Will political merger mania save or topple Netanyahu?
Benjamin Netanyahu
Akivah Eldar writes in Al-Monitor:
Anyone picking up a jar of mayonnaise on a supermarket shelf can find a detailed list of ingredients on its label, including the percentage of fat, sodium and number of calories per 100 grams. The law that requires manufacturers to provide consumers with this information was passed to enable them to buy the products best suited to their health needs and taste. On the other hand, Israelis entering the voting booth on March 2 will find 30 party ballots from which to choose, some 22 of them fly-by-night organizations that they will encounter for the first and last time on that occasion. There is no law or even a regulation obliging political parties to present potential “consumers” of their brand with their ingredients. In fact, even those that bother to formulate a party platform simply offer voters a collection of meaningless cliches.
The right-wing voter, whether secular, religious or ultra-Orthodox, who believes prosecutors have indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on trumped up charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, will obviously pick up the slip of paper with the name of one of the parties comprising the right wing-ultra-Orthodox bloc (Likud, Yamina, Otzma Yehudit, Yahadut HaTorah or Shas) and stuff it into the ballot box. All of these parties are standing by the accused Netanyahu.
For more than a decade, Netanyahu has delivered the goods most in demand by voters of the Likud and company — more settlements and less peace, an abundance of narcissism and heaps of xenophobia. Congested highways, overcrowded hospitals, record-breaking poverty, a huge budget deficit and foreign policy and security problems all pale in comparison to the existential threat that Netanyahu and his chorus dub a “left-wing regime.”
On the most critical issue, the Arab-Israeli conflict, even a magnifying glass could not help in discerning a gap between the positions of Netanyahu’s wannabe Likud successors — Israel Katz, Gideon Saar, Gilad Erdan and Nir Barkat. All support annexation of the West Bank or parts of it and oppose a two-state solution. That is why the parties considered the Likud’s “natural partners” will easily find a common denominator with whoever succeeds Netanyahu