Late at night, Naftali Bennett announced his surrender.
Whoever defeated Netanyahu in the previous coalition negotiations was forced to wave a white flag and take the portfolio he didn't want under any circumstances. Now it turns out that he "fell in love" with him altogether and we didn't know.
What is most amazing about the life-or-death struggle he waged until yesterday at 11:00 PM over the foreign affairs portfolio is that the gladiators who fought did not pay any public price.
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Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman pushed aside every worthy value in favor of their own private egos, and no one said anything. Not out of cowardice. It turns out we no longer have expectations of them.
It's clear to us that they will deceive us in the election campaign, talk about certain issues, and after the elections, demand completely different things.
Of course. What did you think? What did you expect? They are politicians.
The foreign affairs portfolio has long since ceased to be an important portfolio. Its status as one of the three senior portfolios is complete nonsense. The portfolios of education, energy and water, justice, and even communications are more important than it.
The foreign minister, in his modern form, fills a schedule packed to bursting. Travel, cocktails, but there's only one thing he hardly bothers with: the burning issues of foreign policy.
The Iranian issue is with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and the Mossad. Even Steinitz gets some touch there. The Minister of Foreign Affairs? Not related.
The negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, when there was such a thing, were managed by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. The file of (destroying) relations with the US is managed by the Prime Minister. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is barely an upgraded Minister of Information. He receives the prestigious title when he is interviewed by CNN and that's more or less it.
Sorry, he can also get busy rebuking the hypocritical nations of the world – Denmark and Sweden and South Africa, they are all hypocrites. You can still ruin relations with all of them.
Oh, the foreign minister also has the legitimacy to travel more than anyone else. He doesn't have to look for excuses under the rug why, as economy minister, he chooses to spend hundreds of days abroad.
Where are we going? At best, to countries in Africa that an Israeli foreign minister has never set foot in.
In the worst case, to Vienna, Vienna and Vienna again.
The current Foreign Minister has brought the Foreign Ministry to an unprecedented low due to his laziness and political positions, but even more environmentally friendly ministers, such as David Levy and Silvan Shalom, have not really influenced foreign policy.
During the campaign, Naftali Bennett assumed the position of a moral preacher. He lectured the media about the imbalance, and attacked the judicial system for not representing the public ("We will demand the internal security file").
The education portfolio sounds like a good place for a moral preacher, but until yesterday those around him said they would not let Likud turn their Naftali into a new bitter Zebulun.
Bennett also never dreamed of being the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Communications. What the hell? What, did you really believe his speeches? You bunch of gullible people.
Bennett was interviewed hundreds of times during the campaign, but he never bothered to tell the public that he had a promise from the Prime Minister to be Defense Minister, as he claims today, and he certainly did not hint that his ultimate demand for entering the government would be the Foreign Affairs portfolio.
The Jewish Home spokespersons' reasoning for the demand was even more outrageous: It is impossible for a party smaller than us (Yvette) to receive a senior portfolio from us.
The senior position that the leader of religious Zionism will hold, it turns out, is not a function of values, ideology, and the needs of the public he represents. It's a matter of status, ego, who has more.
There's no point in even going down on the Yisrael Beiteinu leader. Even his own public has already understood the depth of Lieberman's cynicism and that the issues of conversion, marital union, and other hardships of immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States interest him less than his next wine tasting tour.
I write 'even his public' because for years Lieberman exploited the weakness of the Russian-language media to control it and convey biased messages to the relevant public.
In 2009, I stood outside Netanyahu's office to talk to senior Likud officials, who had just heard from the prime minister-elect what their roles would be. When Moshe Kahlon came out, he said that Netanyahu had offered him half of the communications portfolio. The portfolio would be split between the media minister and the telecom minister, or something similar. Half for him and half for Yuli Edelstein.
"I told Bibi," Kahlon said, "you don't want it, don't give me a bag, but without these humiliations.".
The media portfolio was not split, but I wanted to suggest to Netanyahu that he split the foreign affairs portfolio, until Bennett came at 11:00 PM and "fell in love" with the education portfolio.
The article appeared in Haaretz. From Raviv Drucker's blog: http://drucker10.net
