-- Lali Deri, former candidate for Knesset on the Amcha Yisrael slate

A moment after they annoucned their plan to recommend Netanyahu for PM after the elections I said exactly the above and called it a fatal mistake that would lose them support. They copuld not withstand the pressure coming from Netanyahu to drop out and they thought publicly saying they support him would get him off their backs...

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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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  -- Chairman of Shas MK Aryeh Deri, lamenting the results of the elections that sees Shas dropping to 7 seats, and possibly to 6

well, yes, that is how elections work. The people choose which party to vote for and it is their fault they did not vote Shas. They question is why Shas potential voters chose not to vote Shas, and that is not the fault of the public (though it was their decision)

Some people think they own their public's decisions, and the public does not have a right to choose otherwise...

I hope this Qatari influence gets uprooted and banished from Israel and whomever they find to be connected to the fraud, if true, gets his due punishment

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right now, less than a day to elections, lots of people are saying lots of crazy things, so it cant be hard to choose, but I think this one takes the cake 

  -- Rav Sariel Rosenberg, Av Beis Din of Bnei Braq, at the Degel Hatorah election rally last night

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I think this kind of stuff is so cool where people have talents and figure out how to use it for preparing for the mikdash. 

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wow

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