Member of Knesset Eli Avidar (Yisrael Beiteinu) told journalist Gil Hoffman this week that he expects United States President Donald Trump to intervene in Israel’s political system to ensure the formation of a coalition that can implement his administration’s “Deal of the Century.”
Israel is heading to national elections for the third time in 12 months on March 2, following two failed attempts to form a government of at least 61 lawmakers.
MK Avidar’s statements caught Hoffman by surprise but Vision Magazine has for months been making the case that Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman has been acting as an agent of the Trump administration and its regional interests.
In April of 2018, Lieberman traveled to Washington while serving as Israel’s defense minister. He returned with a test balloon for Trump’s plan to partition Israel into two separate states and expressed his unequivocal support for the plan.
“There is no free lunch,” Lieberman told Israel’s Channel 2 in early May 2018, following reports that he was shown parts of the then-secret US plan. At that point it should have been clear to the Israeli public that the Yisrael Beiteinu leader had been recruited by Trump’s Middle East team to drum up support for their agenda.
In November 2016, immediately following Trump’s victory over US establishment candidate Hillary Clinton, Lieberman had already presented himself as at Trump’s service by announcing support for a Jewish construction freeze in the disputed Judea and Samaria regions.
With a man like Donald Trump in the White House cozying up to some of the world’s most reactionary political figures, Lieberman likely saw his chance to make himself Washington’s new man in Israel’s political system.
It should be within this context that we recall the fact that it was Lieberman’s resignation as defense minister in November 2018 that initially destabilized Netanyahu’s coalition and sent the State of Israel to early elections. It was also the Yisrael Beiteinu leader’s refusal to join a Likud-led nationalist coalition after both previous elections that ultimately forced Israel into a second and third election cycle.
The Trump team’s preference for a government including both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Blue & White party has been clear for some time and that’s exactly what Lieberman – after each of the previous two elections – has been scheming to bring about.
Despite Netanyahu’s very public embrace of the Trump administration’s regional policies – especially those that he could promote as his own diplomatic achievements, the nationalist government he formed following the 2015 elections wasn’t likely to accept the Trump plan due to the inclusion of coalition partners ideologically opposed to any division of the country.
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” had likely been stalled only because it was awaiting an Israeli government that would accept it without a fight and have the stability to last through the plan’s implementation. As the Trump administration’s man in Jerusalem, Lieberman couldn’t allow the formation of another nationalist coalition likely to resist Washington’s agenda.
But now that the plan has been unveiled to the public, Avidar’s words should serve as a warning that Trump will apply heavy pressure to exclude ideological nationalists from the Yamina party, who would likely destabilize any coalition succumbing to US pressure to surrender territory.
Avigdor Lieberman himself announced Thursday that he wouldn’t rule out sitting in a government with Blue & White together with the Liberal Zionist Labor-Gesher-Meretz alliance after the coming elections, ostensibly dropping his demand for a Likud-Blue & White coalition.
Being that the far-right Lieberman cannot sit with Palestinian partners and Blue & White, Yisrael Beiteinu & the new Liberal Zionist alliance are unlikely to reach the necessary 61 seats to form a coalition without Palestinian inclusion, this announcement should be understood as a tactic to pressure Likud into abandoning its traditional nationalist and ḥaredi political allies.
The best way to thwart Lieberman’s efforts and to strengthen Israel against Trump under the current circumstances would be for those committed to the Land of Israel to vote for smaller parties ideological opposed to any territorial surrender so that the Likud doesn’t possess enough seats to form a government with Blue & White (the Liberal Zionist alliance is unlikely capable of sitting in as government with the Netanyahu-led Likud) and becomes dependent on nationalist partners opposed to Trump’s two-state agenda.
