Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s prime minister no more. What does this transition mean for Israel, the Middle East and the world?

Gil Tamary, chief international news editor and commentator of Israel’s Channel 13 News, takes us on a deep dive into Israeli politics and society post-Benjamin Netanyahu. He joins hosts Peter Schechter and Muni Jensen on Altamar’s latest podcast episode to discuss a post-Bibi world and what that means for the future of Israeli politics. 

Tamary, one of Israel’s top news reporters, has interviewed key U.S. leaders such as Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, as well as many of Israel’s prime ministers.

After serving in office for more than a dozen years, Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu was ousted and replaced with a “pretzel coalition government” of parties with deep ideological differences. Former Prime Minister Netanyahu has been the dominant fixture in Israel’s politics, seemingly unbeatable despite charges of corruption and his role in deeply polarizing Israeli society. How did his tenured time come to an end, and what can we expect from this unlikely coalition?

Netanyahu Adopts Trump’s Tactics

“Israel is better off without [Former Prime Minister] Netanyahu. It became very clear in the last two years that even though Netanyahu enjoyed the highest support and was the head of the largest party in Israel, he simply could not have a majority in the Knesset. And the only reason he couldn’t have the majority is not due to ideological matters, but because of his personality,” explains Gil Tamary. 

Netanyahu is frequently compared with former President Donald Trump, says Tamary. “In the last five years, I don’t remember even one trick from the Trump playbook that Bibi didn’t implement in one way or another in Israel. … His latest trick was to claim, of course, that the election was stolen from him. Same words that we still hear from Trump. Bibi spoke in a way that was very inflammatory, very divisive, and many were afraid that, in the last week, when he said those things in such a rhetoric, that we would actually see in Israel a January 6th moment. And it was frightening.”

Even as the world says “bye bye Bibi,” it is clear that former Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political persona is not going away. “[Bibi] will stay as the opposition leader. He needs this political platform because he still has to deal with his corruption trials, and we will see that he will criticize every move of the new government and will probably act the same way he did many years ago during the [Yitzhak] Rabin era as the head of the opposition back then when he took a major part in the anti-Rabin campaign,” says Tamary. 

The ‘Pretzel’ Coalition

The new government is held together by a combination of the most unlikely coalition partners. Presumably lasting four years, the rotation government consists of a coalition headed by two parties, the rightist Yamina and the centrist Yesh Atid. They are also joined — for the first time in Israel’s history — by an Arab party, the Islamist Ra’am party, under Mansour Abbas. 

“It’s important to mention that they’re [Ra’am] not going to actually sit in the government, instead they would rather have all the crucial positions in the parliament. Those are the chairs of all the committees and the sub-committees like the internal committee, for instance, that are related to their issues. 

Mansour Abbas, the head of the Islamist party, is quite a character. He is a dentist by profession and is a very practical guy. And for the first time ever, the Arab minority in Israel has a leader that leaves ideology aside and looks where he can advance the interests and the needs of his constituency. Up until now, Arab parties held to certain slogans and principles, but never came to realize that sometimes you need to hold your breath, take the plunge, and start working from within the government to improve the livelihood of the Arab population, which is far behind the Jewish population,” notes Tamary. 

United By Opposition to Former Prime Minister Netanyahu

But with a new coalition ushering in a new era in Israel, the question on everyone’s minds is how will this new coalition government survive? Will it be able to govern, will it crumble, or will it turn on itself?

“What unites all of them is the anti-Bibi agenda, or in other words, the rationale or the desire to clean the toxic political environment that Netanyahu created in his 12 long years in power. They want to stop the incitement, the delegitimization campaign for certain groups and certain mechanisms in Israeli society and democracy that Bibi conducted in order to actually fortify his political power,” comments Tamary. 

But with such a strange assortment of parties and beliefs, an important consideration is how to measure this government’s success. 

“Success metrics in the post-Netanyahu era actually are very modest and very simple. Can right-wingers and left-wingers work together and not see each other as enemies? Can they advance together needed reforms in Israel: economic reform, social reform, educational reform, infrastructure reform, justice reform and all the things that Netanyahu didn’t bother to do?” says Tamary. 

A Rotating Leader At the Helm

With a coalition of three very different party leaders, there will be a rotating role at the helm of government. Naftali Bennett will take on the prime minister post now, and in two years, Yair Lapid will take over that role.

“In the coming period, everyone, of course, will be talking about Naftali Bennett, the new prime minister. But the more important guy to know as of right now is Yair Lapid. Lapid enabled Naftali Bennett to become Israel’s prime minister. 

“And according to the agreement between these two guys, [Lapid] is going to be Israel’s prime minister in two years. So actually, if everything works out the way planned, they will divide the four-year term equally between the two of them. Yair Lapid is the head of the second-largest party in Israel. This is a centrist party; its official name is Yesh Atid,” explains Tamary. 

Altamar is a global politics podcast hosted by former Atlantic Council senior vice president Peter Schechter and award-winning journalist Muni Jensen. 

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