Political posturing and pandering.

Tzipi Livni announced that she is going to push to pass a law mandating civil marriage. She has had 5 years of power as a senior member of the ruling party with a fairly stable coalition (until the end), and she did not take advantage of that power to push the law she insists is necessary now. Now she has relatively no chance of passing the law, as most parties, and even a number of MKs in Kadima itself, will not support her or this law.

True, because of Shas being a member of the coalition with Kadima she probably never would have been able to pass it, but her chances now are no better. Also, pushing this law will be detrimental to her future if Kadima should win the most seats in the upcoming elections. With whom will she form a coalition if she alienates Shas and UTJ now. It is nice to suggest that she for a coalition ignoring them, but that has never successfully happened, and it is unlikely she will gain enough power to be able to be independant of Shas, and other traditional or religious parties.

So why is she doing this? Because she is try to show herself off as the person fighting for the secular against the religious hegmony. True, it iwll likely hurt her later, but right now she is just concerned about getting to later. She already began her campaign by portraying Shas as extortionists only concerned about lining their pockets. That was the first salvo in trying to bring the "secular vote" to Kadima. Now she is pushing civil marriage as the next step to get that vote.

This is similar to Ehud Barak. Suddenly he is attacking non-stop the right-wing activists and settlers. He is demanding arrests, increased administrative detentions, condemnations, etc. What happened that past 2 years when he was Defense Minster where he remianed silent on these issues? What changed now? Only the fact that we are heading to elections and he has to look somehow to try to attract some people to vote for him.

Even Netanyahu has recently insisted that the education portfolio will stay in Likud's hands and not be given to Shas as part of a future coalition. he knows that the secular do not want Shas controlling the Education Ministry. He too is trying to show he is not beholden to Shas and the secular should vote for him.

Everyone knows this is all bogus and after elections, no matter who wins, they will come crawling to Shas offering them tons of money and important positions in exchange for their support.

So don't get too excited. This is all just more of the same...