- You can safely ignore all news reports about when the next elections will take place. After all, what are the possibilities? The last date for elections (based on when the current Knesset was elected) is November 7, 2006; and even if our government falls tomorrow, the earliest likely date for elections would be in April or May 2006. So all the hoopla about timing is really a waste of ink and effort; what's six months more or less?
- You can safely ignore all reports about Ariel Sharon splitting off from the Likud (or, rather, given their relative sizes, about Ariel Sharon forcing the Likud to split off from him). Of course, I'm in favor of a Likud split; but it'll happen when and if it happens, and Arik (who, like the off-screen Soviet leader in Doctor Strangelove, loves surprises) is hardly going to let us mere voters know his inner thought processes. We should accept that everything we read on the subject from now until the split happens or doesn't happen is chicken-feed - that is, "news" released by an interested party in order to further an agenda or distract us from something else.
- You can safely ignore reports about mergers and splits among Israel's various right-wing parties. I'm not saying that mergers and splits won't take place, of course - heaven forbid! I'm just saying that it really doesn't matter. Every election season, the Israeli Right decides that the reason for its inability to seize control of the country is because of some technicality: either there are too many right-wing parties splitting the vote, or there are too few, or they need a charismatic new leader, or whatever. Every election season, somebody comes up with a scientific opinion poll showing how Magic Merger X will result in thirty Knesset seats for the far-Right, and yet somehow it never seems to work out that way.
- While it would be nice if it mattered who runs the Labor Party, it probably doesn't.
More about: | Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Israel, Knesset |