As Netanyahu Meets Trump, His Troubles Back Home Intensify

(Bloomberg) -- As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared for a White House meeting with President Donald Trump that will focus on Iran and peacemaking, his troubles at home multiplied.

Coalition partners threatened to bring down the government and force early elections over ultra-Orthodox military enlistment. While the threats intensified, Israeli media reported that Nir Hefetz became the third Netanyahu confidant to agree to testify against the prime minister, who has become entangled in multiple corruption probes.

The agreement with Hefetz, Netanyahu’s longtime spokesman, “makes it seem like we’re moving one step closer to an indictment,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and political consultant at the Mitvim research institute. “We assume that if there’s an agreement for him to be a state witness, then he has something to offer.”

It is unclear whether the other two state witnesses have offered significant information regarding the three corruption cases in which Netanyahu has been implicated. Police declined to say if Hefetz had turned against his former boss, who is most recently suspected of helping Israel’s largest telecommunications company, Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Corp., win benefits in exchange for sympathetic coverage by a media unit. Police have already recommended charging Netanyahu in two other influence-peddling cases.

Clouding Visit

Hefetz’s defection and the early elections talk put a damper on Netanyahu’s visit to the Trump White House on Monday, which was seen as offering him an opportunity to divert attention away from domestic problems and to highlight his warm relations with the U.S. administration. If his government falls, elections could be held as early as this summer instead of late 2019, when the term expires, analysts said.

Early elections aren’t necessarily a bad thing for Netanyahu, Israel’s second-longest-serving prime minister. His Likud party has been polling well in recent weeks as his political base rallies around him while the allegations of corruption against him mount. Although it’s not clear he wants early elections, if polls continue to show him faring well, that could influence him to seek a vote before he is weakened politically by a possible indictment, analysts said.

“According to the polls, he would win,” said Chaim Weizmann, who teaches politics at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “After he won in 2015, he became convinced that he is the chosen one. It’s him and then God. This is the order.” 

Ultra-Orthodox political party leaders are threatening to vote against the 2019 budget unless the coalition first passes legislation to exempt ultra-Orthodox men from military service. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has vowed to block such legislation, and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has said his Kulanu party will quit the coalition and deprive it of its parliamentary majority if the Knesset doesn’t approve the spending plan before going on Passover recess next week.

Little to Gain

Polls show that most coalition parties have little to gain from an early vote. Some may be calculating that any indictment of Netanyahu is certain to spark political turmoil, and that it may be better to head into elections early standing up for an issue popular with their constituencies.

“Sometimes you wind up going to elections with no party really wanting them,” said Shmuel Sandler, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist. “Nobody can gain from an election. The ultra-Orthodox have their ideal coalition and the other parties aren’t polling much better than their current seat count.”

Netanyahu said he is working to resolve the issue.

“There is no reason for this to happen, and with goodwill, it won’t,” he said before departing to Washington.

The debate over ultra-Orthodox military enlistment is highly charged and many secular Israelis resent the exemption, which had existed under other governments. Netanyahu’s previous coalition passed legislation in 2014 requiring ultra-Orthodox men to serve, but ultra-Orthodox parties demanded its revocation as their price for joining the current government.

Their attempt at amending the 2014 law was struck down last year by Israel’s High Court as perpetuating inequality.

--With assistance from Yaacov Benmeleh and Jonathan Ferziger

To contact the reporter on this story: David Wainer in Tel Aviv at dwainer3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Mark Williams

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