Party or part ways: 7 things to know for January 1

1. Not going anywhere (maybe): Welcome to 2019, the year Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t resign if indicted — at least according to Benjamin Netanyahu, who made the comments during a rare press conference with Israeli journalists who accompanied him to Brazil.

• Actually, Netanyahu said he wouldn’t resign if the attorney general announced an intention to indict, pending a hearing, before elections, which is not exactly the same as actually filing charges. Technically, the comments leave open the possibility Netanyahu could resign once actual charges are filed, though he might have said the same thing if asked about being indicted in general and not only pending a hearing.
• A hearing and possible indictment would only come after elections and could take months or more (just ask Haim Katz, who Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he would charge in May and who only had his hearing in October, but who is still sitting pretty as a minister in 2019), and Netanyahu played up his ability to change Mandelblit’s mind about any charges he intends to press should he be summoned for such a session.
• “The hearing doesn’t end until my side is heard,” he said.
• “Imagine what happens if you oust a prime minister before the end of the hearing process, and at the end of the hearing it is decided to close the case,” he said. “That would be absurd, and a terrible blow to democracy.”

2. Duh: While Netanyahu’s position on this was no secret, thanks to leaks from “associates” or unsourced reports saying the same, it was the first time he said out loud and in public that he will stay and fight the charges from the PM’s residence on Balfour Street.

• While the comments made international news, Israeli media regarded it almost as a no-duh moment.
• Israel Hayom splashes the quote across its front page, but only because it says the comments confirm its report that Netanyahu (or Likud sources) had said much the same days earlier. Its actual story on the comments gives it almost no mention.

3. Unite the right? Netanyahu also made comments during the press conference about getting together with other right-wing parties to form an alliance meant to block any similar bloc from the left, and reflecting Likud’s worries about having a right-wing coalition to put together after elections.

• Netanyahu barely had time to get the words out of his mouth before Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman shot it down.
• Yedioth Ahronoth plays up the refusal by Liberman and Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party, quoting sources in the party saying Kahlon also won’t join Likud or ally with it.
• A source in the party tells the paper that Netanyahu is scared of the New Right and will compete with it for who can be most right wing. However, with Kulanu members jumping ship and the party’s fortune’s sinking, an alliance would seem to be the only way to keep the party afloat.
• Meanwhile, it seems Likud members are also not keen on the idea, cognizant of the fact that members of other parties will get top spots and given the less than glorious history of similar gambits in the past.
• “The failure of the alliance with Liberman in 2013 is still echoing, and created much trauma among Likud Central Committee members who approved what turned out to be one of the biggest failures of those elections,” the paper quotes “sources” in Likud saying, apparently speaking in unison, like lovers finishing each others’ sentences.

4. Zionist dis-union: Netanyahu likely need not have worried, at least about a leftist bloc. A sudden divorce Tuesday morning between Labor head Avi Gabbay and Hatnua leader Tzipi Livni effectively ends the Zionist Union, and is the latest shakeup to register on the electoral Richter scale.

• The split was neither amicable nor expected. To the shock of his party’s lawmakers, and of Livni herself, Gabbay said at a faction meeting that he had “hoped and believed that the new partnership would lead to our joint growth, to a real connection, and to mutual support. But the smart public has seen that this is not the case, and has drawn away.”
• The announcement was made on live TV, with a sullen-looking Livni, who either has a killer poker face or had been given a quick warning right before, sitting by his side. Livni continued to tweet about her “revolution” afterward, but on TV she looked a lot like Debbie Downer.
• Gabbay draws some flak for making the announcement that way, like LeBron James announcing The Decision to let Cleveland down live in 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjmoDCCKCIY

• “What did it do him good to put down Livni like that. It was rude to her and didn’t add to the drama,” Army Radio’s Ishay Shnerb asks.
• Haaretz quotes a Labor lawmaker saying that “time will tell whether dismantling Zionist Union was a smart move. But it shouldn’t have been done as a public humiliation to Livni.”
• Party sources tell ToI that Zionist Union MKs responded furiously to Gabbay, berating him for failing to discuss the decision with them first.
• “It is not just his decision. He should have told us,” one says. “It was done in the most aggressive possible way while leaving us in the dark.”

5. Leggo my ego: Things were apparently even worse behind the scenes. According to Walla news, during a closed door session of his faction, Gabbay claimed Livni had also surprised him with an announcement in front of the cameras that she would split off if he didn’t make her opposition chief.

• The straw that broke the camel’s back, according to the report, were more recent comments by Livni that party leaders to need put their egos aside in response to Gabbay saying that the election would be between him and Netanyahu.
• “Avi felt that she crossed a red line. He couldn’t put it aside or continue on with things as they were,” the news site quotes multiple sources saying.
• Party sources are also quoted saying that Gabbay told them “I only got shit from her.”

6. Feigned surprise: The Kan state broadcaster reports that the New Right split from Jewish Home was not as unexpected as some made it out to be, with Bezalel Smotrich having taken part in a meeting about the move days earlier.

• Smotrich had said after the Saturday night announcement that he knew nothing about the ministers’ plans.
• Also at the meeting were three prominent right-wing journalists who are getting flak for secretly taking part in political discussions.
• Makor Rishon editor Hagai Segal issues a sort of apology, writing on Twitter that “last Friday I was invited to an intimate off the record conversation with senior politicians, and I found myself in the middle of a discussion. My journalist instincts would not let me leave while the exciting meeting was taking place, as it seems I should have done. By the way, I clearly distanced myself from parties being split by their leaders.”

7. Flower power: Much attention was heaped over the weekend on the death of writer Amos Oz, but ToI’s Sue Surkes pens an appreciation for Jerusalem Botanical Garden founder Michael Avishai, who also passed away over the weekend.

• “Avishai understood the massive potential that the location of Jerusalem – and Israel – offered for cultivating flora from a wide swath of the globe,” she writes, noting his ability to cultivate the giant Victoria amazonica, simple, dish-shaped flower that provides an easy landing pad for primitive, hit-and-miss pollinators such as beetles.
• “That Avishai was able to grow the Victoria amazonica in a climate so different from the tropical Amazon River basin was testament to his patience, skill, and determination to never stop learning.”