T. Belman. Shavit is way too optimistic about Yaalon’s chances. A May 17/16 Maariv poll showed Likud 26, Bayit Yehudit 14, Yisrael Beitanu 11, and the two religious parties 13, totalling 64 seats. He also presupposes that some center parties can join to reach more than 26 seats in order to get the first chance to form a government.
Even if they could, I believe that they couldn’t form a government because the religious parties won’t abandon Bibi who brought them in from the cold. They would have to be replaced by the Arab Joint List.
Yaalon is not as popular as Shavit says he is.
[..] Netanyahu and Ya’alon ostensibly were allies. Neither believed in peace now and both tried to prevent war tomorrow. Neither thought it was possible to end the conflict but made every effort to contain it.
But about a year ago the defense minister detected that the prime minister had a pretty radical agenda – he wanted to cut down to size the legal elite, the media elite and the military elite. I won’t lend a hand to that, the minister in charge of the army told his superior. I won’t support an attack on the rule of law and the media, and I won’t let you ruin the army.
From that moment the alliance ceased to be. With increasing astonishment Ya’alon watched Netanyahu’s moral indifference and inaction in view of the lawbreakers in the West Bank, the murder-supporters in Duma and the sympathizers with the itchy trigger finger in Hebron. This is not the man I came to work with, he said. This is not the Likud party I joined. This is not the Zionism I believe in.
Ya’alon has three options. He can stay home, purge Likud or set up a new center-right movement that will run against Likud. Stay home? Of course not. His natural ambition and ideological commitment are now fired by rage (at Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, Zeev Elkin, Yariv Levin and the Familia crowd) – not to mention dread regarding the country’s fate.
Purge Likud? Ya’alon feels a deep affection for the moderate Likud people. To him, most of them aren’t partners to the fanatical insanity that has gripped their leaders. If there’s a chance to save Likud from itself, he’ll be glad to do so.
A new center-right movement? According to the latest surveys, a partnership with Gideon Sa’ar, Moshe Kahlon and Gabi Ashkenazi could win more than 20 Knesset seats. With Yair Lapid and other sane forces a new alignment could fundamentally change the political map.
In the foreseeable future Ya’alon won’t provide a satisfactory answer to the left’s yearnings for peace. He doesn’t believe in Mahmoud Abbas, in a sovereign Palestinian state or in immediate, comprehensive reconciliation.
But Ya’alon could exorcize the nationalist, populist obsession that has taken over the right wing. He will replace hatred (of Arabs, leftists, LGBTs, ultra-Orthodox Jews) with a process of national unification based on mutual respect. Ya’alon will restore values and the state’s institutions, while protecting the courts, human rights and freedom of expression. As he tempers Menachem Begin’s spirit with Yitzhak Rabin’s, Ya’alon will invite the center and center-right to unite under his leadership and return Israel to sanity.
Does he have a chance? Israeli politics is brutal. Public opinion is fickle. This season’s king could be next season’s water boy. But Ya’alon has ability that could make him the igniter of a big bang. He’s the grain of sand around which diverse forces could crystallize. His seniority could convince key players to diminish themselves (for a while) and play a team game.
There’s no certainty Ya’alon will divide the land, but he may make a dramatic contribution to spark an upheaval.
😛 😛 😛
Its amusing to watch how the leftists flock to support the guy who incarcerated Jews without evidence, declared them guilty without evidence, used the Duma false flag arab arson to come up with a law to incarcerate Jews, declared a soldier guilty…. basically commit almost every imaginable criminal sabotaging of democracy….. Its amusing to watch the leftists frauds flock now into making him a martyr SOLELY because he incarcerated and abused zionists. It looks like the foreign paid moles and media will accept fascism as long as it is directed against real zionists. The fake zionists behave like the supersessionists who needed to get rid of the Jews in order to make their fairy tale palatable to the masses….. the fake zionists need to get rid of the real zionists so that their ludicrous self appellation of “zionist union” does not appear completely laughable, absurd. The fake zionists MOST important agenda…….their main priority……. is to give as quickly as humanly possible…. the jewish homeland to the muslims to build muslim homes. LOL, calling themselves zionists and writing rubbish like this article……. lauding a fascist who falsely incarcerates Jews. If he had been incarcerating the leftists for their lying blood libeling incitements, which has murdered many Jews, they would have screamed bloody murder.
Netanyahu has been too long in the gov. as PM. It’s time for him to go
Since when Ya’alon can defeat anyone?
Ted, why do you even give this empty ball sack a platform on your blog?
The delusional Israel hating Shavit can “Shove It”.