Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a fabulous hand of political poker. He looked to his left and to his right, saw the chaos in Kadima and the power struggle in the Labor party, and consequently decided to hold the primary election for the chairmanship of his own Likud party on Jan. 31, 2012 -- a year and a half early. The popularity Netanyahu won with the release of Gilad Shalit gives him an enormous advantage over his opponents. Political analysts are describing this surprising move as a brilliant maneuver. In its 62 years, the Knesset has seen its fair share of "brilliant maneuvers." In retrospect, though, not all of them proved to be that brilliant. One of the more famous "brilliant maneuvers" was in 1977, when then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pushed the religious parties out of the coalition and moved up the general elections -- only to end up losing and sitting in the opposition for the first time in Labor's history. Last week, whispers could definitely be heard. I wrote in my column that the coalition is currently stable but many politicians have been listening for faint echoes of an imminent stampede. They have been hearing the rustle of instability emanating from Kadima, Labor, current and future smaller factions, and even from unusual right-wing activity within the Likud. My colleague Mordechai Gilat said it best when he wrote last week that the scent of elections was in the air. Netanyahu's early primaries reinforce this feeling. Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox! What, then, is Netanyahu trying to achieve? What is he trying to avoid? He assured Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely during a faction meeting on Monday that the move was not intended to secure a spot for Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the party list, though he did leave the door just slightly open to that possibility. It is also unlikely that his plan to hold party primaries in January 2012 is a move toward a victory in the general elections in November 2013, nearly two years from now. If Netanyahu retains his popularity in these two years he can count on Likud voters to grant him the party's chairmanship in 2013 anyway. If, on the other hand, his popularity wanes dramatically, his leadership will be challenged ahead of the general elections, and the results of the 2012 primaries will have become irrelevant. From this we can glean that early primaries could mean a move to push the general elections up as well. Why? Because Israeli relations with the U.S. will likely deteriorate should President Barack Obama be re-elected in November 2012; because re-election now would give Netanyahu room to tackle the serious problems in shaping Israel's Iran policy; because, mainly, his coalition is facing threats from within. Two threats, to be exact. The first threat to the stability of Netanyahu's coalition, which rests upon his alliance with Yisrael Beitenu, Labor and Shas, is Shas' desire to hold early general elections in efforts to prevent Aryeh Deri from forming a rival party. As long as Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef (who refused to allow Deri back into the Shas fold) remains in good health and retains his ability to make the final decisions for Shas, the coalition is safe -- but for how long? The other threat, the central one, is that the criminal investigation of Avigdor Lieberman will develop into a serious indictment, prompting the Yisrael Beitenu chairman to withdraw his 15-seat party from the coalition. Both these possibilities carry much more weight than they appear to at this time. Based on all this, the forecast is that the early Likud primaries are a brilliant maneuver only as long as they are followed by early elections for the Knesset.
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