On Friday evening, N12 broadcast the second installment of its new program Special Interview, based on the French format Les Rencontres du Papotin. The local program features a group of young women and men on the autistic spectrum who interview a famous public figure. The moderator is TV personality Rotem Sela, who also works with the interviewers on their questions and presentations.
The interviewers tend to ask blunt and frank questions that no ordinary interviewer would dare ask. Not every potential interviewee is willing to subject him/herself to such a format. In France, President Emmanuel Macron agreed to be interviewed. I doubt whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a control freak, would be willing to do the same.
The interviewee last Friday was singer Shlomo Arzi. He was clearly willing to contend with all the questions, including personal questions such as what mistakes he had made with his children. It all was a very pleasant interlude from the mad rush of current events.
Heightened tensions amid return to war
However, in the middle of the 40-minute program, the broadcast stopped abruptly because a ballistic missile from Yemen was intercepted by the Israel Air Force.
These are certainly not easy times, and tensions inside Israel have reached new peaks. The official resumption of fighting by Israel, before any agreement has been reached about the release of the remaining hostages, is one major cause.
The Israeli government blames Hamas for being willing to release only the handful of hostages who hold American citizenship. But, in fact, it was Israel that announced it was unwilling to proceed to the second stage of the agreement, signed on January 17, 2025, which would involve the release of additional Palestinian prisoners, an end to the war, and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for all our hostages.
The families of the hostages and the opposition argue that this constitutes a death sentence to the remaining live hostages.
Another problem regarding the resumption of fighting is that the opposition believes (and with cause) that pacifying Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich, and Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, is one of the reasons for the government’s insistence on resuming the fighting at this stage.
This ensures the survivability of the government at a time when the highly problematic 2025 state budget must be passed in the Knesset by the end of March, or else the government will fall.
While Otzma Yehudit has returned to the government, the opposition has petitioned the High Court of Justice to prevent Ben-Gvir’s return as national security minister because of various charges against him; the move is supported by the Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.
The continued efforts of Justice Minister Yariv Levin to push his reform/revolution of the judicial system, to the detriment of its liberal foundations, is another issue that remains unresolved, as is the prime minister’s dismissal of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar last Friday.
It is no secret that Netanyahu does not trust Bar, who is among the military top brass responsible for the intelligence failure that led to Hamas’s mega-atrocity in Israel on October 7.
However, the timing of Bar’s dismissal is problematic, due to the current Shin Bet’s investigation of “Qatargate” – in which Qatari sources allegedly paid the salary of Netanyahu’s spokesman for military affairs, Eliezer Feldstein (who never received security clearance).
Netanyahu responded by accusing the opposition of forming a leftist “deep state.” This accusation first appeared in a post on his official X account and was later moved to his personal account.
“In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” he wrote.
Once again, the High Court has intervened to postpone Bar’s dismissal. This will apparently also occur in the case of Baharav-Miara, whose dismissal on grounds of allegedly standing in the government’s way was top of the agenda during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
State commission of inquiry
Another contentious issue is the formation of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the events and decisions that led up to the massacre by Hamas on October 7. Netanyahu and his government object to the establishment of such a commission, whose members would be appointed by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit, whose election last February the prime minister and his cohorts refuse to recognize.
All the alternatives that the government has offered are unacceptable to the opposition. The sad fact is that Netanyahu refuses to accept any responsibility for what happened on October 7, or for any other failure he might have been involved in.
Preventing elections
Last, but not least: There is a growing suspicion in opposition circles that Netanyahu might try to prevent elections, set for the end of October 2026, or at least prevent fair elections from taking place.
Although the opposition keeps calling for elections immediately, there is nothing it can do to force early elections. According to the Israeli system, the results of the last elections remain in force as long as the current government manages to hold on to its majority until the designated date of the next elections.
Even though all the opinion polls (except for Channel 14’s most recent one) show that if elections were held today, the current government would lose its majority, the hands of the opposition are tied.
This mass of issues – together with growing mutual animosity and regrettably, even hatred – has resulted in mistrust between the two sides of the political spectrum reaching dangerous proportions. Last Thursday, Aharon Barak, the retired Supreme Court president, appeared on several local news channels, saying he fears that the country is headed toward civil war.
Hopefully, this will not happen.
The writer is the author of journalistic and academic articles, and several books, including international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010 she worked in the Knesset library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.