Predictable end: A few weeks ago, the Likud estimated that Gantz would go to them, but he would not have a faction behind him.
A demonstration in front of Ganz's house.
Lost the blue and white
Photography:
Gideon Markovich
Already at the beginning of the crisis, a few weeks ago, Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin outlined the following scenario for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It will probably end like this, he told him, He will not have a faction behind him to support it, and if there is no change in the 90th minute, by midnight not only the Knesset, but also the Blue and White Party will be dispersed.
The surrender notice was signed by Ganz himself.
After exhausting negotiations with the Likud, and probably just before Netanyahu himself was about to give up some of the key issues, Gantz blinked first.
A statement issued by Blue and White on Sunday night said that in order to exhaust the negotiations they would allow for an extension with the approval of the state budget.
It was one waiver too many.
Yesterday, Monday, it still seemed in the afternoon that the coalition majority would succeed in the vote to postpone the dissolution of the Knesset.
But as the hours passed, Ganz realized that he had lost control of his comrades.
One by one, the Knesset members informed him, whether in a public announcement or whispered in his ear, that they would not support the compromise proposal in the plenum.
Within a few hours Gantz was left without a majority to approve the deferral law, which he himself had announced the day before.
In a desperate attempt to save something from his lost dignity, he managed to muster something about the vitality of the justice system and disappeared with his party into the night.
Archive photo: From Bnei Gantz's Facebook
But everything seems to be done too slowly and too late.
Ganz, with a high degree of certainty, lost the blue and white.
Following the official announcement of the election campaign, it is estimated that disintegration is inevitable, and any MK or group of MKs will find themselves another platform to run with or announce their retirement from political life.
Like any balloon party, a blue-and-white storm was about to explode, only no one estimated it would happen so quickly.
The laughter of fate will be when the main people responsible for her untimely departure - Avi Nissenkorn, Assaf Zamir and others - will also be the first to find a more promising political future, leaving Gantz to drown with the ship that took care of the hole.
But the fact that Gantz lost does not mean that Netanyahu won.
The election campaign, if it starts tonight, is an election campaign he did not want at the time, and after doing everything in his power to postpone it for at least a few months.
Netanyahu had every good reason to prefer the election after Independence Day.
Because of the corona.
Because of the trial.
Because of the vaccine that will already be effective.
To dry Gideon Saar.
To see what happens with Bennett.
These choices fall on him too quickly and in a situation of a certain lack of control.
In his apprehensive head he already sees alternative coalitions and his opponents on the right are tying ties to his ouster.
Netanyahu was thrown into the arena involuntarily, with the opening data not entirely in his favor.
So far, the prime minister has refrained from directly engaging in the judicial system.
He always let others like Amir Ohana and Yariv Levin stand in the front.
Now that the election has come after he did not give up on reforms on the issue, he may for the first time put the issue at the top of the agenda of the Likud campaign.
In the absence of political rivals, the message about the need for a comprehensive change in the judiciary may be a decisive factor for the continuation of the Likud rule.