enjoyed by ultra-Orthodox Jews going back decades in the name of preserving their religious scholarship. However, fast forward several generations, especially given the large birth rates, the large family size of these communities, they now number between 15 and 18 percent of the Israeli population. They are welfare dependent, by and large, and the fact they do not contribute to the military burden, one that's been very, very sorely felt by Israelis by and large, especially reservists, who had to

6:23 drop everything, families, career, studies in the case of students, and sign up sometimes for hundreds of days of reserve duty with a cost to their professional lives, sometimes to their private lives, their marriages, their relationships with their children, while an entire sector of the population did not have to suffer that, and indeed did not have to suffer the worst result of the war, which is the proverbial knock at the door by notification officers. to tell the family that their son or their brother, their husband or their father has died in the course of this war.

6:59 That is really something that's deemed unforgivable by large swathes of the Israeli populace. So yes, this might have been, and it certainly was an issue in previous elections. Now it's sorely felt.

7:12 After the break, my conversation with Dan Williams continues. Dan, what would a loss mean for Benjamin Netanyahu and his party? What would it say about his long 10 years as the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history? What would that defeat mean were it to happen?

7:39 A defeat would play out slowly on the assumption the Likud party headed by Netanyahu comes out second in this election after Eisenkot's party. Then again, he would probably have a chance at forming a government if Eisenkot fails to do so. If Eisenkot succeeds and if Netanyahu fails, therefore, to be the prime minister, he would presumably head the opposition. However, I think what's going to happen is that knives will come out in the Likud party. There will be an intimation from the new government that the Likud party is welcome to join in an extended, broad national security government on condition they jettison Netanyahu as their leader. Personally, his prospects could be quite dim. He is 77, he just

8:24 turned 77, he's under indictment. He's been for several years now in a corruption trial. He denies any wrongdoing. He's also a man that's well-known abroad. However, his travel abroad, his wings have been clipped because the ICC has issued arrest warrants against him. And in much of the world, at least much of the world that he would want to visit, he cannot travel, he cannot land for fear of being arrested on the spot. And his opponents, his critics, suggest Part of the reason he's holding onto the national helm so hard is because he simply doesn't want to face life after that premiership.

9:03 Were he to lose, I wonder what happens to members of his current coalition, particularly those who are far right, one-time fringe members who have found their way into Netanyahu's current cabinet. Do they continue to have influence going forward if Netanyahu were to lose?

9:18 If he loses on the assumption someone like Eisenkot or the so-called change camp takes over the government, then no. Certainly, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right, hardline settler who now runs the National Security Ministry, de facto the minister for police and prisons, he will not be invited back to any such coalition.

9:40 It's extremely unlikely that Bacala Smotrich, also hard-right, also hardline settler, the finance minister, but I think he's equally, perhaps more interested in the role he carved out for himself in the defence ministry, managing settlements in the West Bank. For that reason, he won't be invited back either.

9:59 Dan, how do you think about the Israel a new prime minister would inherit? I'm thinking about the level of trauma that you've described in the population, thinking of how many reservists are serving at great cost to their families, the jobs they would typically perform, the tensions over settler violence in the West Bank. Given where the general population is after October 7th, Would anything change on the ground in Gaza?

10:20 In Gaza, unlikely, although what we might see is a new government, a post-Netanyahu government, or even a Netanyahu government shorn of the far-rightists. He's given some indications that he might try, if made prime minister again, to find a way to bring alternative partners, certainly to Ben-Gavir, perhaps to Smotrich as well. Then he might be in a position to, should we say, lean toward a top gap situation in Gaza.

10:50 Right now, he's saying there'll be no reconstruction as long as Hamas is not fully disarmed, fully dismantled. So the question now is, given Hamas is holding onto its guns, given that there may not be the energy or the support right now for a renewed war, is it possible in the 64% of the Gaza Strip that the Israelis have controlled since the ceasefire was signed about a year ago, is it possible to start reconstructing there while leaving the question of the Hamas rule 30% in the air? That is something that I think foreign mediators, the Board of Peace, Jared Kushner, Trump's main envoy to this matter, would all welcome.

11:31 It's something that Netanyahu cannot really broach or accept at this point, because the optics of reconstruction going on while Hamas is still in charge, the optics of life returning to normal for some Palestinians, while other Palestinians are living under and presumably serving with and supportive of Hamas, would be intolerable for that far right wing of Netanyahu's current coalition.

11:55 Dan, we've talked about what might happen were Gadi Eisenkant to win this election. If Benjamin Netanyahu were to stay in power, what would that say about his legacy? What would it say about his sway over the government and the general population? What would it tell us about the direction of Israel's future, at least in the near term?

12:11 In the near term, that Israelis are still in the grip of existential fear, something that I think Netanyahu has tried to drum up, especially in recent weeks, as this election has reached its head. That fear trumps being accepted by the world, at least the bulk of the Western world that has really been aghast at the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip and in certain parts of Western Europe, and even certain precincts of the Democratic Party in the United States have shown a willingness to impose sanctions on Israel over that. Israelis have paid a massive price in blood for this war. Just to put things in perspective, the death toll here, in this war, if you factor in or adjust for population size, come out to about

13:00 four and a half times the number of US troops lost in the entirety of the Afghan and the Iraqi campaigns. Despite that massive sacrifice, the deepening isolation of the country, there's every indication that most Israelis have called upon again to mobilize for another war. And there's talk in the air of potentially an imminent resumption of attacks on Iran, they would turn up. So if Netanyahu is voted in one more time, there will be a great deal of rancor.

13:29 Some Israelis, especially those with portable professions and means, will emigrate abroad. There has been a degree of brain drain seen by Israelis who simply don't want to expose their children to this, perhaps disagree with the politics. But the population in general, I think, will soldier on while the opposition tries to devise ways of bringing him down and perhaps hope that that the fact that he's 77 years old, the fact that some members of his party may be towering in his leadership, will also have their own effect in ousting him one way or the other.

14:05 This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurra. The show is hosted by me, Sarah Holder, and Juan Ha. The show is made by David Fox, Jeff Grocott, Naomi Ng, Julia Press, Naomi Chavin, Julia Weaver, Yang Yang, Aaron Edwards, Patty Hirsch, Tracy Samuelson, Sean Carter II, Emma Munger, and Alex Agura. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster-Boer. If you liked this episode, please leave a review wherever you listen.

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