Netanyahu's Coalition Deals: How They Enabled Bennett's Rise

Gadi Eisenkot, a leading opposition figure, recently stated that "a reality where the head of a party with six, eight, or ten mandates demands the premiership — that's not appropriate." His comments were widely interpreted as a reference to Naftali Bennett. Likud members have similarly complained that Bennett became prime minister despite his party winning only seven Knesset seats.

Yet the truth must be told: Naftali Bennett did not invent the possibility of receiving an enormous position in exchange for a tiny number of mandates. He was simply the first to use this method to reach the Prime Minister's Office. The path there was paved by Netanyahu over many years, as he transformed senior government positions, once centers of power reflecting broad public trust given to major parties, into currency for negotiations with party fragments over coalition survival.

For years, Benjamin Netanyahu awarded the country's most senior posts, first to medium-sized parties and later for even smaller handfuls of mandates, in order to form governments and ensure their survival. Along the way, he gradually eroded the political exchange rate.

To understand the depth of this change, one need only examine two examples, Yitzhak Shamir's government in the late 1980s and Ariel Sharon's government in 2003, and compare the distribution of senior portfolios then to their distribution in Netanyahu's governments.

In the late 1980s, the Labor Alignment needed 39 mandates to receive the defense and finance portfolios. In 2009, by contrast, the Labor Party received the defense portfolio with just 13 mandates, and Yisrael Beiteinu received the foreign ministry with 15 mandates. Two parties with a combined 28 Knesset members, more than a quarter fewer than the Alignment's strength, controlled two of the most senior and influential ministries in the country. Within just over two decades, senior portfolios that had been given to a 39-seat party were now being awarded separately, by Netanyahu, to parties with only 13 and 15 mandates.

In the 2003 elections, the Shinui party, led by Tommy Lapid, won 15 mandates. Ariel Sharon gave it the Justice Ministry, and Lapid was appointed minister. A decade later, in Netanyahu's government, Tzipi Livni received exactly the same portfolio when her Hatnuah party held just six mandates. Moreover, she also received responsibility for diplomatic negotiations with the Palestinians.

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The same ministry, less than half the mandates.

The question is what political price was required to receive one of the country's most sensitive and influential portfolios. In Sharon's era, a 15-seat party received the Justice Ministry; under Netanyahu, a six-seat party received it. The position remained important, its price plummeted.

And it didn't stop there.

Ehud Barak, who was appointed defense minister in Netanyahu's government, split from the Labor Party and formed the Independence faction, which numbered only five Knesset members. Despite this, he remained in the position. Avigdor Lieberman received the defense portfolio when Yisrael Beiteinu held six mandates. The nadir came when Naftali Bennett was appointed defense minister while heading a party with just three mandates.

Three mandates --- and the country's second most important position.

After all this, the path to granting the premiership to the head of a seven-seat party became much shorter.

Other portfolios also served repeatedly as currency in coalition negotiations. The Foreign Ministry was given to Lieberman; the Finance Ministry to Yair Lapid and later to Moshe Kahlon; the Justice Ministry to Tzipi Livni. It wasn't always a single-digit number of mandates, but the trend was clear: instead of senior positions reflecting the main power centers in the ruling party, they became payment to other party leaders in exchange for joining the coalition.

As a rule, senior portfolios previously remained with the ruling party or were given to a large partner in unity governments. There were exceptions, some were personal appointments of figures with national stature, like Moshe Dayan on the eve of the Six-Day War, and some were specific coalition deals. During Netanyahu's tenure, distributing power centers to small parties shifted from an occasional exception to a recurring operating method, and the bar gradually lowered, until a defense minister served at the head of a three-member faction.

The root of this may lie in the political trauma Netanyahu suffered in his first government.

When he was first elected prime minister in 1996, he appointed central figures who had risen through Likud or run on the list he headed to the three senior ministries: Dan Meridor was appointed finance minister, David Levy foreign minister, and Yitzhak Mordechai defense minister.

By the end of the term, all three had become his rivals: Meridor resigned from the government amid confrontation with Netanyahu and sharp criticism of him; Mordechai was fired, left Likud, and ran against Netanyahu as a candidate for prime minister; David Levy broke away from Likud, joined Ehud Barak, and ran with him in the 1999 elections as part of the One Israel list, the list that competed to unseat Netanyahu from the premiership.

Netanyahu lost to Barak and went home. When he returned to power a decade later, it was fairly easy for him to understand the lesson: a senior minister from within Likud is not just a partner in running the country; he could become an heir, a power center, and a competitor. The head of another party can threaten to dissolve the coalition, and a senior portfolio can certainly prevent him from doing so. Additionally, he poses no threat within the ruling party.

Ultimately, Israeli law does not stipulate how many mandates the party of a defense minister, justice minister, or even prime minister must have. A government is formed by virtue of the Knesset's confidence, and as long as a majority of Knesset members stands behind it, it is legal. But legality does not negate political and public significance. When a tiny party receives an enormous position because without it there is no coalition, it is not the power of the public that voted for it that determines the size of the position, but rather the extortion power granted to it by the balance between the blocs.

Netanyahu did not invent coalition trading. It existed in all Israeli governments. But during his tenure, the number of mandates required for the most senior positions repeatedly decreased. This created a new norm: one need not be the second or third largest force to receive a major national ministry; it is enough to be the small link without which there is no government.

This is where Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett enter the picture.

Lapid did not merely observe the process from the sidelines, nor did he simply inherit a reality Netanyahu created. He took the system one step further and applied it to the only position that until then had remained outside coalition trading: the premiership. In the rotation agreement he signed, he agreed that Bennett would serve first as Israel's prime minister, even though the Yamina party received only seven mandates.

Bennett served Lapid twice. First, Yamina's mandates provided the missing link for forming the government; then, Bennett's tenure with seven mandates legitimized, from a public and political standpoint, Lapid's entry to the office with 17 mandates. After a prime minister with seven mandates, a prime minister with 17 already seemed almost self-evident.

Lapid also had a dramatic precedent. While Ariel Sharon had already served as prime minister with 19 mandates, the difference between the cases is fundamental. When Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001, Likud had 19 mandates from the 1999 elections, but at that time, special direct elections for prime minister were held. Sharon was personally elected by the public with an overwhelming majority. When elections for the Knesset were held again in 2003, Likud under his leadership won 38 mandates.

Sharon did not receive the premiership in exchange for 19 mandates in a coalition deal. He received a direct and broad mandate from the voter. Lapid, in contrast, entered the Prime Minister's Office by virtue of the rotation agreement, when Yesh Atid held only 17 mandates. Had Bennett not preceded him with seven, Lapid's tenure would also have been recorded as an unprecedented breaking of the ratio between party strength and position strength.

Netanyahu is not solely responsible for this outcome. He cheapened the price of senior portfolios for years; Lapid transferred the trading system to the premiership; and Bennett agreed to accept the deal and serve by virtue of seven mandates. Each played a different role in the same process.

Nevertheless, the historical irony belongs first and foremost to Netanyahu. The man who sought to keep his rivals far from the Prime Minister's Office spent years eroding the threshold requirements for positions beneath it. Again and again he proved that even a small party can receive an enormous ministry, if its mandates are vital to the coalition's survival.

In the end, this logic came back to him like a boomerang. If a justice minister can arrive with six mandates, and if a defense minister can arrive with three, why shouldn't a prime minister arrive with seven?

Naftali Bennett was the first to do it. But he didn't write the price list.