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The current political bazaar in Israel has a beginning and an end. The beginning was in the Knesset elections, and the end is in the formation of the government. Benjamin Netanyahu still has some time, but he is on the way to forming his government in alliance with the Haredi parties and the fascist parties in Israel. Netanyahu managed the bazaar with all its intricacies skillfully, just as he did in the preparations for the elections to the 25thKnesset. Netanyahu is not Yair Lapid. His efforts, all his concerns were focused on winning the elections after three years of political vacuum, and that is why he did his utmost not to scatter votes in his right-wing camp. If the price of success and return to Balfour Street is to glorify the power of Religious Zionism as an extreme right-wing fascist movement, why not, then it is Machiavellian of the first order.
The Amateur vs. the Professional
Lapid, unlike Netanyahu, is not a professional politician. He is new to the profession, new to the political tricks that Netanyahu masters. In preparing for the elections, he did not focus on alliances that would allow him to hold the cards after the elections. His concern was his party (Yesh Atid - There is a Future), so he lost the future and kept the party as a force that occupies the second position in the Israeli political system. The antiNetanyahu camp was dispersed. The Arab parties fragmented into three lists, each struggling to pass the electoral threshold. The same was the case with the so-called Zionist left parties. The leader of the Labor Party, Merav Michaeli, refused to unite with the Meretz party led by Zahava Galon, so Meretz disappeared and ceased to exist in the Knesset. Beyond that, Lapid missed a number of opportunities when he refused to agree to reduce the electoral threshold to two percent, did not pay attention to an agreement on the surplus votes, and did not pass the bill to bar anyone indicted in a judicial inquiry from serving as prime minister in the first weeks of what was called the "Government of Change," just as he did not pay attention to all of what would defeat corruption and messianic racism, lift the...