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It's freezing at the top
By Yossi Verter
Tags: Settlements 

"The real question is not whether to freeze settlement construction," said a senior Likud official this week. "The question is this: Is Likud at all capable of functioning as a governing party? Ehud Omert, after the Second Lebanon War, with abysmal ratings in the polls at the height of the investigations against him, governed for three years. His faction let him live. If [Ehud] Barak hadn't brought him down, he would still be prime minister today. And now look at Netanyahu: Barely five months in office, and he's already facing rebellion from within, and is being threatened. Various events are being organized against him. He has to devote a large part of his time to quashing these things, and he's only at the start of his term!"

Two nights ago, the "orange" contingent took over the 14th floor of the Likud headquarters at Metzudat Ze'ev, brandishing armloads of petitions. The head table was populated by settlers, who were joined by several MKs from the Likud back benches: Miri Regev, Tzipi Hotovely, Danny Danon, Yariv Levin. Regev, who served as the IDF Spokesperson during the disengagement, spoke with the same passion in favor of both settlement and of Netanyahu. "What about Gush Katif?" came the shouts from the audience. "When will you ask forgiveness from the people who were uprooted?"

Gershon Mesika, head of the Samaria regional council, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "The Land of Israel does not forgive those who lift a hand against it, as both recent and distant history has shown."
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No one in the crowd uttered a word of protest on hearing this implied threat. A pious-looking woman in a headscarf asked the participants to choose a slogan, from among 15 possibilities, based on the line from Moshe Ya'alon's speech at the "Jewish Leadership" conference last month: "Every time the politicians have brought the dove of peace, we in the army have been forced to clean up the mess left behind." The elegant slogans that were proposed include: "The dove has left, it's time to flush the toilet" - and, of course, "Ya'alon Now." Bumper stickers can't be far behind.

Ministers Gilad Erdan, Yuli Edelstein and Moshe Kahlon planned to come but canceled at the last moment. Netanyahu did not threaten to fire them. He chose to speak to them nicely, citing their long personal relationships with him. They tried to persuade him that their participation would actually be helpful to the premier in dealing with the Americans.

"Yes," Netanyahu said to them, "but even if you say 1,000 times that you're with me and that you support me - I'll still be portrayed as weak, as someone whose faction is slipping through his fingers and becoming oppositional. It would be a shame to ruin good relations," he hinted.

"It's true - I'm a pushover," one of them said the other day, sounding happy and cheerful, for some reason.

"Besides," Netanyahu explained to them in personal conversations, "you know who I am. What I am. Where I stand. You know that construction will continue during the freeze as well. Public buildings will be built all the time. Kindergartens. Clinics. The construction throughout Jerusalem will not stop. They've just finished building 2,500 units and soon we're adding another 500. And if later we see that we're not getting the promised gestures from the Arab states, the construction will resume. So why are you giving me a hard time?"

Nevertheless, ministers who've been around Netanyahu for some years are no longer certain they know who he is. It's not certain he himself knows either. People who are in regular contact with him talk about a leader in the throes of indecision. One day he's the old Bibi, who always wrote and spoke in favor of the settlements and against the idea of a freeze; the next day he's fantasizing about a far-reaching diplomatic vision and endeavor that would make him the second Ariel Sharon.

Opposition to the construction freeze in the territories is being led, in their respective fashions, by Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, who was foreign minister during the disengagement from Gaza; Miri Regev, who as IDF spokesperson was a right hand to then-chief of staff Dan Halutz; and Likud faction chair Ze'ev Elkin, who joined Kadima after the evacuation from Gaza and was first elected to the Knesset on its slate, on the basis of Olmert's ill-fated convergence plan.

Silvan speaks

For five months, Silvan Shalom kept silent. There was plenty he wanted to say: about the Bar-Ilan speech, about Netanyahu's plan to impose VAT on fruits and vegetables, about the budget in general. But he kept his mouth shut, as a strategy. Silence as a form of protest. This week, he spoke, at an activists convention and two days before that, in an interview with Aryeh Golan on Israel Radio. Strange as it may sound to anyone who's lived here in the past decade, Shalom is now Netanyahu's biggest opponent on the diplomatic front.

Eli Yishai of Shas is prepared to live with the freeze, which he calls a "strategic freeze" (he means a "tactical" one, apparently). Netanyahu knew how to buy off Yishai: He included him in his forum of intimates, expanding it from six to seven.

Avigdor Lieberman has made it clear that he has no intention of bringing down Netanyahu or undermining the coalition's stability. Benny Begin, away on a very long trip to Canada, is keeping mum.

Moshe Ya'alon is also keeping his lips sealed, for now. He is "in favor of the process and against the freeze," says the vice prime minister's people. But the freeze is part of the process, isn't it? "He's waiting to see the big picture," his people say. "Nothing is settled."

Netanyahu appointed two "vice prime ministers": Ya'alon and Shalom. The first humiliated him a month ago; the second stuck it to him a week ago.

After Gideon Sa'ar, one of the most senior Likud ministers, took a clear stand at Netanyahu's side last Thursday and thereby gave a signal to other Likud members to issue announcements of support for the prime minister, we were left with Silvan Shalom. He does not see himself as a rightist or a leftist, but as someone who just states his position. He doesn't understand why he's always being accused of making everything personal.

Shalom thinks that a temporary freeze really means a permanent one. Yes, he did support the prime minister in a recent speech, explaining that he believes Netanyahu is working for the benefit of the country. But this was done in Shalom's own clever way, so that he also portrayed the premier as practically begging for a meeting with Abu Mazen and being willing to pay for it with something the Likud holds most dear: construction in the territories. And Shalom knew exactly what he was saying, and just how Netanyahu would interpret it.

People say that Shalom is acting this way because what he really wants is to become foreign minister, after Lieberman is compelled to step down because of his imminent criminal indictment. But Shalom rejects this notion. If he anticipated getting the foreign affairs portfolio, he would either keep quiet or be supportive; he certainly wouldn't come out against Netanyahu's moves. He didn't support the disengagement wholeheartedly either. And Shalom never said he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state, demilitarized or not. Yes, he did vote in favor of the road map, and the road map calls for a Palestinian state, but only in the third stage - after the Palestinians turn into Finns, as Dov Weisglass famously put it.

Silvan Shalom intends to be the alternative to Netanyahu. When the current process fails, he'll say: I told you this is not the way to make peace. I know how to do it better. He hopes to rally the centrist stream in the Likud as well as the party's rightists for whom a construction freeze in the territories is intolerable, and with their help, bring down Netanyahu.

Bibi and Silvan are our 21st-century Rabin and Peres. In terms of the rivalries, resentment, wariness and vengefulness, they are quite close to the original model. The cease-fires between them are brief and temporary. When they talk, Silvan often says to Netanyahu: "Don't forget, I've served in Israeli governments longer than you have. I've been in four cabinets, in two kitchen cabinets. You may have been prime minister, but I also know a thing or two."

Waiting with an ax

One might have expected opposition leader Tzipi Livni to congratulate Netanyahu on his disengagement from his mother ship, if only to try to widen the rift in Likud. But Livni, and Haim Ramon before her - they are apparently still coordinating with each other - opted instead to attack, to claim that the prime minister doesn't mean what he says and is constantly zigzagging.

Livni is attuned to the desire of a good number of the members of her faction to join the Netanyahu government if a peace process gets under way. She hears Shaul Mofaz, and senses Dalia Itzik's eagerness to reassume the Knesset Speaker's seat, or at least to return to the government. And she, Livni, is prepared to fight - against them.

Even if Netanyahu does make some progress in dealing with the Palestinians, Livni can be expected to bring him down at the height of the process. She believes that he won't pursue any actions of real substance, and that at the last moment he'll panic and renege. Then she'll be waiting for him in the corner with an ax.

"Remember 1998?" Livni may also say to the faction members who are imploring her to lend a hand to the prime minister these days. That year, Netanyahu signed the Wye Agreement, which set a timetable for, and outlined the scope of, the withdrawals to which Israel committed itself as a continuation of the Oslo Accords. However, Barak, the opposition leader at the time, opted to join forces with the right-wing MKs and bring down Netanyahu in the Knesset, with the assistance of Haim Ramon. Yes, the same Ramon who is now at Livni's side.

If Barak had dragged the Labor Party into the Netanyahu government, Bibi would have been king of Israel. The role of the opposition, Livni will tell her people, is to topple the government, not to prop it up. This is just what Barak said a decade ago when his party, together with the extreme right in the Knesset, tossed Netanyahu out of power.
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