In December 2018, former Israel Defense Forces chief Benny Gantz established Hosen L’Yisrael (Israel Resilience Party) and rocked the Israeli political landscape when many started seeing him as a viable replacement for Benjamin Netanyahu. Gantz agreed to run a joint candidate list with the Yesh Atid Party under an alliance called ‘Kahol Lavan’ (‘Blue and White’, the colours of the Israeli flag). Yesh Atid (which translates as ‘There Is a Future’) was formed in 2012 by the former journalist Yair Lapid, who served as finance minister in a Netanyahu government.
Gantz, dubbed the ‘Teflon General’ by some, brought with him two other former military chiefs of staff: Gabi Ashkenazi, who, like Gantz, was a Netanyahu appointee; and Moshe Aylon, who had served as Netanyahu’s defence minister.
Netanyahu took the Gantz–Lapid threat seriously because, in 1999, three other former military leaders, Ehud Barak, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Yitzhak Mordechai, came close to toppling him. Lipkin-Shahak was Gantz’s mentor. Again, Netanyahu faced three security people, which challenged his campaign message that only he could protect Israel.
Initially, Gantz and Lapid’s platform focused on the need to address many of Israel’s social problems, including a crumbling health system, traffic-choked roads and an affordable-housing crisis that has locked many young Israelis out of the real-estate market. Because Netanyahu’s campaign emphasised security, annexation of the settlements on the West Bank and his close relationship with Donald Trump, Kahol Lavan struggled, leading it to rely on Gantz’s security credentials. Those credentials proved insufficient and southern Israel voted overwhelming for Netanyahu and the Likud Party.
On the Palestine issue, Gantz and Lapid were extremely cautious. Gantz emphasised his military role— particularly the fact that he led the IDF during the 2014 Gaza War—suggesting that if negotiations were to take place, he too would negotiate from a position of strength. No reference was made to a two-state solution; instead, the Kahol Lavan platform called for a regional summit to help facilitate a separation of Israelis and Palestinians, while stressing that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel.
Read the article by Isaac Kfir on The Strategist.