The two 'players' that will decide these elections - the percentage of obstruction and the percentage of votes in the various sectors - have recently been joined by another 'player', over which the parties have no control: terrorism.
The scenes of the last two attacks, yesterday in Givat Avot in Kiryat Arba, and yesterday in the Dead Sea area, are severe enough and close enough to Election Day, for them to remain seared in the public's memory.
Past experience shows that such a reality usually benefits the opposition, in this case the 'Netanyahu Bloc'.
At least three times in the past, last-minute terrorist attacks have decided election campaigns.
On October 30, 1988, just two days before Election Day, (in the middle of the first intifada), Rachel Weiss and her three children were burned to death by a Molotov cocktail that a terrorist threw on a bus in the Jericho area.
The scene of the attack at the Nabi Musa intersection, photo: Ihud Hatzla spokespersons
The soldier David Delrosa who tried to save them, died two months later from his wounds.
The serious attack happened while Shamir was Prime Minister, but his Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was seen as the one who bears the responsibility for the wave of attacks and the Likud won on the edge of a mandate.
Shamir formed a government.
In 1992 it was Yitzhak Shamir of the Likud who lost power, a few weeks after the attack in which 15-year-old Helena Rapp was murdered on the promenade in Bat Yam.
The tumultuous demonstrations that developed following the murder and the fact that Yitzhak Rabin and the Labor Party took advantage of the severe feeling of insecurity that prevailed in the public at the time led to their victory in the elections.
The escalation affected voters
At the end of May 1996, a few months after Rabin's murder, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres in personal elections. In the background, a wave of terrorist attacks took place in which dozens of Israelis were murdered and hundreds were injured. The escalation affected the voters. Many were convinced that Netanyahu was 'good for the Jews' and would deal with terrorism Better than Peres. Netanyahu won.
May be a hit in the block.
Sa'ar, Gantz and Eisenkot, photo: Yossi Zeliger
Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his bloc may/may now suffer from exactly the same syndrome.
Both Gantz and his bloc may lose valuable votes.
As strange as this may sound, the polls show that there are now two small segments of undecideds: one between Gantz and Ben Gabir, and the other between Gantz and Shaked.
Both of them may now turn their backs on Gantz, who is extremely unpopular in the ideological right-wing circles, against the background of his principled support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the freezing or slowing down of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and lax treatment of the masses of illegal construction by the Palestinians in Territories C, Judea and Samaria.
The ideological right still remembers how Gantz tried in the second round of elections to qualify the 'shareholder' and base a coalition on it.
Only Yoaz Handel and Zvi Hauser then saved Gantz and us from the illusory reliance on the supporters of the martyrs.
The two paid for it, two years later, by removing them from the list headed by him.
The ongoing chain of attacks, just a few days before the elections, therefore harms Gantz's electorate and the bloc he belongs to.
She helps the Netanyahu bloc.
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