MK Eisenkot's bloc, aka the Change Bloc, has 67 mandates but no clear path to a government. Of the 67 seats, 19 are held by Arab parties that will be difficult to form a government with. Netanyahu is working hard to delegitimize forming a government with the Arab parties, even though it looks like the big scandal of voter fraud will come to almost nothing (actual results still pending but it looks like this was just a planned Netanyahu head fake). There are a couple other options for Eisenkot such as bringing in the Haredim who have expressed conditional interest. One little part of me wants to see this happen just so we can see people on the Right (eg Yinon Magal, among plenty of others) go ballistic about the Haredim and call them traitors to the Right and all sorts of other things.

Another option being floated is a unity government of sorts. I have supported this option for a long time and wanted to support a party running on this platform in the elections but other than Hendel they all dropped out. That being said, a unity government will not be easy to put together either. Netanyahu's people are saying they want a unity government but only Netanyahu will be Prime Minister with no rotation, and Eisenkot's people are saying he won't sit under Netanyahu. If this is going to work and avoid new elections (election fraud will probably not bring us to new elections right now), it is going to take a lot of work and compromise.

Until any of that happens, The Change Bloc has the numbers and are sayibng that in the meantime until the government stuation can be figured out, they will start by working on using their majority in Knesset. To start, if they can work it out among the various parties, they will put up their own candidate as Speaker of Knesset and remove outgoing Speaker MK Amir Ohanyon of the Likud. The Haredim say they will likely support this move as well, considering they regret, in hindsight, supporting his candidacy (because he is a homosexual and suddenly it is a chilul hashem that he was appointed to this position).

After that move, they say they will try to pass some basic legislation they campaigned on. Again, in Knesset they have the straightforward numbers for this right now. There are various ideas for legislation and decisions they are floating to pass quickly, such as appointing a State Commission of Inquiry, among others. One I already discussed, being a law to disqualify anyone indicted from running for Prime Minister.   

I saw a new idea floated last night in the Change Bloc. That is, they would pass a law that would change the method of our elections. Theyw ould set it to be two separate ballots, one voting directly for Prime Minister and the second being a vote for Parliamentary representation. There is reasonable logic to this, considering the Executive and Legislative branches are meant to be two separate branches of government. This was tried before and abandoned after one election (when it did not help Netanyahu the way he thought it would when he passed the law). That would mean whichever candidate for PM wins the most votes would become Prime Minister and would not need a Knesset majority for forming a government but could form it with however few or many MKs he wants. Netanyahu himself has spoken about this idea in recent years as well, but there is no way he would agree to it right now.

Personally, I am in favor of electoral reform, but it has to come as part of a comprehensive set of reforms designed to improve our electoral system, not just to help this or that candidate at a specific time and place.. I am not a fan of gerrymandering, and this is just a form of that. I am in favor of term limits as well, but we need mroe electoral reform than just term limits and it should come as part of a bigger package of reforms, not on its own as a way to exclude a specific candidate. 

Also, Eisenkot might support making such a change for direct election of Prime Minister but I can totally see it coming back to bite him. Just like polls were wrong regarding the results of the elections, perhaps polls were wrong showing him as the favored candidate for PM. 

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  -- MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) in his final session in the Knesset Finance Committee, after the Coalition parties voted to approve the list of charitable organizations to receive Chapter 46 status, despite the Haredi organizations being left out

We often only learn our lessons after it is too late

Back in 2021 Gideon Saar proposed an amendment to the current law that would also prevent anyone under indictment from being Prime Minister. Saar's proposal became known as Chok HaNeesham - the Law of the Indicted. I am not sure what happened to Saar's proposal - it seems to have just never been dealt with due to the multiple elections and chaos happening in those years.

MK Avigdor Lieberman has spoken out today (and maybe others have as well, not sure) that after the elections, assuming he and his potential coalition partners obtain some sort of victory in the elections, will immediately move to replace Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana with their own representative (nothing wrong with this move, it has been done before), and then immediately pass Law of the Indicted, Chok HaNeesham, which would then prevent Netanyahu from running again for Prime Minister (at least until his court cases are finished in his favor with an exoneration of all the main charges) in future elections.

Whether it is a good law or not I don't know, though I think it is. Just like someone indicted should not be any other type of minister, he or she should also not be Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister's attention should be focused on running the country, not on defending himself in court. Even being a good law, it should not be used to ban Netanyahu from running, at least one election forward. Passing this would be a law targeted at someone specifically which should always be out of bounds. If they do pass it, I would expect and hope that Netanyahu would be allowed to run in at least the elections after that (and I am saying this as someone who no longer supports Netanyahu for Prime Minister), though maybe not in elections after the next one. We cannot pass laws targeting specific people and we cannot change the rules in the middle of the game. If after the coming elections this law gets passed, it should only go into effect after the next elections after these.

It would though be fun to see Gideon Saar's law passed to hurt Netanyahu after seeing how Saar has changed his poisitions the past 2 years....

  -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

when he says things like this (he made similar style predictions regarding the draft of Haredim before he decided to not pass the law they were working on) I sometimes feel like I want him to win just so we can see how his words play out, or not, in reality

  -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at government meeting this morning

If you have information about them planning attacks, take them out now. But regardless, why does Hamas still have such capabilities that this is a serious threat after 3 years of decimation?

  -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a State memorial for the victims of the Oct 7 War

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Right after they, the leaders of Amcha Yisrael, announced their entry into the fray, they explained that they did not accept offers from the Likud to abandon their party and take reserved slots in the Likud, nor would they join up with other existing politicians and platforms because the people want something new, and they did not want to join toether with anyone connected to the failures that led to the massacre of October 7. 

That makes sense, and this is an apparoach I actually value and think is worthy of supporting.

I think it was the next day, maybe two days later, Vinter gave in to extreme pressure from Netanyahu and Smotritch and promised that he would support Netanyahu and only Netanyahu for Prime Minister. Netanyahu and pothers in the Likud were attacking Vinter and saying he would be "Bennet 2.0" and bring down the Right and support the Left and Eisenkot, etc. To counter that Vinter announced he would support Netanyahu and not bring the Left to power.

Now, it was kind of obvious that unless something unusual and unexpected would happen, Vinter all along was going to eventually support Netanyahu. nobody expects him to win enough seats to become Prime Minister, so eventually it would come down to making a choice, and Vinter is unabashely on the Right side of the map in Israel (from a security perspective - I dont know much about what thinks on other issues). I think it is obvious he would eventually choose to recommend Netanyahu for Prime Minister. But then he said it, and just a day after saying he wanted nothing to do with anyone connected to the failures of October 7. Later he clarified that a bit saying that he wont team up with anyone and run together on a list with anyone connected to October 7, Israel wants new and fresh faces, etc... but being on the Right, Netanyahu is his only choice for PM just because that's what there is available now. 

Despite Vinter saying explicitly that he would only support Netanyahu for PM, Netanyahu and the Likud, and other Right parties have only attacked Vinter, trying to get him to drop out of the race. Even today, after Vinter submitted his official party list (with no "joint" arrangement), both the Likud and Smotritch have attacked him and are pressuring him to drop out.

So, Vinter announcing at the start that he would support only Netanyahu has not helped relieve himself from their attacks. I am not sure why he would even want to support Netanyahu considering the relentless pressure they are putting on him, and even blaming him for their eventual loss, if they will lose to Eisenkot or anyone else. But he is. 

I am not sure with Netanyahu's approach to Vinter. Some polls have him crossing the threshold and some have him failing to cross - I guess he is borderline according to the average poll. If Netanyahu takes the approach to ravage votes away from Vinter (as the reports say he is trying to do), Vinter will likely not pass the threshold and then the [tens of? hundreds of?] thousands of votes he does get will surely be a waste, but if Netanyahu would just let him run his campaign and maybe even encourage some to vote for him, he probably only needs a slight boost, and then Netanyahu has those mandates in his corner. Supporting Vinter seems to me to be a better move for Netanyahu, but he seems to be taking the opposite approach, which seems less sensible to me.

So even though it seems obvious, at least to me, that Vinter would eventually support Netanyahu for PM, I think he should have kept quiet about it for now and let it play out until closer to the elections or even until after the elections, and then he could have a stronger negotiating position for more influence in the government to be formed (if Netanyahu would win). I think a lot of the people who like Vinter want new faces in politics do not or will not like that he caved so early to support Netanyahu publicly, and will continue to not like that despite being attacked relentlessly by Netanyahu (et al) continues to support him publicly.

I think this was Vinter's early mistake, and I think it is a significant one, and I think it will hurt him.

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  -- MK Dan ilouz (Likud)

not sure how he expects the Likud to be able to form a coalition if he thinks the Likud should work against some of its national partners. Whatever you might think about those partners, the Likud needs them at this point... Netanyahu created this fiction of blocs back when we were in a series of re-elections and it has worked well for him, and he should be the one to dismantle it rather than be dragged around by others, but right now he cannot as he has no other options... maybe that is something he should deal with, but util he does, his bloc is his only option...

The issue has been ongoing for a little while, with Netanyahu both demanding a large number of designated slots into which he can personally choose someone for that slot, and also Netanyahu seemingly thinking that certain MKs who would benefit from the primaries and get into realistic slots might harm the Likud list in the upcoming national elections and cost the Likud some seats. That concern is based on advanced polling Netanyahu relies on.

In the end I think this is just posturing and Netanyahu won't go ahead with this. He will use this for some sort of compromise, perhaps to get more "shiryunim", reserved slots, than what others are willing to give but fewer than what he is demanding, or maybe something else. I just cannot see him canceling the primaries.

The Likud, and Netanyahu, has always been very proud of the primaries and uses them to attack many of the other parties. the Likud is one of just a few parties that hold real primaries to choose its candidates, and they regularly claim they are the only democratic party that holds primaruies while other parties have their candidates selected by the chairman or a committee. I have a hard time believing they are really going to give that up and make the Likud just like most of the other parties in that regard. I can see the attacks on the Likud for this if it happens, King Bibi canceling primaries and selecting the candidates that work for him. I don't think he will give anyone that opportunity.

And perhaps a bigger reason is that if there are no primaries, why should anyone be a member of the Likud? If they were to cancel the primaries I would assume there would be mass cancelations of membership, which would be a big financial hit to the Likud.

The Haredi parties, especially Degel Hatorah, were pushing for the law to be brought to vote, though they never said they got the go ahead from Rav Landau and Rav Hirsch to actually support it. When they sqaw it was not coming and PM Netanyahu was not doing anything about it, ot the point that Netanyahu told them it will have to wait for the next government, they decided to bring down the government over it. Even though they themselves never said they would support it.

So they decde they can't trust Netanyahu any longer and he is just playing with them, constantly making excuses to buy time and kick the can down the road, so they support going to early election (not a big deal, it is a different of 4-6 weeks, not any significant change). The initial vote passes. PM Netanyahu seems to go into panic mode and despite the process of voting the government out having started, he tries to push the bill through, has the committee put on the afterburner and plan to bring it to vote almost immediately, whether he has the votes or not - even if it does not pass he can say I brought it to vote and tried, don't blame me.

Tonight Degel announced they will not play along. We are not interested in Netanyahu just bringing it to a vote. They are also saying it is a bad proposal - though they still have not said if they would or would not support it should it actually come to a vote. They said Netanyahu can't just bring a law, he has to bring a law with a majority vote.

So Netanyahu first said wait until after the elections, Degel said no. Now Netanyahu is pushing for a quick vote on a law and Degel is saying, no, wait until after the elections. 

The news is reporting, anonymously of course, that the people around Netanyahu are angry at Degel Hatorah saying Degel played with them. Degel, they are saying, never planned to support the bill, they now just want to blame its failure on Netanyahu. Netanyahu's biggest concern, which is what's pushing him to push the law forward now, is that Degel might not support him for Prime Minister after the next election - he already lost Agudat Israel. And if Degel doesn't, it will be messy for Shas as well.

So they are each blaming the other for the failure of a bill that neither side, seemingly, wanted. Degel spent four years ignoring the fact that Netanyahu was trying to not bring the bill forward and only make it look like he was taking it seriously to keep them happy. Netanyahu spent four years saying this bill (that he clearly never actually intended to bring to vote) would bring 23000 haredim to the army within 3 years while ignoring the fact that the Haredi leadership repeatedly said, despite pushing for a bill, that despite any passed law not a single Haredi would conscript because of it.

Will Netanyahu successfully push a law through with a majority vote this week and save himself? We'll see what happens.

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