Like or hate Israel’s new government, blame it on one person’s vanity.
But Netanyahu apparently wanted to be King Bibi and rule for life.
Leaders make friends, enemies
Netanyahu had been PM for more than a dozen years.
Over that time, all leaders form friendships of convenience and at the same time find the number of foes increasing.
In Netanyahu’s case, the foes outnumbered the friends. Many, former members of the Likud, left the party to form new parties. The new parties had similar political philosophies, but they were “Netanyahu free.”
This is not a new phenomenon. Netanyahu drove former PM Yitzhak Shamir from the Likud. Shamir then formed a new party. (See Yitzhak Shamir mini-biography, below)
Finance Minister Israel Katz told activists for the ruling Likud that in an attempt to prevent the party’s fall from power, he had suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu step aside temporarily to enable the formation of a right-wing government. (https://tinyurl.com/yxzelhg6)
Netanyahu refused, even though Katz (illegally ?) promised that Netanyahu could continue to reside in the PM’s residence while he “vacationed” for a year.
Unlikely bedfellows
Because Netanyahu refused to accept the reality that, after three elections he still was unable to form a stable right-wing government, other politicians, notably Yamina's Naftali Bennett (right-wing) and Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid (centrist) cobbled together a coalition of parties whose main goal was Netanyahu’s removal as PM.
Politically, the coalition members run the gamut from far left to moderate right. The haredi parties representing Shas (headed by a convicted criminal) and United Torah refused to participate in a national unity government that included the Muslim’s Ra’am party and leftist parties they consider anti-haredi.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his minions are behaving like the sore losers they are, like spoiled toddlers who failed to get what they want the instant they want it.
Netanyahu repeatedly promises — or threatens, depending on the point of view — to being down the current government, and his sycophants either try to shout down the new PM (Bennett) and his coalition members or, like petulant children, walk out of the Knesset. Either way, they cannot do the business of the state, the job their parties — not the individuals — were elected to perform.
A better man
Netanyahu had an admirable record, some of which he actually deserved. (He claimed he created the Abraham Accords, for example. The accords that attempt to “normalize” relations between Israel and Muslim countries were conceived and implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump using U.S. assets as a carrot to encourage Muslims to recognize Israel as a country with a right to exist.)
Unfortunately, his forced exit from power and his behavior will be remembered long after anything positive he may have honestly accomplished.
Had Netanyahu done what previous “retired” PMs had done, his positive reputation would remain intact.
Many of Netanyahu’s predecessors as PM knew when to step aside. The following are excerpts from Wikipedia biographies.
David Ben-Gurion retired from politics in 1970 and spent his last years living in a modest home on the kibbutz, working on an 11-volume history of Israel's early years. In 1971, he visited Israeli positions along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition. (https://tinyurl.com/gtkoro9)
Moshe Sharett during his retirement he became chairman of Am Oved publishing house, Chairman of Beit Berl College, and Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. (https://tinyurl.com/yfpx8l4j)
Levi Eshkol and Yigal Allon died
Golda Meir resigned on April 11, 1974. She believed that was the "will of the people" and that she had served enough time as premier. She believed the government needed to form a coalition. She said, "Five years are sufficient ... It is beyond my strength to continue carrying this burden.” (https://tinyurl.com/nlmgqsp)
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing extremist who opposed the signing of the Oslo Accords. (https://tinyurl.com/mrwvu7d)
Yitzhak Shamir was defeated by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 election. He stepped down from the Likud leadership in March 1993, but remained a member of the Knesset until the 1996 election. For some time, Shamir was a critic of his Likud successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, as being too indecisive in dealing with the Arabs. Shamir went so far as to resign from the Likud in 1998 and endorse Herut, a right-wing splinter movement led by Benny Begin, which later joined the National Union during the 1999 election. After Netanyahu was defeated, Shamir returned to the Likud fold and supported Ariel Sharon in the 2001 election. Subsequently, in his late eighties, Shamir ceased making public comments. Shamir's health declined, with the progression of his Alzheimer's disease, and he was moved to a nursing home. The government turned down a request by the family to finance his stay at the facility. (https://tinyurl.com/cxaooso)
Shimon Peres was elected President of the State of Israel by the Knesset. 58 of 120 members of the Knesset voted for him in the first round (whereas 38 voted for Reuven Rivlin, and 21 for Colette Avital). His opponents then backed Peres in the second round and 86 members of the Knesset voted in his favor, while 23 objected. He resigned from his role as a Member of the Knesset the same day, having been a member since November 1959 (except for a three-month period in early 2006), the longest serving in Israeli political history. Peres was sworn in as president on 15 July 2007. (https://tinyurl.com/znmgjer)
Ehud Barak After serving as PM he was sentenced to serve a prison term over convictions for accepting bribes and for obstruction of justice during his terms as mayor of Jerusalem and as trade minister. In an interview with HaAretz Barak said he currently earns more than a $1 million a year, and that from 2001 to 2007, he also earned more than a $1 million every year, from giving lectures and from consulting for hedge funds. Barak also said he made millions of dollars more from his investments in Israeli real estate properties.
In the interview, Barak was asked whether he is a lobbyist who earns a living from "opening doors". Barak confirmed that he has been received by these heads of state but denied earning money from opening doors for international business deals for Israeli and foreign corporations, and said he does not see any ethical or moral problems in his business activities. He further said there is no logic to demand of him, after "the natural process in democracy has ended" to not utilize the tools he accumulated in his career to secure his financial future. When asked if his financial worth is $10–15 million, Barak said "I'm not far from there." (https://tinyurl.com/c82j4oy)
Ariel Sharon was hospitalized on 18 December 2005, after suffering a minor ischemic stroke. During his hospital stay, doctors discovered a heart defect requiring surgery and ordered bed rest pending a cardiac catheterization scheduled for 5 January 2006. Instead, Sharon immediately returned to work and suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on 4 January, the day before surgery. After spending eight years in a coma, Sharon died at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on 11 January 2014. (https://tinyurl.com/yf3dwomv)
Ehud Olmert in 2009, he spoke at various colleges throughout the United States to mixed receptions. In October 2009, he visited Magnolia, Arkansas, and spoke about Israeli farming, technology and Israel's view on Iran. The speech was given at Southern Arkansas University, where he also invited the rural university to form a partnership with Israel's Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (https://tinyurl.com/yhtwwv69)
Term limits
A Hebrew video clip from nearly two decades ago of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for term limits spread like wildfire on Wednesday, reminding the public of the earlier views of the fourth-term leader.
“I have an answer for you that is inscribed in stone,” Netanyahu told tv’s Dan Shilon in 1977. “When I was one of initiators and backers of the Direct Election Law, I asked to add a clause that a prime minister cannot serve more than two terms.”
The Direct Election Law, which allowed the public to choose a prime minister on a separate ballot from their Knesset vote, was repealed in 2001. Netanyahu explained his support for term limits for a prime minister. (https://tinyurl.com/yh8hx52b)
Once crowned PM, the proposal to limit a PM’s term of office quickly “disappeared” from Netanyahu’s vocabulary.
According to a New York Times article (https://tinyurl.com/ygwvb8fb), the first two prime ministers elected directly, Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 and Ehud Barak in 1999, both resigned early, after losing support among the many parties that found their influence had increased in Parliament.
Today's vote came just hours before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government was sworn into office this evening, and was supported by the Likud and Labor parties -- the right and left mainstays of his new unity coalition.
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