The centrist who hopes to oust Netanyahu in Israel's ugly election

The Israeli military jeep rolled slowly through the dark streets of Beit Ummar, a Palestinian town in the southern occupied West Bank.

کد خبر: ۸۹۰۰۱۱

تاریخ: ۱۹ فروردين ۱۳۹۸ - ۰۸:۵۴

It was the summer of 1988. For the previous six months, thousands of Palestinians had been confronting Israeli forces in an uprising that would later be known as the First Intifada.

In the front seat was Benny Gantz, a young officer. The night was suddenly lit up by Molotov cocktails exploding all around the jeep. The Israeli soldiers jumped out with assault rifles raised but their attackers had already fled.

"Other commanders would just say shoot everywhere. But not Benny," said Dan Emergui, one of the soldiers. "He's calm and he's cool. If he doesn't have a reason to shoot, he won't."

Three decades after the ambush, Gantz is once again trying to hold his nerve under fire, this time in the midst of the ugliest election campaign in recent Israeli history.

The 59-year-old son of Holocaust survivors, who rose to be Israel's top general, has led his centrist Blue and White coalition to within striking distance of toppling Benjamin Netanyahu after a decade in power.

The final polls before tomorrow's election show Blue and White winning more seats than Netanyahu's Likud party.

However, the same polls also show right-wing parties with a narrow majority in parliament, which might be enough to keep Netanyahu in office. In a last-minute bid to win over Right-wing allies, Netanyahu promised over the weekend that he would annex all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a step he has shied away from in the past.

Gantz's campaign has been relatively light on policy. On security questions, he has taken similar positions to Netanyahu and sometimes tried to outflank him in hawkishness.

He refuses to say if he supports the idea of a Palestinian state and has promised to continue Israel's campaign to drive Iran out of Syria and seek better relations with the Gulf Arab states.

His main pitch to voters is that he is the candidate of decency while Netanyahu, who is facing criminal corruption charges, is prepared to tear Israel apart to hold on to power. "We are speaking about a corrupt man who is destroying the country," Gantz said.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his allies have pummelled Gantz as a paranoid delusional and tried to scare Jewish voters with claims that he would bring Israel's Arab minority parties into government.

Gantz suspects the prime minister's aides were behind the leak of a report that his phone was hacked by Iran, which prompted Netanyahu to claim his opponent was vulnerable to blackmail by Israel's enemy.

Beyond the daily mud-slinging, the election poses a larger question: is the liberal Zionism of Israel's early days still relevant, or is Netanyahu's brand of divisive Right-wing politics now the country's dominant force?

Several measures indicate that Israel's shift to the Right may be permanent. Around 63 per cent of Jewish Israeli voters identify as Right-wing, compared with just 15 per cent for the Left and 18 per cent who consider themselves centrist. Surveys show that young Israelis, who grew up amid a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the early 2000s, appear more Right-wing than their parents' generation.

Gantz hopes his appeals for national unity, bolstered by his military credentials as the chief of staff who commanded Israeli forces during the 2014 Gaza War, will be enough to turn the tide.

"Benny has a calm and collected type of charisma that is not necessarily a sign of our populist times. The question is whether that type of leadership succeeds in this day and age," said Peter Lerner, a former military officer who served with him.

His main advantage is a wave of anti-Netanyahu sentiment among liberal Israelis, with voters saying they are tired of Netanyahu rather than enthused about Gantz.

"The biggest reason to support him is to just to get Netanyahu out," said Esti Nof, 26.