Same players shoot gain

Saddening, really. Quite hard to tell what is the most saddening, by the way, in this embarrassment, as no matter where you look, there is nothing or nobody to bring some comfort. Selfish fools who don’t give a damn about Israel’s future.

So, Avigdor Lieberman held firm until the end on his requirements regarding the “H’aredim draft bill”. H’aredim for whom this law is a red line, and on which they didn’t budge, or barely. Critical, crucial law ? Not at all, quite the opposite, in fact. Just a populist story, mainly about electoral ego. On one side, it allows Lieberman to take revenge on Netanyahu, and on the other side, it gives him the “guy who doesn’t sell his principles to H’aredim” image for the elections to come, elections he largely contributed to provoke. Indeed, let’s remind here that “H’aredim to the army” is nothing more than a demagogic electoral slogan. Their rabbis refuse the principle of mandatory service (although more and more young H’aredim join Tsahal of their own free will), and the army does not see their draft favorably either, so, again, we talk here about a totally useless and costly (not only financially) law.

Benyamin Netanyahu has also his part, obviously. True, he was stuck between angry H’aredim and stubborn Lieberman, but still, there was a myriad of political, sometimes surrealist, acrobatics, in desperate attempts of saving a coalition that promised to be flawed from the start, by pushing opposition MKs to defect, or even by proposing to the already dying Labor Party, to join the coaltion, (what would be pure and simple suicide), in return for ministerial retribution and support for the presidential election. All this, not for the sake of the country, but most and foremost to secure a legal shield guaranteeing a few more years of immunity.

Moshe Kah’lon, by negotiating his return to the Likud, proves he has no ideological ethos or plafotrm, he had no reason to leave the Likud in the first place, and does nothing more than parasiting the process. All this on the basis of a fake “social” image he built, first thanks to Moshe Feiglin who helped him to be elected in 2008 Likud’s primaries, and of course thanks to Netanyahu and his law crushing mobile phone providers prices.

“New Right”, then, announced they would run again. Fine, but led by who ? Ayelet Shaked, after she left “Jewish Home” to found New Right, is now being approached to join the Likud (which as well tells a lot about her ideological convictions). It is not clear yet, but for them, as for Feiglin, it looks like a second chance to enter the Knesset.

There is no reason to rejoice in the opposition either. Yair Lapid yesterday hinted he could leave the “Blue-White” bloc, that he won’t guarantee he would remain its number two.

Avi Gabbay refused Netanyahu’s offer, and therefore avoided Labor definitive crash, but his situation is not quite better. The first polls published these two last days, as it became clear we would head to new elections, show that the odds don’t change, for now, on the center-left. “Blue-White” would retain around 33 seats, Labor 6, Meretz 5, Hadash 6.

That’s it, here we are. Same players shoot again. And at no time we talk about crucial topics, We will get back to vote on September 17th, it will cost the israeli tax payer nearly half a billion shekels, and we will finally get similar results, similar configuration, with no guarantee whatsoever this time we will have a stable coalition to run the country. Note, I said “stable”, not “responsible”, this is pure fantasy.