The beggars and the king: 6 things to know for April 14

1. Let’s make a deal (for real this time): As of this writing, a coalition deal is so close that the press can almost taste it, with stories aplenty across the media landscape of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White head Benny Gantz making “significant” progress toward a deal, after a late night get together in Jerusalem. (By the time you read this, talks may have blown up, or a deal may have been sealed. Or neither.)

• Channel 12 news reports that all that’s left is for the sides to agree on how the opposition will be represented in a panel set up to appoint new judges to the Supreme Court.
• Likud would apparently prefer they be some sort of patsy, the channel indicates (without saying as much): “Until now Blue and White have demanded that the custom [of having an opposition voice] be respected, but is not looking for some sort of other compromise. In the last round, recall, the opposition representative was a member of Yisrael Beytenu, which later joined the coalition.”
• The Ynet news site reports that the main sticking point is Likud wanting to insert “some sort of mechanism to ensure they can influence the picking of judges, or not give Blue and White the ability to do so unilaterally.”
• On Twitter, Tal Shalev notes that the statements coming out of the meetings are identical to those sent out two weeks ago, when talks were also reportedly a done deal.
• The talks, which are continuing for a second meeting as these words are being written late Tuesday morning, were made possible by President Rueven Rivlin giving Gantz a two-day extension to his mandate. According to Walla, Gantz and Netanyahu made the extension request one minute before midnight, when Gantz’s mandate would have turned into a pumpkin.

2. Beggars belief: The talks were also made possible by a pair of speeches by the leaders Monday night on the importance of unity, especially from Gantz, who managed to sink his reputation even lower after already being widely criticized for even agreeing to join a government under Netanyahu.

• Gantz was widely panned by pundits for imploring and appearing to plead for Netanyahu to bring him in from the cold.
• “Take me, Bibi. For Heaven’s sake take me. I’m begging you please take me,” tweeted Channel 13 reporter Barak Ravid mocking Gantz’s tone. (Channel 12’s Amit Segal tweeted almost the exact same thing at the exact same time.)
• Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer notes that Gantz was a lot tougher with his supposed Blue and White partners than with Netanyahu.

So nothing “dramatic” in the end in Gantz’s announcement. He was much tougher towards his former partners in Blue and White than with Netanayhu who he’s still trying to woo with “moment of truth talk”

— Anshel Pfeffer אנשיל פפר (@AnshelPfeffer) April 13, 2020

• Amit Segal, who had predicted — along with others — that Gantz would use the speech to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu, remarks that in the end “It was not an aggressive speech; it was a defensive speech.”
• “More than anything else, Gantz’s speech on Monday night shows that he will likely fold,” writes Mati Tuchfeld in Israel Hayom. “Instead of threatening Netanyahu, using a parliamentary majority to pass laws that target Netanyahu, or setting a clear deadline for the talks, Gantz sounded like he was pleading for his life. He knows that his fate is in the prime minister’s hands and that his dream of someday being the prime minister can come true now but not at any time in the future.”
• In Yedioth, Sima Kadmon calls Gantz’s speech a “parody” of leadership, and says she thought for a moment she was watching Lior Ashkenazi, who plays Gantz on satirical news comedy show “Eretz Nehederet”: “The only difference is that you laugh with Lior Ashkenazi. With Gantz, you have to cry.”
• After Netanyahu tweets at Gantz that he’s waiting for him at home, several remark that the two could have just sent each other kissy messages on WhatsApp and saved us the PDA.

3. Sucker survey: The speeches and talks came after a Channel 12 poll that showed Netanyahu’s Likud handily defeating everyone and romping its way to 40 seats if the country does go to elections, with enough support from his right-religious friends to snag a 64-seat coalition.

• Meanwhile Labor is seen sinking to just 1.1 percent of the vote, well shy of entering the Knesset and below even extremist Otzma Yehudit, which gets 1.9 percent.
• The poll is the latest in a series in recent days to show Likud handily winning, but Channel 12’s Amnon Abramovich rightly notes that any poll done now, in the middle of a crisis, is about as relevant as one taken during an intifada or during the Lebanon War, meaning everything can change between then and the actual vote.
• Yedioth’s Kadmon writes that the poll put wind in Netanyahu’s sails, though “the results don’t actually point to anything, and the survey has no significance beyond softening Gantz up a little more before he got in bed with Netanyahu.”
• Nonetheless, some get excited about the results, such as Kikar Hashabbat, which calls them “dramatic.”
• A picture of Labor, Gesher, Derech Eretz and Otzma Yehudit, with zeros (for the number of seats they would get) makes the rounds on social media as all four are mocked as “zeros.”
• “No problem to merge Labor-Gesher-Derech Eretz-Otzma and finally bring in votes from the right-liar-values-fascists,” commentator Tomer Persico quips.

4. Spitfired: Getting almost as low a score as Gantz and that bunch of supposed losers is Prof. Avi Simhon, the top economic adviser dealing with the health crisis, who gets into a shouting match with Fox Group CEO Harel Wiesel over money, or lack thereof, for businesses struggling and the lack of a transparent strategy for opening the economy back up.

• Wiesel, who says he is there representing small businesses as well as his own conglomerate, is the louder of the two, and gets spitting mad at Simhon — literally. At one point Simhon tells him he hopes he does not have COVID-19 because he got spittle all over him.
• Simhon is also widely criticized for trying to counter Wiesel by saying he is rich and doesn’t need to worry about money and seemingly dismissing the very real concerns of small businesses, and also telling Wiesel, who is brash, to be quiet.
• “From the viewers’ point of view it does not matter how much money Wiesel has in the bank (lots), or how much Simhon is working for them (seemingly not enough),” writes critic Einav Schiff in Yedioth. “What they saw was a man who lost it on behalf of the poor and the hungry, and another who is getting worked up because of a suspected spittle terror attack.”
• “As a public servant, [Simhon] needed to keep his passions in check. Even against Wiesel, who let his coarseness run wild. Even if he thinks it’s all a show, there is still a need for keeping things civil and not being dragged into street talk,” writes Hodaya Karish Hazouni in Makor Rishon.
• Former IDF spokespeople, who know a thing or two about dealing with a critical public, are also unimpressed by Simhon’s performance.
• Avi Benayahu describes Simhon as “someone who does not know how to support, to show sympathy, to relate to the pain and feeling of the crisis, but only to yell at Wiesel ‘you are rich.’ An embarrassment.”
• Also on Twitter, Peter Lerner writes that Simhon showed “arrogance” and put on a display of “ugliness, cruelty and not a single drop of human compassion.”

5. Half-baked: If only critiques were money, we’d all be rich. But rather than start talking about an exit, Israel is on the cusp of yet another major lockdown.

• Walla news reports that thousands of cops and soldiers are being deployed to enforce the quarantine measure, which will keep Israelis confined to their hometowns until Thursday, and the operation will ramp up even more.
• “The harshest enforcement will come tomorrow, out of a fear that people will break restrictions during Mimouna [a post-Passover feast from North Africa]. A source explained that starting from 5 p.m. between 7,000 and 9,000 cops will patrol residential neighborhoods to ensure that residents are not breaking the emergency regulations,” the news site reports.
• A main focus of the enforcement measures will be on bakeries, which seemingly will not be allowed to open to provide the bread-hungry some post-Passover morsels. However, Haaretz reports that work inside bakeries will be allowed, as will deliveries, meaning some miracle-workers may be able to get their hands on loaves early.
• Channel 12 reports that officials also fear that when the lockdown lifts on Thursday morning there will be a rush of people to buy bread and other leavened products forbidden during Passover, and so police will deployed in extra numbers then as well to ensure there is no crowding at supermarkets.
• But in a repeat of last week, when Israel faced a similar surprise lockdown, Israelis are using the last few hours before the lockdown to stock up, leading to crowding at supermarkets, Ynet reports. And those hoping to grab eggs will once again be disappointed.
• “There’s a shortage across the country and distribution has been slow; there’s been such a rush that no eggs are left,” the manager of a Rami Levi branch in Ashkelon is quoted saying.

6. Exit through the gaffe shop: Talks on rolling back restrictions and reopening the economy will only take place at week’s end, Netanyahu said Monday, which Channel 12 news notes is a step back from his earlier claim that some rollback measures could even start taking place then.

• In ToI, Shoshanna Solomon notes that that “even as the economy’s exit strategy is on the cusp of being rolled out, conditions on the ground remain shaky. Officials in Israel and globally are largely fumbling in the dark to battle an invisible and deadly enemy they have not seen the likes of before. Outcomes, thus, remain uncertain and plans will need to be adjusted constantly to meet demands as they develop. The rollout of the strategy won’t be easy and huge questions about how things will work in practice will no doubt arise.”
• In Haaretz, Amos Harel notes the panoply of reports and recommendations that have emerged in recent days on how to move back to some semblance of normal, and claims they are part of a plan by Netanyahu to keep everyone guessing and him in control.
• “The multiplication of reports is the continuation of the strange dissonance exploited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to manage the crisis: Between centralization to chaos. These competing proposals allow Netanyahu to continue to maneuver, without announcing his decisions. A policy of divide and conquer,” he writes.
• Israel Hayom reports that there is just as much confusion regarding getting schools up and running again, with the Education Ministry talking about a graduated plan, and teachers and others saying they have been left out of the loop and the plan, which includes small groups and attendance every other day, will never work.
• “There are hundreds of things in a kindergarten. The kids sit on the same chairs and play with the same toys,” a caretaker tells the paper. “If someone gets sick, they will infect all of their friends and the group that comes in the next day as well, unless the Education Ministry disinfects all 20,000 classrooms nationwide everyday.”