Nothing Biden Does Can Remove Netanyahu. BY Anshel Pfeffer

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is incapable of taking responsibility for October 7 and has no intention of ever resigning. Until his rivals in the Knesset get their act together, no outside pressure will get him out of office

US President Joe Biden meets Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in October.

US President Joe Biden meets Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in October.Credit: EyePress Newsvia Reuters Connect

Anshel Pfeffer

Joe Biden is rightly frustrated with Benjamin Netanyahu. The American president has supported Israel to the hilt since October 7 and in return Netanyahu has turned down all of Biden's requests that Israel take more care in avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza, allow more humanitarian aid in, and work towards at least a temporary ceasefire.

Despite all that, Biden's support for Israel remains solid. Instead of cutting off arms supplies or ending the U.S. veto on UN Security Council resolutions imposing a ceasefire on Israel, he is trying to target Netanyahu, just Netanyahu. So far, he has openly encouraged senior Democratic figures like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, known for their support for Israel, to openly criticize the prime minister and urge Israelis to replace him.

This may be an outlet for the president's frustrations, but it will not help end Netanyahu's premiership any sooner. The only realistic way to get rid of Netanyahu is by dissolving the Knesset and holding early elections, and the Biden administration has no influence over the internal parliamentary machinations that can make that happen.

Foreign observers, even those who are close allies, like Biden, who know a bit about Israel, are still surprised that Netanyahu is hanging on. It should indeed beggar belief that a man who is not only responsible for the strategy that led Israel into the worst and most tragic debacle of its history, is still in office, exacerbated by the fact that according to every poll, an overwhelming majority of Israelis, including most of those who voted for the parties of his coalition just sixteen months ago see him as responsible. But it is totally believable when that man is Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is incapable of either feeling shame or taking responsibility. He sees himself as the ultimate victim of October 7, the strong and righteous leader let down by idiots and traitors. He has no intention of ever resigning on his own accord.

Even though many in his coalition of fascists and fundamentalists will tell you in private that Netanyahu is responsible, they also know that they will never again have a prime minister prepared to award them massive chunks of power and billions of shekels in taxpayers money simply to be prime minister. They read the polls as well and know that this is not an opportunity that will recur in their political careers, and they aren't about to end their time in a government where they can dictate their terms to a beleaguered prime minister even a day earlier than they need to.

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And as long as the coalition's majority remains intact, the Knesset can't be dissolved and early elections can't be held. The Biden administration has no control over that.

That doesn't mean that there is no chance of dissolving the Knesset and bringing the elections forward. It isn't inconceivable that the five rebels necessary to bring down the government can be found from among the original coalition of 64, or that one of the parties of the coalition will break away, perhaps over the terms of the hostage agreement or due to the Supreme Court forcing the government to start drafting Haredi students and cutting funds to their yeshivot.

Those scenarios are plausible, but Netanyahu, who has dealt with more coalition crises than anyone, will find his way to delay and prevaricate, with the help of his patsy Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who will certainly block any no confidence votes during the Passover recess. Any serious move to dissolve the Knesset is unlikely before late May, when the Knesset reconvenes, at the earliest.

And even when that happens, for a dissolution vote to succeed, there has to be a serious parliamentary strategist handling it. Someone who can take on Netanyahu's machine.

Netanyahu's self-inflated image as a serial election winner is, of course, a myth. He may have won more Israeli elections than any other party leader, but that is only because he's fought many more elections than anyone else. He's had more than his fair share of losses and ties as well. What the losses he's suffered all have in common that they were engineered by parliamentarians who could anticipate his moves and build alternative majorities.

Three of those – Ehud Barak who ended Netanyahu's first term in 1999, Ariel Sharon who kept him out of the prime minister's office in the early 2000s and Ehud Olmert, who served Netanyahu his worst electoral defeat in 2006 – are now retired, dead or disgraced.

The two other men who bested Netanyahu are Avigdor Lieberman who pulled out of Netanyahu's prospective coalition at the last moment in 2019, denying him a majority and forcing a series of tied elections, and Yair Lapid who, in 2021, formed the "government of change" coalition by coming up with the master-stroke of offering Naftali Bennett the job of prime minister, prizing him away from the Netanyahu camp.

But Lapid now, despite being officially the Leader of the Opposition, has no control over the other opposition parties, especially with his party Yesh Atid languishing in the polls and Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beitenu party is actually going up in the polls, is biding his time. His official position is that this isn't yet the moment to hold an election, with the war still ongoing.

Another top political operator, Gideon Sa'ar, who in the past orchestrated the downfall of governments when he was still Netanyahu's lieutenant, was until last week in an uneasy alliance with Benny Gantz. This week he finally broke the partnership, and is now the leader of his own tiny party of four MKs. He is waiting for his moment as well, but it has yet to come.

Gantz, the man who would be prime minister if an election were held right now, is no political strategist. His success in the polls is due to his image now as being both an opposition to Netanyahu and at the same time willing to serve under him in the emergency war cabinet. He embodies the impossible Israeli aspiration for a feeling of national unity at wartime, despite Netanyahu not suspending his own divisive and poisonous smear campaigns for a minute.

But Gantz, and the senior administration officials he met recently in Washington who have only started to understand this, has got neither the stomach for another bruising political fight with Netanyahu nor the strategic smarts to outmaneuver him. Gantz may become the next prime minister of Israel, but he won't engineer the birth of the elections that will make that happen. Someone else will have to do that for him.

Lapid, Lieberman and Sa'ar could together topple Netanyahu. They know how to marshal MKs from disparate parties into voting together, how to sniff out defectors and bring them over to their side. And most crucially, they know Netanyahu, how he thinks and operates.

But since they all have their own parties' interests in mind and are in no rush to make Gantz, whom none of them rate very highly, the next prime minister, they have yet to choose their moment. When they do, and only then, can we start speaking seriously about an early election taking place.

Until then, Biden is not only wasting his time by targeting Netanyahu, he's probably helping him to portray himself as the brave leader standing up for Israel against the entire hostile world.