Israelis trust Netanyahu on security, not the economy

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at a government meeting March 29 after having met with Republican leader of the US Senate Mitch McConnell, who was visiting Israel. The long-standing friendship between the two, and Netanyahu’s clear victory in the March 17 elections, made the get-together especially warm and friendly. On the table was the emerging agreement in Switzerland between Iran and the six world powers, an agreement that seemed on that morning more imminent than ever before.

In between the McConnell tete-a-tete and the government meeting, Netanyahu managed to carry out a round of briefings with his representatives to the coalition negotiations. Netanyahu’s efforts to consolidate a coalition have been foundering ever since the publicized confrontation with designated Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, chairman of the Kulanu Party, regarding Kahlon’s authorities in the future government.

But Netanyahu dedicated his public statement, photographed by the media at the onset of the government meeting, to negotiations with Iran, not to the difficulties in coalition negotiations with Kahlon or the housing and cost-of-living crises. The prime minister updated the ministers about his meeting with McConnell and the telephone call he shared at the end of the week with the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid.

Netanyahu used the media to transmit two messages: The first is that he is on good terms with both Republican and Democratic leaders, as opposed to claims and reports that his pre-election speech in Congress on March 3 turned Israel from the recipient of bipartisan US support, to a tool in a political game between the two US parties. The second message relates to the agreement itself. Netanyahu warned against an agreement that is “dangerous to humanity and needs to be stopped.”