It has not been a month since Yair Lapid took office as prime minister, until he realized that his path to the top is not as simple as he thought.
While he tried to convey action, stateliness and suitability for the job, the political stars around him not only did not get along as he had hoped, but rather tightened the political rope around him.
Lapid believed that the patient wait for a year would pay off.
That the entire camp will appreciate and acknowledge that it has succeeded in fulfilling its overarching goal, ousting Netanyahu, and uniting around it.
This is also more or less what happened.
Lapid, who was not considered in his early years in politics a darling of the left camp, to say the least, stabilized his position as the camp's candidate for prime minister.
This was evident not only in the polls but also among the working people: Merav Michaeli, who wanted to be photographed with him immediately after her victory in the primaries, and Zehava Gal-On, whose first thing she did after announcing that she was running for Meretz was to make a pilgrimage to him.
But the move of Bnei Gantz and Gideon Saar preyed on him.
Officials in the strategic team that surrounds him describe hysteria in their environment, which does not subside even two weeks after the union.
While the fact that the unified list does not rise in the polls encourages them a little, it does not change the fact that his path to continuing as prime minister is actually blocked because of that unification.
Currently, Torch has no way of forming a government.
He, for his part, was willing to sit down with the commoner as well, but not all of his potential partners this goes right down his throat.
The chances that they will agree to sit again with a government of barely 61 seats, ranging from Ze'ev Elkin to Ahmad Tibi, are not high.
In this film, they already were.
And so in all the new ultra-Orthodox scenarios within the picture.
Ganz is courting them.
Torch from dawn to develop.
And even after all this it is not certain that they will come.
And even if they agree - not sure if the numbers will be enough to form a government.
One thing is certain: as long as it depends on the ultra-Orthodox, the preferred candidate is Gantz and not Lapid, regardless of the number of seats.
The outgoing government taught that even with six seats it is possible to demand and accept power.
Last time, Lapid refrained from trying to grow at the expense of the center-left bloc parties, in order to ensure that they all pass the blocking percentage.
It remained relatively small, but reached its destination.
This time he wanted to be free from these worries.
If there was a union between Labor and Meretz, he could develop a head-to-head battle with Netanyahu and start accumulating more and more seats.
But the head chosen for the job and the head that will probably win vigorously are not in the right direction.
Both believe in a separate run and will not work to unite as long as the polls are stable.
Lapid, who would be interested in catching a gap on Ganz, would find himself with one hand tied behind his back and with no real ability to do so.
This is also the reason why, after making it clear several times that he has no problem sitting down with the commonwealth, this week he changed direction and stated that his goal is to form a "no-frills" unity government.
Lapid's new partners: the left-wing bloc and the ultra-Orthodox.
The edges left outside: Smutrich, Ben Gvir and the joint.
As time goes on and the political system changes its shape, it seems that the only hope for the torch is a sixth election.
Only then will he be able to remain prime minister for a few more months.
Can alone
Blaming the right as an increasingly camp is a regular ritual that spans decades.
Menachem Begin was the most extreme of the extremists, until he left the world, then became a symbol and role model of nostalgic moderation and statehood.
Limor Livnat was also a defamatory culture minister, until she retired and became the darling of the studios.
So did Boogie Ya'alon, the chief of staff who opposes the disengagement, who will overnight become the most stately figure in the Knesset, exactly on the day he abandoned Netanyahu.
But those who have really moved away from the center and gone through an extremist process are mainly the left-wing leaders.
Merav Michaeli, who turned Labor into a niche party, and Meretz, who went through a process of disconnection from Israeli reality.
In the world of Meretz, everything is utopian - there is no religion and no peoples.
The boundaries are also unnecessary.
John Lennon was resurrected and dressed as a political party in Israel.
Over the years, Meretz has become the main seller of illusions in the country: in all the ills of society, security and the economy, the occupation is to blame;
Without it we would be in heaven on earth.
In the past, Meretz was a slightly more practical and pragmatic party.
It could therefore also bear the burden of power where, what to do, there is also a reality to deal with.
In recent decades she has become addicted to dreams.
She also abandoned Zionism and joined the extremist fringe elements that work to harm Israel and rely on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish funds.
The membership in the last government shook her.
The fact that they had to take into account the real needs of Israeli society, accept the occupation, the fact that there are no political negotiations, leave the religious laws intact and recognize a complex security reality was very difficult to digest in large parts of it. Them on existential levels.
The three ministers - Nitzan Horowitz, Tamar Zandberg and Issawi Frij - paid a heavy price for fulfilling their duties.
Horowitz resigned as Meretz leader, and the other two completely left the political system.
The one who felt the pressure the least was Yair Golan, who was never considered flesh and blood, so there were no expectations from him.
Golan made sure to voice the right opinions but his style was foreign to them, even alienating.
So, left alone in the campaign for the party leadership, they anxiously sought out those who could free them from the embarrassment of a former senior military chairman, the mother party of conscientious objectors, supporters of interrogation of officers in international legal tribunals and breaches of silence.
Zehava Galon was not in the direction.
Five years ago she retired after a sense of exhaustion.
She never left Meretz and continued to support the party inside and out, fully supporting Horowitz and partnering with the government, but she was good at home and in her new pursuits.
She recognized that Meretz was in a deep, existential crisis.
That distrust in the Golan, if elected, will only deepen the crisis.
So she stood up to the flag.
The previous time, in order to survive, she had to run a "forced campaign."
To warn veteran voters that Meretz may be deleted.
This time, she believes that there will be no need for a captive to recover in the polls.
If Horowitz was under pressure to unite with Labor to survive, Gal-On is confident of her ability to stabilize the boat and lead it to a safe shore beyond the blocking percentage.
The vanishing mandate
In the fifth election, everyone is looking for the X Factor, the variable that this time will lead to a different result from the previous four rounds.
To reach 61, Lapid does not have enough votes and Netanyahu does not have enough parties.
The ability to reach 61 seats through the Likud, two ultra-Orthodox factions and one national religious party is limited and almost impossible.
It did not work in the previous four systems.
Netanyahu needs another party, the Center Party, which will drain the votes of the soft right, those who may not want him as prime minister but will be willing to accept him with no choice.
Such there are two types: national religious from the moderate, more bourgeois current;
And non-religious, liberals, who dislike the babysitters, and certainly do not associate with the Smutrichs and the nobles, not even the ultra-Orthodox.
These two groups have no home.
Their vote is scattered or non-existent (i.e., they would prefer to stay home).
Yossi Brodny, the mayor of Givat Shmuel, who was elected chairman of the Jewish House, will try to capture the first group. Ayelet Shaked will go all out on the second.
Both are in trouble.
The blocking percentage is too high and currently seems impassable.
Right now, both will try anyway.
Brodney wants to arouse the religious sentiment of classical religious Zionism, so he makes sure to call his party the "Jewish House-NRP", where he will try to make all those who were educated on the knees of the old religious-national movement vibrate. National Service.
Shaked will go with Yoaz Handel and Zvika Hauser, probably also with Abir Kara and Shirley Pinto.
Not the brightest names for a party that is faltering anyway.
And there is another group: the ultra-Orthodox.
Not the classics, those represented by Torah Judaism and Shas, but the moderns, the workers, those who serve in the army. Many of them admire Netanyahu and Ben Gvir, others less so. Netanyahu reserved a seat for the same group. He knew that if he demanded a realistic seat, he would fail, so he went ahead with a seat on the margins, 45 on the list. He succeeded. In this election, the seat was already armored. If he forms a government, with all the Norwegian ministers and resignations from the Knesset, there is still little chance of getting screwed there.
This is the same audience that Lapid tried to reach, according to the publication on Channel 12 about the correspondence between him and the broadcaster Menachem Tuker.
In the meantime, both are not having a resounding success.
Lapid will not be able to form an ultra-Orthodox party to support him, while Netanyahu will find it difficult to conduct an "ultra-Orthodox campaign" without the anger of the ultra-Orthodox parties on him.
"If I run an ultra-Orthodox campaign - I know I will win a seat, but I will lose the existing 15," he said.
In Bnei Brak, Wieder succeeded.
In the city of activists and deals, where everything is stipulated in agreements between the courts and the streams, he managed to introduce a mandate of free ultra-Orthodox who voted from the Knesset in the municipal elections.
This is how it passes for her
Even before the formation of the government, Naftali Bennett was warned that the left would make him "use and throw away."
Which is the donkey of Messiah.
Useful idiot.
Bennett decided to take the risk.
The role of the Prime Minister was most important to him. When he was appointed, carried on his hands, he became addicted to the embrace. By default, the government became the love of his life. The right with her entered political life.
Even when he retired he continued to enjoy the waves of sympathy.
The leaders of the left-wing parties issued outspoken messages, Lapid told him in front of everyone that he loved him.
The media praised the mentality and gentlemanliness of honoring the agreements with Lapid, and life outside the job also seemed rosy.
On a visit to Biden it patted him on the face.
From the briefings on Lapid stopping his demands in the alternate Prime Minister's office, through his exclusion from major events to announcements from Lapid's entourage that he should vacate the arena, as Lapid did when he was prime minister.
Bennett was injured.
His rage at Lapid led to a rift between the two.
After finding himself crawling behind Biden and Lapid on the red carpet, he decided not to come to the reception at the President's house and the opening of the Maccabiah.
He did not attend the cabinet meeting, and he arrived at the second meeting after the photographers left.
He tried to plead with Lapid to give him the foreign bag, but Lapid kept it to Saar, who had meanwhile escaped with Ganz.
Bennett now sits mostly at home, rarely meeting people, and there is no area he is in charge of or in charge of.
The Prime Minister's Office has an office for the Deputy Prime Minister, but not for the replacement himself. According to those who spoke to him in recent days, for the first time Bennett felt in his flesh what he had been warned about in the beginning. Things in the body.
Were we wrong?
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