Report: Ticking Clock השעון המתקתק
- Ariel Avidar
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
PROMO: "Donald Trump is a businessman. He wants action. He wants results.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a career politician. A politician in a conflict that spans decades. For him, the status quo is a victory.
Pull him like a stubborn donkey so that he will have to tackle issues head on.
You have 68 mandates. You don't have to respond to every Lapid tweet. So we have two clocks, and they're not wound to the same schedule."
The clock is ticking. The clock is ticking on the Israeli government. The government has less than two years, and one of those years will include being in election mode.
Meanwhile, the Trump clock is also ticking. President Trump has only four years. Only four years to change the United States, and in his mind, to change the entire world. And he has come out storming. Storming against his neighbors. Storming against Mexico and against Canada. Storming against Europe, and storming domestically. Donald Trump is a businessman. He wants action. He wants results. If he invests time and money, he wants a solution. He wants a product. He wants a profit.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a career politician. A politician in a conflict that spans decades, generations, centuries. So he is content with slow moving progress. For him, the status quo is a victory. So we have two clocks, and they're not wound to the same schedule.
These are not merely two different approaches. These are contrary. And they are publicly coming to a head.
Regarding Israel and Hamas, Trump has been much less subtle recently. He first said what he expected, which then became what he would do personally. Which then became, Israel should decide. Which then became, someone has to get much tougher, hint, Netanyahu. Which has now become direct American talks with Hamas.
Trump has put out very strong words, and ultimatums, and even deadlines. Deadlines that have come and gone. In his own eyes, Trump knows that every threat and every missed deadline damages his reputation. It damages his power. And we're not talking about just with tiny Hamas. We're talking about the world stage. He's already successfully bluffed Colombia, and Canada, and Mexico.
We've seen this before. We saw this in Trump 1.0. In Trump 1.0, Trump openly shot a missile at Iranian General Soleimani. Where did he do it? He did it at the Baghdad International Airport.
He did it when Soleimani was on his way to visit the Iraqi Prime Minister. So he did it in front of the whole world. And he sent a message purposefully to the whole world, and to Russia, and to China, to let them know that Trump is not afraid to use his powerful military.
And to let them know that he's not afraid of consequences, and he's not afraid of international pressure. So here too, against Hamas, Trump sees another opportunity. A chance for a two for one.
To destroy terrorists, and send a military message to the whole world. But Netanyahu is standing in his way. And Netanyahu has already exposed a chink in Trump's armor.
Now, Trump is not a war monger. He has mocked the neocons. He has mocked the Steve Bannons. Instead, he prides himself, like Ronald Reagan, not on winning wars, but on peace through strength. So a chance to flex his military muscle in this morally justifiable case by destroying Hamas, this is an opportunity that Trump wants.
On to Netanyahu. First of all, he's not going anywhere. He remains head and shoulders above all other Israeli politicians. In terms of political savviness, popular support, professionalism, charisma, international clout. Under his leadership, Israel has reached levels of political and economic success well above its own size and age.
Now, part of Netanyahu's strategy for such long term survival is his knack for accumulating excuses, even pre-excuses, which allows him to avoid action. Allows him to share or shift blame. What does this mean? Means he pits one side against the other. And those are his excuses for not acting.
Where have we seen this? Well, his long list of excuses that he offers to the right are the courts, the left, Blinken and Biden, Europe, Gantz, Galant, the ICC, sanctions, embargoes, goes on and on. To the left, he will claim Ben Gvir, Smotrich, the coalition, the budget, Haredim, US evangelicals. Also a very long list.
And these long lists enable him to backtrack, to backtrack on promises, not to meet expectations, but to still save himself and use the plausible deniability to blame someone else. In other words, sorry, I would love to keep my promise regarding ABC, and I meant it at the time, but right now, XYZ keeps me from doing it. Even if he himself created the circumstances for XYZ.
In short, that's the MO, and that's his MO for decades. And it is exactly for that reason that he evokes personal vendettas in politics. Lieberman, Saar, Elkin, from this Knesset alone and others have dropped their ideologies, have seemingly dropped personal gain just to depose him, to depose Netanyahu at any costs.
We've also seen similar personal animosity on the world stage. President Sarkozy complaining to Obama years ago. We saw it in 2001 with Trump's comments on Netanyahu as well.
But either way, there's no replacement for Netanyahu from the right. And if there was, as we said earlier, there's no time. And opposing Netanyahu via elections right now brings the chance of a leftist government, a government of Lapid and Golan and Mansour Abbas.
Which during war and during a Trump-Huckabee administration would be a complete disaster. So what do we do now? What does Israel do now? So we don't wanna challenge the coalition's stability for the reasons we just said. So what we do is we pull Bibi.
Not push, not nudge, pull. And I'm not saying strengthen or support either. Because a strong Bibi is still slow moving, just like in the war.
A strong Bibi is still filled with empty promises, like with sovereignty and judicial reform. And a strong Bibi is still averse to conflict, like with the courts and like against the left. We don't want that either.
That still conflicts with Trump, and it doesn't get us out of this situation. The situation being that this is already a historic failure. A historic lost opportunity of the Israeli right.
A failure before, during, and since the war. That's the reality. It's not pleasant.
So I mean pull him. Pull him like a stubborn donkey, so that he will have to tackle issues head on, aggressively. Things that are against his nature.
Things that are against his ideology, if he even has one after all these decades. How do we do it? There's one thing that he listens to. That's mandates. Numbers of mandates. Meaning, we use Netanyahu's own MO to pit one against the other. To force him. Force Netanyahu to comply with Trump's strategies and Trump's plans. Meaning, jump to the right of Bibi. So that he is openly the one standing in the way and cannot point to excuses.
How? How do you do such a thing? You start a Knesset caucus. A caucus that any right winger should be willing to join. Any Likud member should be willing to join.
A Trump caucus. And you make a Trump conference. And you bring in the 14 extreme right wing mandates.
Have them take a break from Twitter. And you gather the Likud mandates. Pull them out of their basements. Some Haredim. And even the Liebermans. And the Matan Kahanas, who at least claim to be security minded. The goal is to thank Trump. Praise him. Promote his policies. Call for action. And with so many diverse mandates in favor, it begs the question, where is the sticking point? Why is there no action? The answer would be obvious. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not.
But right now, we have a storming Trump and an indecisive Bibi. And that's certainly not working. And what else do you do? You organize. Organize your right wing media. Organize your right wing politicians. You have them focus. Focus. Buy horse blinders if you need to. You have 68 mandates. You don't have to respond to every Lapid tweet. You don't have to fake shock at every Golan interview. I know, it's easier to be in constant election mode than it is to govern. But at some point, you have to govern. You don't like the Attorney General? You don't like the courts? You don't like the generals? Change them. They're not going to leave on their own.
The excuses are gone. Push for right wing policies. In war. Against terror. Are you waiting for 78? For 88? Because if you can't do it now, you never will. And don't get me wrong, I understand full well the loss of sovereignty by handing Gaza over to the US.
The possibility that Trump could be followed by a Democrat. And we all know demographic changes in the United States are not looking good for Israel. The US left sees Israel as apartheid. As a colonialist. Many in the US right see Israel as manipulating. Manipulating the US to fight its wars. So don't get the wrong impression about the future from US support. It's evangelicals and that's it. But Trump, Rubio, Huckabee, they see that too. Their intention was never to remove 2 million Gazans. Or to even take over Gaza. Because Israel won't allow it. Right, Israel won't allow it.
See our last talk on the reluctant messianic. The reluctant messianic who is filled with guilt and filled with moral dilemmas. He believes that Israel is an occupier of its own land. He wonders if the enemy is a freedom fighter.
So more practically it was a ploy. A ploy to encourage a timid Netanyahu by shifting pressure. The pressure from Europe. The pressure from the Israeli left. The pressure from the world. To shift that pressure from Netanyahu onto Trump. It's the plausible deniability that we just talked about. Giving Bibi the chance to raise his hands and say, hey, Trump insists. So the real goal was a negotiating ploy. To move an otherwise recalcitrant Hamas. A Hamas that is unfazed by deaths of civilians. Unfazed by their own destruction.
But what may get them to the negotiating table is the complete loss of Gaza. Trump's real end goal was to have them, the Hamas leaders, leave. And that's exactly what we saw in his last threat. Where he said, turn over the hostages. And Hamas leaders should leave. Now, this doesn't remove PIJ. Doesn't remove PFLP. Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood. ISIS in Sinai. It doesn't solve the deadly indoctrination. It simply pushes the problem to the next generation.
So it's a less than ideal outcome. And some, many, will say it's a loss. But after a year and a half, this government and our military leaders have proven that they cannot, will not do what it takes to win. They're unwilling to pay the civilian casualty costs.
They're unwilling to use the heavy-handed deterrents needed to combat terrorism. To combat guerrilla warfare. That's the reality. Like it or not. Most of us don't. But you go to war with the leaders you have.
Not with the leaders you want. If anyone remembers Rumsfeld, which I doubt. And what this Trump plan does, not plan A of removing two million people. Unfortunately, that's negotiating ploys, we said. But plan B, the real plan. The plan to remove Hamas leadership. Who anyway will just switch their jerseys to another acronym. But what it does is it saves face for Israel. It makes Trump the hero. It keeps Gaza quiet for a while. And it ends the war. Which means Israel will not be actively bonbing M_u$lims. So that Saudi Arabia can join the Abraham Accords. It ends the Middle East peace conflict. It results in signatures on the White House lawn. And it guarantees Trump and Netanyahu a Nobel Peace Prize.
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