All eyes on Netanyahu

Israeli voters have another 96 days before they can go to the polls to vote for the Knesset, but before that happens, members of the Likud party will have a chance Wednesday to make their voices heard in what the press is heralding as one of the more important pre-election tests.

While the vote looks like internal matter, at stake, according to the papers, could be the political future of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led the country for the past five years but may find himself isolated by his own party by the time the dust settles Wednesday night.

“Netanyahu’s test,” read the headline in Yedioth Ahronoth, which goes on to explain that the Likud’s 3,700 members will vote Wednesday on whether to agree to Netanyahu’s proposal to move party leadership primaries up by a week.

What seems a simple scheduling matter is actually far more freighted, though, as the move would essentially bury any attempt by former minister Gideon Sa’ar to challenge Netanyahu for the party leadership, activists are quoted saying. “This is underhanded opportunism,” one senior Likud source is quoted telling the paper. “Netanyahu is just trying to prevent Sa’ar from properly running against him.”

Israel Hayom, which is seen by many as having close ties to the Netanyahu camp, leaves the Likud primaries off its front page, instead leading with US envoy Dan Shapiro’s “warning” that Obama would use his time as a lame duck to push forward the peace process.

But the tabloid does devote considerable space to the Likud story on its inside pages, characterizing it as “battle over the primaries” in its headline. The paper doesn’t have the same takeaway that moving the primaries up will torpedo Saar, instead writing that if the group fails to accept Netanyahu’s suggestion, it will end up having to fight more internal battles ahead of election.

The paper also seems to chide Saar for not declaring if he will run against Netanyahu earlier. “He’s letting dozens of Likud activists run around trying to gather thousands of signatures of Likud members to sign for him to run to head the party, and is holding hundreds of telephone conversations and meeting to check again and again whether he should run before making a final decision,” the article reads.

The paper seems to identify Netanyahu’s real rival not as Sa’ar, but rather the American government, which the paper seems convinced is trying to push Netanyahu out. Pointing to Shapiro’s speech, Prof. Avraham Ben Tzvi comments that all the saccharine words can’t cover up the real message Washington seems to be trying to convey to Israeli voters, despite a promise not to intervene.

“The [US] government is turned toward March 17, and it is clearly signaling what political circumstances must be formed to ensure the continuation of the US-Israeli covenant, with all the benefit packages that come with it,” he writes, saying that the carrot and stick equation can be seen as an “Israeli voter guide.” “This is truly the opening shot in the intervention of the [US] government in the current political system.”

Haaretz files a dispatch from a main Likud meeting held Tuesday night, noting that its location, in the settlement of Ariel instead of Likud’s normal stomping grounds in Tel Aviv, made for a crowd even more hostile of Netanyahu than normal.

“As angry members waved their membership cards, slogans written on the back were clearly visible: ‘Enough of the dictatorship!’ ‘Bibi, we won’t give you a blank check!’” the paper reports. “Since the West Bank is [MK Moshe] Feiglin’s home court, hostility to Netanyahu ran even higher than usual. When Netanyahu’s name was mentioned from the dais, about half the time booing followed. ‘Arrogance, disconnection from the people,’ a central committee member named Halperin said when asked to explain Netanyahu’s plummeting status in his party. Another veteran panel member, Eliyahu Kornfeld, accused Netanyahu of ‘trying to steal the party.’”

While the Likud’s leadership will play an important role in the election, it’s far from the only story. Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el, for instance, writes an against-the-grain screed against the center, accusing it of having no mooring and therefore being “extreme” in its lack of stand-taking.

“There’s no difficulty identifying them. They congregate in a big clump, hold group hugs and, like sumo wrestlers, defend themselves lest they be pushed outside that holy center line. The extreme center is a religion with its own unique prayer book. Its members have no positions or opinions, nor do principles and ideologies trip off their tongues,” he writes. “They derive their faith from a negative: They aren’t right-wing, so they oppose annexing territory, but they also aren’t left-wing, so they agree that it’s okay to build in the settlement blocs.”

Keeping the focus on Netanyahu, Yedioth writes about the prime minister’s visit to the southern oil spill on Tuesday and his appointment of a minister to oversee the cleanup, calling it a “belated visit.”

The paper reports that Netanyahu didn’t actually go to see the damage up close, but rather surveyed it from the air, and was reassured by officials that the millions of liters of spilled oil pose no health threats.

But activists quoted in the article claim that despite taking the reins now, he acted too late. “It’s kind of funny that now, when everything is already cleaned up, is when he comes,” one is quoted saying. “But it’s better than nothing.”