After three elections of cooperation, Netanyahu is in a dilemma • Should the alliance be kept at the cost of further elections, or is it time to change direction?
• Interpretation
Netanyahu, Deri and Litzman
Photography:
Oren Ben Hakon, Archive
January was a month that Netanyahu would have preferred to be forgotten about the Likud campaign.
As the rate of reduction in the number of patients slows and hospitals continue to report full occupancy in corona wards, it is difficult to imagine the end of this nightmare.
If all this is not enough, even the political partners at home do not add well to Netanyahu's election campaign, and they seem to be taking it to the extreme.
Within the Likud, hair is already being plucked following the conduct of the ultra-Orthodox factions in recent days.
On the one hand, loyal partners, who went with Netanyahu in fire and water to three election campaigns, did not abandon him or he.
But there is also a second side.
And it is becoming more and more oppressive day by day.
The media agenda has become, once again, decidedly anti-Haredi.
Open schools, mass weddings and demonstrations in which buses are burned and police officers beaten, star in editions.
The Knesset members from the ultra-Orthodox factions stand helpless, and mostly inactive.
Riots in Bnei Brak: Bus set on fire, driver attacked // Photo: David Keshet
The one who pays the price is Netanyahu, who does not knock on the table and make order.
Public outrage was directed at him this week no less than at them.
And this is already evident in the polls: this week the Likud deleted the moderate and consistent increase of the other weeks and returned to area 2 in the polls.
Likud officials said this week that it was time for Netanyahu to cut.
Despite the clear political need and despite the threats of Moshe Gafni who was "caught" in a public phone call, he threatens to consider the partnership with the Likud.
In the end, they say, the Likud will lose power, and then both we and they, the members of the ultra-Orthodox factions, will find ourselves in opposition.
The time has come, they continued, for Netanyahu to stop taking the ultra-Orthodox factions as partners in which he depends and to surrender to all their whims, but as a matter of course.
As such they have no choice but to go with the Likud for better or worse.
That their people depend on him much more.
Because what is happening now is nothing less than a political disaster, they concluded.
Last night, Netanyahu ruled.
The political price of surrendering to the ultra-Orthodox this time, and ending the closure early from the demands of the health system - is higher than opening a front in front of them.
Likud representatives on the constitutional committee were required to make it clear that they would vote in favor of raising fines and align with blue and white.
The full column - tomorrow in the "Israel of the Week" supplement of "Israel Today"