Eli Yishai told reporters today that following the elections, he plans to recommend to President Rivlin that his preference for Prime Minister is Bibi Netanyahu.

Naftali Bennett has also made it clear that he will recommend a right-wing led government under Netanyahu.

Last week Avigdor Liberman said he could go with either Netanyahu or Herzog/Livni, but in a poor attempt at damage control, a few days later Liberman said he might recommend himself to the president.

Yishai’s statement puts pressure on Aryeh Deri to publicly pick a side.

At this point, a Knesset Channel poll has both Yishai and Deri’s party each receiving 4 seats.

Rabbis and Shas political leaders Monday morning failed in a last-ditch attempt so stop former party leader MK Eli Yishai from leaving Shas and setting up his own party, possibly with the support of the Jewish Home’s Tekuma faction, headed by Housing Minster Uri Ariel.

Chances to make peace between Yishai and Shas chairman Aryeh Deri were rated as very low, but there is more optimism in the Jewish Home party. However, Ariel gained an advantage with the announcement that a member of his faction, MK Yoni Chetboun, will not run for re-lection on the Jewish Home slate.

Party member and Tekuma colleague MK Orit Struk has said she will follow Ariel if he forms a new party or joins with Yishai. With Chetboun and Struk, Ariel will have the minimum of number of Jewish Home MKs needed to take along with them millions of shekels for funding their campaign.

Suspense still surrounds Moshe Kahlon’s new Kulanu party. He is courting Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, who said two months ago he would not enter politics. If he does, he will have proven his credential to be a politician by not keeping his word.

Kahlon has scotched rumors that supermarket mogul Rami Levi will join his party, whose banner will be social justice.

Rami Levi supermarkets are known for having the lowest prices in the country but he also is known for fighting attempts to raise the minimum wage, which he pays to thousands of his workers.

It is all but official that Aryeh Deri, chairman of the Shas Sephardic Haredi party, is getting rid of Eli Yishai, one of the most respectable and intellectually honest Haredi politicians whose presence ruins Shas’ tradition of selling out to the highest bidder.

An announcement is expected Sunday or Monday.

As reported here Thursday, Deri and Yishai called off a meeting to make peace after Deri insulted Yishai with a demand that he deposit a liter of resignation just in case Deri decides his menace is working against the party.

Deri tried to calm Yishai by offering him the number two slot on the Shas party list of candidates. Yishai was not about to accept the prize while handing over a letter to pave the way for his dismissal.

Yishai also has been talking with Jewish Home party Housing Minister Uri Ariel about signing for a new party.

Sources close to the issue told The Jewish Press that it is far from being a “done deal” and that there is a chance that Ariel can patch up his differences with Jewish Home party chairman Naftali Bennett.

Ariel, whose honest to his  ideology often leads him to make the wrong turn politically, has demanded that Bennett reserve several spots for his Tekuma faction.

The Jewish Home party has been the most successful of all Knesset factions in the current government,. It has rid itself of the hardline image of the old National Religious party that closed its doors to secular nationalists and carved into stone an image of considering Judea and Samaria the capital of Israel.

If Ariel cuts the cord, he will cost the Jewish Home party some Knesset seats but he, too, will pay a heavy price by being fingered, rightly or wrongly, or making the “Jewish Home” a contradictory word. As Minister of Housing, he has played a major role in promoting new building for Jews in eastern Jerusalem, much to the dismay of the Obama administration.

Bennett has been too successful to please Ariel’s old-guard national religious ideology, and Ariel has complained that Bennett has not fulfilled promises made to him and his Tekuma faction.

Ariel’s contacts with Yishai have served only to deepen the fissure between him and Bennett.

Ariel admits that he differs with Bennett on religion and the extent of maintaining a Jewish presence in all of Judea and Samaria.

Ariel is very principled. He can be trusted not to sell out for votes or power, but his red lines are too rigid and too narrow in the politics of compromise.

Which is better? A compromised but effective Jewish Home or two separate nationalist parties?

Unlike normal MKs who receive death threats for their connection to the Temple Mount, Eli Yishai was threatened to be stabbed if he left the Shas party. Yishai received several phone calls threatening his life.

When party head Aryeh Deri was sent to jail, Eli Yishai successfully took over the Shas party. But once Deri was released and the law permitted it, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the party’s founder and spiritual head, put Deri back in charge.

Once Rav Ovadia died, Deri’s sidelining of Yishai become more open. But there was a fear among Deri’s supporters that Yishai would leave Shas and take half the party with him.

With elections coming up, Yishai had been examining his options to either form a new party, or join someone else’s party instead of running under Deri’s rule.

Yishai is considered the more popular leader among Shas voters.

The Shas party is probably not as unified over voting in a specific presidential candidate for president as some might believe. It’s probably not unified at all.

On Monday night, Shas MK Eli Yishai and Likud president-hopeful MK Ruby Rivlin were seen sitting side-by-side at a wedding for the grandson of former Chief Rabbi, Rav Shlomo Amar.

In fact, except for Shas leader Aryeh Deri and Ariel Attias, all the Shas MKs showed up, despite the tremendous pressure placed on them not to go to the wedding.

The battle behind the scenes is over who is spiritual heir to former Shas founder Rav Ovadia Yosef and of Sephardim in general. Most Sephardim appear to be leaning towards Rav Shlomo Amar, who is considered a halachic genius and successful chief rabbi. Aryeh Deri sees Rav Amar as a political threat to his Sephardic hegemony.

At one point Rav Amar blessed Eli Yishai, who Deri had deposed as party head, saying, “May all your enemies fall before you, and may you be raised up, and succeed in all your undertakings.”

In practical terms, Shas, under Aryeh Deri, is more likely to be ordered to cast a vote for Dalia Itzik than for Ruby Rivlin. But as the vote for president is done by secret ballot, we’re more likely to see Yishai’s faction within Shas voting for Ruby Rivlin.

Among other guests who made an appearance were the two current chief rabbis, one of whom is related through marriage to Rav Amar, former chief rabbis, judges, both Ashkenaz and Sephardi yeshiva heads, as well as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat who sported a fashionable knitted Kipa.

If weddings parties were coronations, then Rav Amar would be king.

And despite all the attention his grandfather was getting, the Chatan (groom) clearly enjoyed the wedding too.

The Shas political party, founded and run by the late Rav Ovadia Yosef, has a appointed a new spiritual leader, according to a Galei Tzahal report.

The rabbi chosen to replace Harav Ovadia and be the new president of the party’s Council of Torah Sages is Rabbi Shalom Cohen.

Aryeh Deri is the political leader of the party. Deri displaced Eli Yishai, who was interim leader for the years that Deri was in jail, and until he was allowed to return to politics.

MK Eli Yishai, the former head of the Shas party has decided he will not be running for mayor of Jerusalem, according to a report in the Israeli, Chareidi La’Daat website.

Yishai was the political head of the Shas party until Shas’s spiritual leader, Rav Ovadia Yosef, kicked him out and replaced him with Aryeh Deri. Following the completion of Aryeh Deri’s prison sentence, Deri had a cooling-off period before he could return to the politics.

Upon Deri’s going to prison, Yishai replaced Deri for 13 years, during which time Yishai ran Shas as a responsible and effective political party.

Associates of Yishai said that he had been considering challenging incumbant mayor Nir Barkat for the position in the upcoming race, but in the end Yishai has decided he wants to remain working in the national politics, and still within the Shas party.

As the Minister of the Interior in former governments, Yishai earned the reputation of being an honest person and a politician who did his job well.

Currently no candidates have announced their decision to challenge Nir Barkat for position of mayor of Jerusalem.