Status: 08/30/2022 4:48 p.m
On the one hand, Israeli Prime Minister Lapid and opposition leader Netanyahu agree: they reject a nuclear deal with Iran. On the other hand, there is an election campaign in Israel. And so the sensitive issue becomes the subject of party disputes.
One cannot accuse Israeli Prime Minister Jair Lapid of not approaching Benjamin Netanyahu. During the most recent Gaza crisis, he had met with the ex-prime minister and opposition leader – which Netanyahu commented in his way, patronizingly and unflatteringly for Lapid: he had given the prime minister a few tips.
So now another meeting – Lapid wanted Netanyahu to establish a common position between the government and the opposition on the nuclear deal with Iran. Before the talks, Lapid said there was no opposition or coalition on national security issues in Israel.
A description that Netanyahu did not share afterwards. After the conversation with Lapid, he was more concerned than before, the ex-premier said. He accused Lapid and Secretary of Defense Benny Gantz of “falling asleep” over the past year. Both would have had to put “necessary pressure” on the US government, meet with “several senators, hundreds of members of Congress and appear on dozens of TV shows” to prevent an agreement. But that didn’t happen.
Lapid did not let the accusation stand. In front of foreign journalists, he had already emphasized the close ties to the US government and spoke of an “open dialogue with the US administration about all these differences of opinion”. The US government is ready to listen, and that’s a good thing. The US remained Israel’s closest ally, he reiterated.
Lapid “not ready for skirmishes”
For Netanyahu, the nuclear deal is a found campaign issue with which he wants to drive the government before him. This is also why he announced that after November 1st, the day of the parliamentary elections in Israel, a strong new leadership in Israel will ensure that Iran will never have nuclear weapons.
Lapid responded promptly on Twitter: He was not prepared to engage in a skirmish with Netanyahu, which harms Israel’s security, he wrote. This must not be jeopardized by political games.
Most important: US-Israeli relations
A good two months before the election, political observers also see a purely domestically motivated maneuver by the ex-prime minister. Politically, there are hardly any differences between the government and the opposition in their assessment – including the rejection of the nuclear agreement with Iran.
But what is different, says the renowned political journalist Barak Ravid on the radio station “103fm”, is the behavior of the top Israeli politicians in the USA. Ravid recalls that Netanyahu publicly and extensively opposed the nuclear deal in March 2015 before the US Congress. According to Ravid, this appearance was intended to prevent the then government under US President Barack Obama from signing the nuclear agreement. “But it didn’t. Instead, it created a deep rift in relations with the US.”
A rift in US-Israeli relations that Lapid does not wish to risk again. Especially since the nuclear agreement came at the time – despite Netanyahu’s criticism.