The man who cannot be bought
Analysis: Avigdor Liberman watches from a distance as Netanyahu obsesses and struggles to deliver the coalition government needed to protect him from prosecution in his three corruption cases
Avigdor Liberman has an advantage over other politicians - he cannot be lured by an offer of a job, he's had many of them.
Liberman has already been defense minister and knows full well how easy it is demand decisive military action standing outside the Defense Ministry and how hard it is to execute it from within, especially when the prime minister is as indecisive as Netanyahu has been.
He's already been Foreign Minister and has no interest in the Finance Ministry.
The offer of becoming deputy and locum to the prime minister, even if he were to want it, would never come his way. Netanyahu would never risk anyone in position to step in to his job if he were forced to leave it.
"Politics for me is not an obsession" Liberman once said. But to others, it is.
Liberman can see the obsession underneath Netanyahu's heavy make-up and is unable to hide his contempt.
Netanyahu, in his televised speech Monday, said new elections would be a waste of time and money. True. But what he neglected to say is that he alone has dragged the country to early elections, twice.
One time was over Sheldon Adelson's free "Israel Hayom" daily, a paper launched to support the prime minister's own career. The second time was over criminal charges still pending against him.
Netanyahu has never put the country before his own personal advantage, and when it comes to his legal woes, he is obsessed.
From his position outside government, Liberman can observe Likud ministers as they try to come to grips with the possibility that Likud may be ousted from power, threatened not by the opposition or even the voters. The real danger to Likud is from its own leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, but they say nothing.
They say nothing because they have ambitions, they have aspirations. They want better ministerial positions, to lead important committees, have seats at the inner cabinet table and even help in primary elections.
They are bound and gagged by their ambition. For when it comes to the pecking order in Likud, they are obsessed.
If by midnight Wednesday there is no coalition agreement and as a result no government, then 61 members of Knesset can sign an affirmation for President Reuven Rivlin to grant Netanyahu an extension, giving him more time to reach an agreement.
But the Likud fears that Rivlin may task someone else with the job of putting together a coalition, so is opting for fresh elections.
When it comes to Rivlin, Netanyahu is obsessed.
Netanyahu now aiming his fire in all directions at once. He has even enlisted the president of the United States, who on Monday obligingly tweeted that he hoped to be able to continue to work with Netanyahu as prime minister.
He enlisted the Syrian anti-air defenses, threatening action after a missile was launched at an Israeli jet flying near the Syrian border.
His Israel Hayom mouthpiece is already in the trenches and close Likud ally Ze'ev Elkin an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, was dispatched to try to sway Liberman's Russian-speaking voter base, threatening them with the loss of pension reforms and thereby punishing them for Liberman's perceived sins.
Liberman from his vantage point on the outside, can observe the panic on the inside.
He observes that Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman of United Torah Judaism is too scared to push back on his rabbi's excessive demands, while he whispers in the old man's ear that Litzman has gone soft and is pandering to the secular ministers.
The head of the Union of Right-Wing Parties, Rafi Peretz, is panicking too. With his little understanding of the political game, Peretz hides in the shadows hoping not to be discovered by political partner Bezalel Smotrich, who runs circles around him and leaves Peretz to clean up the mess.
Liberman observes the opposition, in particular Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, who so wants to be loved by the left and the right, the religious and the secular, oblivious to the fact no one so beloved has ever become prime minister of Israel.
He sees the cracks beginning to appear, the egos and conflicting views. He sees the Blue and White leadership lacking the fire, the hunger and the ambition to rule.
Liberman knows any right-wing leader attempting to form a government would have played one side of the aisle against the other, negotiating with the center-left as well as the far-right.
Netanyahu, however, knowing that the opposition would never provide him with immunity for his myriad corruption investigations, conducted all coalition negotiations from a clear disadvantage.
