Chairman of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz was well prepared the evening of Oct. 23, when President Reuven Rivlin granted him a mandate to form a new government. His speech was proper and met all expectations. It relayed a message of reconciliation, along with a promise to form a liberal unity government. As soon as he was done, Gantz called all the leaders of the various parties in the Knesset and invited them to meet with him. This was organized meticulously as well in order to provide a sense that he was being proactive and that he had a genuine desire to unite everyone.

The Blue and White party knew that they would eventually come up against a wall, in the form of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of 55 seats, the Likud party together with other right-wing parties and the ultra-Orthodox. What they failed to assess correctly was how consolidated that bloc would be. Each of its members responded politely and even cordially, but one by one the leaders of the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties refused to meet with Gantz, suggesting instead that he meet with Netanyahu as the head of their bloc. Gantz had hoped that he would manage to eke out a meeting or two, with the heads of the New Right, for example, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, or with his old army buddy, Chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi Rabbi Rafi Peretz. Instead, he got the same generic answer from all of them. It turns out that the right-wing bloc was carefully briefed and well prepared for when Gantz woulc receive this mandate. Had Gantz managed to get even a single meeting, it would have created the sense that there were cracks in the bloc. Netanyahu has managed to prevent that for now.

But that is the least of Gantz’s problems. He is going to the coalition negotiations with a sincere desire to form a broad unity government, because he really believes in it. The problem is that he has little room to maneuver and no idea what Netanyahu really wants.

Quite a few senior members and advisers in Blue and White believe that what Netanyahu does want is a third round of elections, and that he is fooling everyone with his calls for a unity government. They warn Gantz that any negotiations with Netanyahu would trip up him and the Blue and White party, and get them entangled in all sorts of statements or deeds, which would be used against them in the next election. What this means is that Gantz will have to conduct coalition negotiations under impossible conditions. He is facing a bloc of 55 Knesset members and Netanyahu’s precondition that he serves first as prime minister in a rotation agreement. If he negotiates over this point and a third election is held, Gantz could suffer from having shown intent to violate one of his cardinal election promises, i.e., not to sit in a coalition with Netanyahu, who is expected to be indicted on criminal charges.