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Netanyahu’s Survival Is in the Hands of a Fickle Former Friend

Netanyahu’s Survival Is in the Hands of a Fickle Former Friend

(Bloomberg) -- Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival may depend on the support of a one-time ally who’s turned on him.

Avigdor Liberman, the blunt-talking hardliner who was instrumental in Netanyahu’s rise to power in 1996, is shaping up to be the kingmaker of Israel’s Sept. 17 election, and that’s reason for the premier to worry. In May, Liberman blindsided Netanyahu by refusing to join his coalition in a tussle over military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews. The prime minister’s political hand doesn’t seem to have strengthened since.

Netanyahu’s Survival Is in the Hands of a Fickle Former Friend

“The ultra-Orthodox are dragging the country backwards in every way,” Liberman said Sept. 7.

Liberman’s tough stand against sweeping privileges for ultra-Orthodox men has resonated among voters on both left and right in a country where the military draft is compulsory and many resent the concession, polls show. If the surveys prove right, his Yisrael Beitenu party will double its parliamentary representation, giving him the power to crown the prime minister once again -- or send Israel into the post-Netanyahu age after more than a decade.

“At the moment, according to the polls, neither bloc has a majority,” said Ashley Perry, a political consultant, referring to the right-wing and center-left groupings in parliament. “Liberman thus becomes the kingmaker if the polls are correct.”

Netanyahu’s Survival Is in the Hands of a Fickle Former Friend

Would-Be Premier

Netanyahu’s legal woes -- he faces possible indictment on charges including bribery and fraud -- are a major reason he’s desperate to stay in power for a fifth term. The prime minister has been playing up the precariousness of his position in an effort to persuade nationalists to vote for his Likud party. Bibi, as Netanyahu is widely known, has also invoked his close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump to suggest his 13 years in power make him the best candidate to represent Israel’s interests on the international stage.

Liberman, who has prime ministerial aspirations of his own, has been one of Israel’s most polarizing politicians in the past two decades. He unsuccessfully crusaded for loyalty oaths from Israeli Arab citizens, and has proposed trading land where Israeli Arab communities stand for West Bank territory populated by settlers like himself.

Once Israel’s top diplomat -- his resume has included stints as foreign minister and defense minister in Netanyahu governments -- he’s made no secret of his hardline views. He’s said Israeli Arab lawmakers who met with the Gaza Strip’s militant Hamas leaders should be executed, and that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak “could go to hell.” Liberman declined repeated requests for an interview.

Moldovan-born, with a heavy Russian accent that persists, the 61-year-old Liberman once dreamed of a career in literature or film. But after moving to Israel, he became politically active as a university student, and later offered to work for Netanyahu when he entered politics in the late 1980s. His bet on the young politician paid off, and Netanyahu appointed him to the powerful position of director of the prime minister’s office after his 1996 election.

The two parted ways over Netanyahu’s approach to the Palestinians, and Liberman quit Likud to form Yisrael Beitenu in 1999. The two have since had a tumultuous history of breakups and reconciliations.

“This is one of those friendships tested at life’s every juncture, sometimes crushed, sometimes weakened,” Liberman says in a new documentary, Lieber-man, directed by Nurit Kedar.

While Liberman has a reputation as an ultranationalist, he’s no ideologue. His nationalism is propelled by security concerns rather than the religious conviction that God promised the Jews all the biblical Land of Israel -- including east Jerusalem and the West Bank that Palestinians want for a future state. He once said he’d be willing to evacuate his own home in the Nokdim settlement if peace with the Palestinians could be achieved.

“He is seen as very pragmatic, Machiavellian pragmatic, to the extent that if the situation calls for making far-reaching compromise, as long as he can guarantee security, he has no sentimentality for religion or commitment to West Bank territory,” said Professor Tamar Hermann, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy.

Liberman’s pragmatism -- some say opportunism -- has also extended to the religious-secular divide. A defiant secularist, he’s sat in coalitions with ultra-Orthodox parties, but he set this election’s agenda fighting them. His campaign has drawn support beyond his core constituency of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, whose Jewishness, in many cases, has been questioned by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate that controls issues of religion and state.

Netanyahu’s Survival Is in the Hands of a Fickle Former Friend

“The secular segment of the Israeli society, which is about 43% of the electorate, has been pretty passive over the past two decades and now people are starting to feel the ultra-Orthodox demands are indigestible and intolerable,” Hermann said. “This is where Liberman comes into the picture. At last there is a leader that has this as his primary concern.”

United Government

Liberman wants to freeze the ultra-Orthodox out of the next governing coalition, and is calling for a national unity government consisting of his party, Likud, and the Blue and White bloc led by former military chief Benny Gantz.

With Likud and Blue and White running neck and neck in polls, but neither able to form a government without him, Liberman’s support may be crucial.

“He is a politician above all,” Kedar said. “There is no one more goal-oriented than he is.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Riad Hamade at rhamade@bloomberg.net, ;Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel

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