posturing to the last minute

This is fun.

Most of coalition negotiations are boring. The same thing over and over again. Lots of spin, lots of blame and finger pointing, weeding out reports and information from spin but it is days and weeks of the same misinformation all over the place.

As negotiations come to an end, because the deadline approaches, it gets more interesting. They can only spin for so much longer, and at some point have to come to an agreement or not.

The most interesting right now is UTJ negotiations with the Likud. While initially it looked like jobs and appointments was going to be the problem, it seems that has been worked out and now the fundamental issues are what is holding things up. UTJ wants agreements in advance of certain policies. And UTJ themselves arent all in agreemnt on some of these issues. One of the biggest is the draft issue. Agudat Israel wants the Tal Law back and in place. The Tal Law was shot down by the Supreme Court something like a decade ago, but Agudat Yisrael wants it back. Degel says that isnt realistic so they want an agreement as close to it as possible. In the meantime the Likud is saying the Tal Law is impossible, and Agudat Israel is saying without it no government. No compromise at all. This has been reported tonight by Amit Segal. There have been some other issues as well, but this seems to be the big one.

It is still just posturing and I would still be surprised if something isnt worked out at the last minute. I expect the government to be formed. But it is getting down to the last minute. It will be fun to watch who blinks first on these issues, and it will be even funnier if they really cant form a government because of it, after they ran in such sync for so long. I might add, if UTJ really says no government without these specific issues and no compromise, they may have to resign themselves to never being a part of any government again, at least in the near future. If we go back to elections over this, with the Netanyahu bloc really be able to run together again they way they did previously with full coordination and agreement and purpose?

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