Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman has announced he will sit only with a center-right coalition, virtually blowing apart the illusion promoted by the Labor-Livni party and establishment media that it can for a coalition government
Lieberman, who has become Israel’s most widely-known if not bizarre chameleon, previously has not ruled out sitting with a coalition headed by new Labor party, which merged with the party headed by Tzipi Livni and renamed itself the “Zionist Camp.”
All pre-election polls since the start of the campaign have shown that the party, co-headed by Yitzchak Herzog and Livni, has no chance of forming a coalition without the support of Yisrael Beiteinu, based on the false assumption that Lieberman would sit with the Haredi parties.
The concept is totally ridiculous, but even that hallucination came undone with Lieberman’s announcement Sunday that “Yisrael Beiteinu never will be part of a leftist government.”
Two weeks ago, he rejected sitting with a coalition that included the left-wing Meretz party, but he finally has realized that he is not the only one who understands that many of the Herzog-Livni candidates would be very comfortable in the Mertz party.
If the Labor-Livni slate of candidates had been a bit more normal and without the inclusion of potential Knesset Members who unabashedly favor a Palestinian Authority country based on all of its demands, perhaps Lieberman would have held his breath.
One of Labor’s top candidates for the Knesset is Stav Shaffir, who wants to get rid of HaTikvah as Israel’s national anthem because it is too Jewish for Arabs to love.
Another star in the Herzog-Livni camp is Merav Michaeli who has stated that no one should serve in the IDF because of the “occupation.”
Labor Party candidate Zuhair Bahloul maintains that his “Palestinian identity is stronger than [his] Israeli one.”
Lieberman’s party is down to four or five seats in polls, still enough for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to want to make part of the next government if the Likud takes charge after the elections in March.
