The sorry saga of Likud party’s slate of candidates for the elections to the Knesset retook another bump on the head Monday afternoon with a Tel Aviv District Court order to halt a recount of ballots that a lower court ordered.

More than 50 percent of the votes had been recounted before the court issued its ruling today.

The court ruled that the judicial system had no right to interfere in the Likud party’s court ruling concerning the recount.

The appeal to the civil district court was filed by Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, who was elected to the 20th place on the list after a party recount found her ahead of challenger and former Cabinet minister and MK Avi Dichter.

Dichter filed and won an appeal to a lower civil court for a complete recount and he is probably will appeal today’s decision to the Supreme Court.

The Likud has a scant three days to meet the Thursday deadline to announce its candidates.

The Likud party manages to make a mess of its primary elections almost every time, but this year was exceptional.

Maybe it has something to do with the Shmittah?

Polls that showing that Eli Yishai’s Yachad party won’t pass the minimum electoral threshold. Neither will Michael Ben-Ari’s Otzma Yehudit party. As a result, they could lose at least 4 seats that could have gone towards a right-wing coalition.

But joined together, the two are not only more likely to get in, but could possibly get as many as 7 seats.

But it comes at a cost.

Bayit Yehudi drops from 15 or 16 in the polls to 13 seats. Shas will also take a hit and drop back down to 6, after rallying this past week.

While Bayit Yehudi will take a small hit, in the big picture, Bayit Yehudi and Yachad would then bring 20 seats to the coalition, not 15 – assuming Naftali Bennett agrees to work with them after the elections.

It’s clear that neither the Yachad nor the Otzma party chiefs plans to step down for the greater good and ensure Bayit Yehudi gets their otherwise lost votes, so the only sane option left is for them is to join together for the elections.

The question is, will their ideological handcuffs allow them to do the right thing?

Uri Orbach, a leading Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Knesset Member and outgoing Pensioners’ Minister, is in the hospital for recurring  blood disease, but his condition has improved slightly and is now not considered the be life-threatening.

He was hospitalized two weeks ago, and his condition deteriorated over the weekend but improved on Monday.

Now I must devote my time to urgent and important treatment for my health,” Orbach, a former journalist, wrote on Facebook  “At present I must focus immediately on treating my condition to get back to health. Thank you for your prayers on my behalf.”

He asked people not to visit but to pray for a complete and speedy recovery for Uri Shraga ben Penina.

The Herzog-Livni party, billed as the “Zionist Camp,” and the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party headed by Naftali Bennett would be the two largest parties in Israel if university and college students were voting, according to a poll published by Globes.

The Likud party came in a distant third place, winning only 16 of 120 Knesset seats in a poll of nearly 2,600 students.

The Herzog-Livni combo won 30 seats, and Bennett’s party was only four seats behind.

Bennett topped the list on the question of trust, while Herzog was favored when it comes to social issues, housing and future employment, which are of the utmost concern to students.

Herzog and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were even-Stephen in the poll that asked who is best suited to be Prime Minister.

Political leaders should pay serious attention to the results because they show that those who soon will be in the forefront of society are tired of slogans, talk and lack of change in a social and political system that is overweight, tired and self-fulfilling.

The lists of candidates of the Jewish Home party and the in the merged Labor-Livni party, even if it is called the “Zionist Camp,” are clearly left-wing and right-wing.

The Likud, under Netanyahu, has tried so hard to be so centrist that it has no clear direction.

Israel’s establishment launched the election campaign by trying to convince the public that Labor-Livni is not leftwing but is a centrist party.

The Labor party primaries killed that hoax with the election of bona fide leftists, including one who wants to divide Jerusalem, to spots that guarantee them a seat in the next Knesset.

Similar, voters in the Jewish Home party made it look like a resurrection of the old National Religious Party, except for the spectacular victory of secularist Ayelet Shaked.

Bennett can make the list a bit more secular but even stronger as a right-wing faction if he exercises his option of choosing a candidate for a top spot and nominates Dani Dayan, a spokesman for Judea and Samaria but not religious.

The merged party that brought together Labor and Tzipi Livni under the banner of the “Zionist Camp” has talked with Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi about a possible coalition government.

The fact that Labor party chairman Yitzchak Herzog would even agree to talk with an anti-Zionist Arab MKs such as Tibi is only another page in Herzog-Livni’s new book to prove once again that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

It is not clear whether Herzog approached Arab political leaders or vice-versa, but both sides agree there were talks on the possibility of Arab parties breaking the taboo against joining a Jewish-dominated coalition in the Knesset.

Channel 10 reported that it was Herzog who took the initiative, and he confirmed there were contacts but insisted that it was MK Tibi who approached him.

Remember, Herzog and Livni merged their two parties under the clever slogan of the “Zionist Camp,” just in case anything thinks that expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from Judea and Samira is not Zionistic.

The theory is that it is better for Jews to be a majority in “Auschwitz Borders,” as termed by former Labor party official and Ambassador to the United Nations Abba Eban, than to be “surrounded by Arabs.” By the way, this is exactly the situation of the Jews in Netanya and Hadera, except that they are not surrounded by Arabs on all sides because they have the Mediterranean Sea to protect them on the west.

And who is Ahmed Tibi, with whom Herzog talked about a future coalition with the “Zionist Camp”?

He was elected to the Knesset in 1999 after serving as an adviser to Yasser Arafat. As a Knesset Member, he supported terror under the euphemism of the “intifada.”

Tibi opposes Israel being a Jewish state, which he calls “racist.”

He backs abolishing the Law of Return that allows Jews all over the world to move to Israel as citizens, but he backs the so-called Arab “right of return” for third, fourth fifth and six-generation Arabs living in foreign countries but classified as “refugees” by the United Nations because their great-great-great–great grandparents lived in Israel once upon a time.

Tibi wants to ban the HaTikvah national anthem and the blue and white Jewish flag bearing the Star of David.

In a radio interview last July where he refused to use the word ‘terrorists’ regarding the murderers of three yeshiva youth,  Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Sha’ar and Eyal Yifrah. Tibi blamed “the government of Israel, Naftali Bennett and the rabbis who incited to murder Palestinians” for the revenge killing of Mohammed Abu Khder.

Herzog can breathe a sigh of relief that Tibi rejected the idea of joining a Siamese twin coalition headed by Herzog and Livni.

However, if the “Zionist Camp” forms the next coalition, Tibi said it might get the support of Arab MKs in critical votes in exchange for more funds for the Arab sector.

Four pre-election polls published Thursday night and Friday morning show varying results, but two of them reveal that the popularity of Labor-Livni has grown by a solitary seat in the Knesset. Nevertheless, Israel’s establishment media are reporting the trivial news as if there is a rush of support for the left.

Polls are not  meaningless, but when a party registers one seat more or one less from week to week, it is virtually insignificant, numerically as well as statistically when taking into account the margin of error in small samples.

That has not stopped Israel Radio, known by the misnomer in English as the Voice of Israel, from promoting the results of this week’s poll as a victory for the “Zionist camp,” a label now claimed by everyone except for Neturei Karta.

Similarly,  three television polls show that the lead party is the “Zionist camp,” whose list of candidates likely to be elected includes those who want to turn over all of Judea and Samaria as well as half of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority, which has said that no Jew will be allowed to live there.

The same poll trumpeted by Israel radio also shows that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a 4 percentage lead over Labor party leaders Yitzchak Herzog and Tzipi Livni when voters are faced with the question of who should be Prime Minister. However, Rafi Smith, who carried out the poll, said this is insignificant because of the margin of error, which apparently does not apply to results in favor of the left.

But that was the secondary headline.

The big news, according to Israel Radio, is that Herzog-Livni is now leading the Likud party by two seats instead of one.

The gap is 2, 4 and 1 in three polls on television channels 2, 10 and 1.

More significant is that Herzog-Livni still have no chance to form a coalition government without an ungodly collection of Meretz and Yisrael Beiteinu or Yisrael Beiteinu and Haredi parties.

After adding up all the numbers, the picture has not changed from last week or even last month: There are two camps: the anti-Netanyahu parties of Labor-Livni, Meretz and Yesh Atid, headed by Yair Lapid; and the pro-Netanyahu camp of the Likud and the Jewish Home, which according to all polls is holding stable with 16-17 mandates.

The most significant changes in the numbers relate to Yisrael Beiteinu, which has been in a clear trend of a decline in the past month. The four polls give the party 5, 6 and 7 seats, far less than when the current Knesset was dissolved.

After taking into account small differences in poll results for the other parties, Kulanu, headed by Moshe Kahlon, Yesh Atid, Meretz and Shas are not moving up or down significantly.

Eli Yishai, who split from Shas and formed his own party, still is on the borderline of being shut out of the Knesset.

There are other very significant indications: If Labor-Livni picks up any more seats, it will be at the expense of Meretz or Yesh Atid, and vice-versa. If Kulanu attracts more voters, they likely will move over from Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beiteinu and possibly the Likud.

There still are two months left before voters go to the polls, and Israel Radio and most of the television channels will try to convince voters that Herzog and Livni have the best chance to win.

If the combined party comes out on top, President Reuven Rivlin will have little choice but to give it the first crack at forming a government, which brings back to mind the elections five years ago.

A Likud activist who a was a strong supporter of outgoing KM Moshe Feiglin posted on his Facebook page Thursday a message encouraging people to stick with the Likud.

Temple Activist Yehuda Glick, who shares with Feiglin the objective of allowing Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, also is staying with the Likud instead of following Feiglin to a new party he wants to form.

Feiglin announced on Monday he is leaving the Likud.

Gidon Ariel, a Likud activist for English speakers, wrote Thursday on Facebook,

As you may know, I have been a Likud activist for over ten years, and many of you are members of the Likud because of my efforts.

I have never hidden the fact that my presence in the Likud is not to be a yes-man to anyone, but to defend the Likud’s stated values as clarified in its constitution, through supporting activists and MKs who carry that banner, speaking for the party in the media, running for office, and other activities.

I now count hundreds of rank and file members and more than a dozen Central committee members as people who respect my recommendations.

I joined the Likud with Moshe Feiglin, and while I am a close friend of his and his inner circle, they all know that the hundreds of people who I signed up to the Likud over the years are “mine,” not “theirs.”…

I continue to believe that the best place that a supporter of Eretz Yisrael can make a significant impact is within the Likud.

I am staying in the Likud, I encourage my friends to stay, and if you aren’t a member yet, I urge you to consider joining.

Ariel formerly lived in Maaleh Adumim and moved to the community of Maaleh Hever in the southern Hebron Hills two years ago.

Earlier this week, Glick delivered a similar message to Ariel’s.

He praised Feiglin’s character and philosophy but added he is staying in the Likud “so that the next elections will have a large party representation.”

Glick is on an “unrealistic” spot on the Likud party list and recently said he is “running” more for symbolic purposes than with any intent to be elected a Knesset Member.

Feiglin’s idea was to sign up thousands of people who used to support the former national religious Mafdal party and form a large block in the Likud, which has said has left its true principles that he represents.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and most senior party leaders never have been happy with Feiglin’s presence and have kept him off a realistic place on the Knesset last until the last elections.

In the party primaries last week, they made enough deals to make sure Feiglin would not return to the Knesset.