Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A haunted person
Photo: EPA
Tami Arad
Photo: Gabriel Baharalia
Enough is enough
Op-ed: Netanyahu is suffering from mental fatigue. The only way to possibly prevent complete chaos in the future is to enact a law limiting a prime minister in Israel to just two terms in office.
When the prime minister convenes journalists for private talks, which last four hours or more, and intentionally avoids standard interviews to the press, one bottom line emerges: The prime minister of the State of Israel is a haunted person. He is smart, cynical, a virtuoso of words, but haunted—from his side-styled fringe to the tip of his little fingernail.
The citizens who missed a workday, who called off meetings, who were packed in lines like sardines, who began sweating even before the sun struck their head, who wasted hours in traffic jams—and the soldiers who returned to their bases on Saturday evening and those who did not make it on time on Sunday—couldn’t care less about the war between the prime minister and the transportation minister.
When the prime minister takes every opportunity to talk about respect more than he talks about security, when the prime minister is offended by everything that is written about him if it is not a compliment and makes sure that everyone knows he has been offended, then the paranoia takes on statistical significance. But when the prime minister convinces himself that his transportation minister organized a putsch against him and thus paralyzes an entire country, then we all have a problem.
Netanyahu (R) and Katz at Sunday's cabinet meeting (Photo: AFP)
And after all that, the prime minister's attempt to blame the transportation minister for the chaos was unsuccessful. Even those who are not fans of Yisrael Katz gave him the victory points at the end of the latest battle, at least for his restraint. The hysteria conveyed by Benjamin Netanyahu with his repeated putsch announcements made it seem as if he really thinks there is a coup here.
All that was missing from the inarticulate interview given by Netanyahu's bureau chief on Saturday evening was a recorded video conversation of the prime minister himself with Channel 2 news anchor Dana Weiss, like the conversation held with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the night of the attempted coup in Turkey. Then we would have all joined the tanks on the streets and gone out to defend democracy against the rebellious minister, who would surely have been personally arrested by the police commissioner of the IDF chief of staff.
As we woke up on Sunday morning to an expected transportation chaos and nothing more, the obvious was clear. The tanks remained in their bases, the warplanes were parked safely in the hangars, the police commissioner wiped the coffee off his mustache, and Minister Katz drank his tea silently before leaving for the tense cabinet meeting.
To summarize this chapter, some will say that the prime minister was completely overwhelmed by emotions, and some will define his conduct as a disgrace, and both will agree that it was not the desecration of Shabbat which led to the burst of emotions, especially as the ultra-Orthodox Knesset members did their best to escape the crisis imposed on them.
Granted, the current incident is an example of a radical situation, and more than it suggests that there is something rotten in the Netanyahu kingdom it points to the man's mental fatigue, as talented as he may be. Therefore, it seems the only way to possibly prevent complete chaos, like we witnessed this week, in the future is to enact the law limiting a prime minister in Israel to just two terms in office.
The suggested law, which was initiated by MK Merav Michaeli, leader of the Zionist Union faction, has already been signed by all leaders of the opposition parties, including Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman before he entered the government. Netanyahu himself supported the limitation in the past but opposes the law today, even though it will only be applied from the 22nd Knesset, leaving him with the option of two additional full terms in office.
The authority and power trip—and this is no surprising discovery—may cause a person to become confused and mistakenly think that he is the state and the state is him. Therefore, it would be good for Israeli democracy to refresh the Prime Minister's Residence on Jerusalem's Balfour Street every few years.
