Rumors are swirling with reports in the news about PM Benjamin Netanyahu approaching the Haredi parties with the suggestion of considering the possibility of bringing them into the government coalition in the place of Yesh Atid.

Soon we will see what the decision will be, for now, but here are my thoughts on this, for now:

 1. if the Haredi parties enter now, it might delay elections for a bit longer (right now every day brings another coalition crisis and new elections look more and more realistic each day), but it might also hand Yesh Atid their election campaign on a silver platter and give them the public boost they need. They seem to have lost a lot of popularity, if polls are to be believed, due to not coming through on many of their promises of saving the middle class. If the Haredim replace them in government, Yesh Atid will campaign on being the only ones to hold off the Haredi parties. People might be tired of that message, especially after seeing that keeping the Haredim out of the coalition and budgets did not actually save the country, but they might lap it up (more likely)

2. Bringing in the Haredi parties would be a godsend for them. They could/would condition it on halting, or reversing, various items in legislation that are seen as directly targeting and harmful to the Haredi community. They would come out big winners, at least with their own constituents.

3. If the Haredi parties agree to go in, they might come out looking very bad. Since the last elections they have been regularly saying that they won't be Netanyahu's life boat. They won't save him, they won't trust him, they won't join his coalition, they won't save him from Lapid, etc. For them to suddenly go back on all that rhetoric and join at the first opportunity, it might be politics as usual, but it might look bad. Their own constituents might not like it either.