The opposition’s alternative

It’s PM Netanyahu’s great fortune that there is no one on the opposite side with enough fortitude to allow the other players to pause for a moment, stop spinning around opinion polls, give their big egos a rest and ask themselves what is right for the country.

By BEN CASPIT
Knesset 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Knesset 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
What is happening in the opposition? All-out war.
It’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s great fortune that there is no one on the opposite side with enough fortitude to allow the other players to pause for a moment, stop spinning around opinion polls, give their big egos a rest and ask themselves what is right for the country.
How can they produce an alternative? Ehud Olmert will decide whether to run after the elections in the US. On November 7. If there isn’t a last-minute dramatic change, the former prime minister will wait until then.
Olmert believes that Mitt Romney’s victory will make elections in Israel redundant. Bibi will be revealed as the new Prophet Eliyahu.
How could Binyamin Netanyahu have known which candidate to back for the next president of the US, someone who is supposed to be his best friend? Together they will walk arm in arm, Mitt and Bibi, toward a better future.
But if Barack Obama wins, it will be clear to everyone what a crazy bet the prime minister took for the first time since the establishment of the state, as he clearly identified himself as a supporter of Romney and took an active part in his campaign. For Sheldon Adelson, who has been the patron of both Netanyahu and Romney, a Romney victory in November would be great. It will be a magical journey. If he loses? So we’ll drown.
Well, there are a few more days, so we should try to get as much done as possible until then.
If I were Tzipi Livni, I would tell Olmert that if he’s running, I’m with him. And Shaul Mofaz third. With Gabi Ashkenazi supporting us from outside the Knesset candidates list (because of the cooling-off period for ex-IDF officers).
Because this is the only possible way to offer an alternative to Netanyahu. There is no other. Livni wishes and hopes for a union with Yair Lapid at the last minute, but this has no chance.
Even with Lapid, there is no guarantee that the unified party will be the largest. Most likely not. As the Israeli elections approaches, the public is still asking itself: Who has been there? Who knows what the red button looks like? Who has made decisions like these before? There is only one alternative available, and that’s Olmert. In recent weeks, a huge campaign was launched here, almost unprecedented, to scare and undermine his confidence, to give him a hint that if he dared to return to politics (and the law allows it, but the righteous speak of the law only when it suits them) something will happen to him, and so on.
This campaign may succeed. Anyway, as of now, there is no other alternative to Bibi. Shelly Yacimovich’s story line, romantic and exciting as it is, still requires proof.
If Livni is convinced in the end, to run in second place on a ticket behind Olmert, there could be a chance, albeit a small one. A more secure format would be a large Center-Left bloc headed by Olmert and another social-democratic one headed by Livni.
This is the only possible alternative coalition to the current one that can be formed here, one with Lapid and Shas’s Arye Deri.