How Opposition leader in Israel plans to bring down new government

On top of all the challenges Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett already faces in trying to hold an unlikely, ideologically-diverse ruling coalition together, analysts say he also has to deal with a concerted attempt by his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage the government’s work and bring it down.

On June 13, Israel’s parliament swore in a new eight-party coalition government – led by right-wing nationalist Bennett  – featuring an alliance of left-wing, centrist and right-wing parties, as well as a party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

It brought an end to the 12-year premiership of Netanyahu, the most dominant Israeli politician of his generation, who had failed to form a government after Israel’s March 23 election – its fourth in two years.

Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, on charges he denies, has only deepened his desperation to return to power, and as the Knesset’s new opposition leader and the head of Likud, the largest party in parliament, he and his allies have been using a range of political tactics to frustrate the government.

“Netanyahu and Likud are determined to undermine the ability of this government to function properly,” Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar professor emerita of Jewish Studies at Smith College, told Al Jazeera.

“They are deploying every Knesset rule and procedure to oppose anything the government proposes.”

“They have added to the disorder in what is typically not an entirely civil discourse. So, Netanyahu’s approach is to set up all sorts of roadblocks to the reforms and legislation the coalition wants,” she said.

‘Three strategies’

“Netanyahu has embraced three strategies in his desperate attempt to enable his own return to power and by doing so, perhaps, escape yet again having to face an assortment of criminal charges against him,” Ian Lustick, professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, told Al Jazeera.

He said the first strategy is to use a variety of procedural devices, insults, and personal smears to create an image of the new government as illegitimate or fraudulent.

“This includes disrupting Knesset sessions, refusing until recently to vacate the prime minister’s house, and insisting that his followers continue to refer to Netanyahu as prime minister,” Lustick said.

Netanyahu has also undermined Bennett’s authority by acting as if he were still in power, including when he recently informed the public that he had called the CEOs of the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna to acquire new supplies of COVID vaccine doses for Israel. BBC