Barack wanted to join the government all along. But he only got enough support in his party when former leader Ben-Eliezer came over. Ben-Eliezer said on TV that he changed his mind because Bibi did not have a government. If you remove the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi, who were hemming and hawing, and an extreme nationalist party, who Bibi didn’t want, Ben-Eliezer was right. It would have meant in the worst case another election immediately or even less problematic, a weak government which couldn’t have lasted. Meanwhile Israel has serious problems to deal with, not the least of which is growing unemployment.
That’s the nature of Israeli politics but the big loser if this government works is Livni. In the past, throughout the 80s for example, when the two largest parties Likud and Labor saw that they either had to hang together or hang separately, they worked it out. Her party, Kadimah replaced Labor, Barak’s party, as number two, and she put the country in a possible bind instead of pushing for rotation as PM which she would have got, she just walked away.
