The hot Tiberian heat of August is broken in the afternoon, when a cooling breeze blows strongly, penetrating the temporary encampments, and the shaded booths are decorated with huge pictures of politicians, under which sweaty activists hand out flyers and informational materials to the visitors. The voting site in the Likud primary elections at the community center on Or Haim Street in Tiberias was relatively sleepy until the afternoon. Until the order came.
A video posted by party leader Netanyahu on Facebook, in which he expressed concern at the low voter turnout, conveyed the message well, which went through a storm in residents' homes and workplaces.
About an hour later there were long queues, the mission was successful.
In the Tabreini branch, as in the whole country, the voting rates soared and even exceeded those of the previous primaries three years ago.
The politicians do not come to Tiberias on election day.
There is no need.
Everything here is neat and tidy even without their presence.
Two central groups operate there, each of them has its own recommended list.
Just come, pick up the note, go to the ballot box and hang it up.
There is no need to even mark the 12 markings on the form - everything comes ready.
The first group is that of former MK Zion Pinyan. He and his two adult sons run the local branch with a raised hand and a bent arm. Pinyan himself does not move from the stand he set up, a hat of Yariv Levin on his head, and the pictures of Haim Katz and Ati Atiya at his feet. A pile of marked forms On the table in front of him, everyone who comes receives a form and approaches to identify themselves - and to vote.
Unlike other parties, and there are three others today, that chose to conduct their democratic procedures through apps and websites, in Likud they did not give up the traditional method, however primitive they may say.
The forms are not even scanned by a machine, everything is manual.
With Sharon, said one of the activists, the reason was clear.
At the end of the voting day, all the polling stations from the north would get on vehicles and move to Tel Aviv AD at the party headquarters.
In Kneam they would remove them and replace them with others.
Do these phenomena still exist today?
Most likely, he says, there are deals, irregularities and forgeries of one kind or another, but not on the scale of then.
Not in a way that affects the results dramatically.
The Likud has matured, he concludes.
The deals were broken, Netanyahu's associates announced after the true results began to flow.
A high voter turnout was important to Netanyahu, and he achieved this goal.
Not everyone he wanted in front of the stage got there.
Not everyone he wanted to remove was actually removed either.
My uncle Amsalem, for example.
Netanyahu would like to see him out of the top ten.
Now he will have to deal with him at the front.
He would also like to see Galit Distel conquer the female leadership, but once again accepted Miri Regev in the front.
The deals were broken, photo: Gideon Markovich
In running for the Likud list for the Knesset, most of the focus is directed to the candidates themselves, to the people, to the list that forms a team with which Benjamin Netanyahu will run to try to recapture power.
In the largest primary elections held in Israel in preparation for the general elections, everyone is interested in the success or failure of the elimination lists, whether Netanyahu was able to bring in his associates and keep his opponents out, who prevailed over what - the dealmakers or the free voters, and what happened to Boaz Bismuth.
But in these elections there is a more urgent question, even more important than the composition of the list: the turnout.
The 2022 election campaign is underway as the Likud tries to bring back to its fold 80,000 voters who abandoned it between elections 3 and 4, and did not come to the polls.
Most of the efforts are directed less to voters of other parties who will vote from abroad this time, but more to voters from abroad who will wish to leave the house on November 1.
The starting assumption is that the loss of power and the failure of the outgoing government will bring the masses of Likud voters to the polling stations to save the situation.
More than once, when one of the Likud leaders was asked recently why the party lost about two mandates last time and why he believes that the situation will be different now, the answer was almost constant: when the Likud was in power, no one estimated that we would lose it.
Now that they have seen that the threat is tangible and even realized, they will flock to the polls.
The road to success on November 1 passes on August 10.
The functionaries are supposed to be more aware, not to say more poisoned, of the Likud's success than the general public.
These are people who pay annual membership fees, who in recent weeks have received thousands of messages and phone calls from the candidates.
They are incorporated in branches.
The main activists know most of them personally.
Getting them to the polls should be a much easier task than the potential Likud voters in three months.
That's why the low turnout at the beginning of the day bothered Netanyahu a lot.
Contrary to the internal procedures in Likud, the voting day in early November cannot be extended in order to maximize the results.
Change of generations again
Merav Michaeli did not wish for and did not fill in the list of jobs chosen for her by party officials.
In the last year, Michaeli did her job as she should: she included close associates to the conference, made constitutional changes, annexed powers to herself and distributed positions to the people of Saloma, and all this without any hindrance and without any opposition.
The first break was received from the party institutions when they returned a blank face when she asked them to approve the cancellation of the position of Secretary General, the only one who tried to stand up with his meager forces against the powerful bulldozers that rushed forward at her command. But the vote of the functionaries was already a ringing slap in the face.
A day before the primaries, Michaeli sent all party activists a personal email with her recommendations for Voter's Day.
The letter was sophisticated.
It included 33 recommendations, far beyond what any voter can indicate, including all Knesset members serving today and many other candidates.
The overt message was that everyone is good, but Michaeli's preferences were evident from all sides.
The first on the list, the ones who also received the best compliments, were Ministers Amr Bar-Lev and Nachman Shai.
Challenging list.
Michaeli, photo: Coco
"He led to a revolution in crime on the Arab street," she wrote about Bar-Lev, "promoted the electronic handcuff law. Has integrity, responsibility and national commitment."
About Shay she wrote: "A public was elected with rich experience in the public arena, led the moral voice on the issue of refugees from Ukraine and restored the relationship with Diaspora Jewry."
The functionaries read the letter and threw the two out of the Knesset.
Two that Michaeli wanted to keep away - Emily Moati and Ya-Ya Pink - actually got closer and entered realistic places.
Naama Lazimi, who came in first place, was not Michaeli's favorite either.
Relative to the obedient poodles that followed her in the past year, when the highlight was the letter of support for her sole candidacy for party leadership that was signed by all, this time Michaeli received three opinionated and quite independent MKs. Not exactly the dream team to run with.
Lazimi is a respected member of the Knesset who did not have time to make enemies among the activists and therefore she was screwed at the top.
Moati was considered disobedient enough and therefore Michaeli acted against her behind the scenes.
Ya-ya Pink belongs to Sheli Yahimovitz at all, a stranger to Michaeli's cousin.
Fink is too opinionated and too popular for her taste, the kind that makes her mark him as an enemy from the first moment.
She also worked against him behind the scenes, but in his case too, she failed miserably.
The young people elected to the real seats mark, once again, a change of generations in the old party.
The problem is that due to turnover there is no trace left of that party.
Nor mandates.
This is another internal election campaign in which Labor is pushed another step to the margins of Israeli society, to the extremes.
Another layer on the way to blurring the identity between her and Meretz.
It is difficult to separate the event of the dismissal of the Labor Ministers from the resignation of Minister Meretz a month ago.
The assessment is that it is not about dissatisfaction from the professional aspect, although there is a lot to be said about that as well, especially when it comes to Amer Barlev, but about a much deeper process.
A rift is widening between the left camp and the State of Israel and its institutions.
As long as they were in the opposition - this gap was dimmed.
Opposition to the policies of the State of Israel was seen as legitimate opposition to the current government.
But from the moment they took the wheel themselves, it was already difficult to play the game.
The status of the ministers gradually eroded as they were forced to cooperate with the government, in Meretz they did not stand up to the pressure and resigned on their own, at work they thought they would last until they were shown the way out this week.
Cheers time
Lapid scored some decent points with the battle in the Gaza Strip.
A considerable achievement for a man "in the camp" who managed to end his campaign without feeling sour and with quite a bit of praise from the security forces, the residents of the Gaza Strip, and even members of the opposition.
Lapid's problem was and remains different.
Even those who are not strong in math understand that they have no possibility of forming a coalition without the Knesset and the joint list. The statements of the Arab Knesset members - Ahmed Tibi who accused Israel of killing the children in Jabaliya, and senior members of the Knesset who claimed during and after the operation that if the Knesset had not been disbanded they would have stopped the operation - Right-wing and center-right people who don't want Netanyahu but fear a scenario in which a government is formed that depends on the votes of the Arab MKs are fleeing. The experience of the outgoing government was enough for them.
Benny Gantz also benefited from the operation and even managed to create the impression that it was not Lapid but he in general who was behind it.
The "dawn" is over, and the cost of mandates in the polls will begin, he hopes.
No matter how successful an operation is, it will not be able to cover the essential matter that characterizes its operations.
This week 17 years ago, the great deportation plan of Gush Katif Jews was implemented.
Earlier, in 1994, the IDF withdrew from the area as part of the "Gaza and Jericho first" plan.
Both Lapid and Gantz supported those plans, and until this moment they do not believe that these were serious security concepts.
vice versa.
The two wholeheartedly support a similar withdrawal in Judea and Samaria to implement the two-state plan.
This could completely abandon the back of the eastern mountain to Arab hands, exactly the same as those who now hold the Gaza Strip.
They do take care to obscure their minds, to point out that now it is impossible and irrelevant, but the vision is the same vision and the plan is the same plan.
Both of them expressed it, each in their own way, in words and even in actions.
The security event, which was managed jointly, as well as the photos of the victory after it and the joint statements in the media, revealed the real battle going on in the current election system, in which not only Lapid and Gantz, but also Benjamin Netanyahu take part - the battle for statehood.
Each of the personalities is fighting to get the same two mandates of right-wing people who do not want Netanyahu, and the war for their hearts goes through the astonishing extremism of manners and manners.
A real rampage.
It shares credit with the one that cares to favor the second and together praise the third, in a wild battle of pleasantness and civilized calm.
Everyone has the same interest.
They all focus on the same audience.
The second method has already been tried.
The result resulted in four rounds of elections.
Now they are trying another method, and we just have to see if it will serve one of the parties, or if this time it is the same lady only with a change of dress.
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