Kadima begins to disintegrate

Yesterday it was announced that former Justice Minister Tzakhi Hanegbi is leading a group of seven Kadima MKs back into the Likud. Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised them bribes in the form of offices. These bribes will be expensive, but Netanyahu probably figures that it will be worth the cost--which is being footed by the taxpayers--in order to destroy Kadima before the next elections. Netanyahu has been plotting the destruction of the party and attempting to arrange just such a major defection at least since the end of 2009 when rumors first surfaced in the Israeli press.

Without Kadima there will be no major Center party around which to build a Center-Left coalition that will support a two-state solution. Polls have projected that Kadima in the next election will receive about half as many (12-14) seats as at present (28). So expect that this will probably drive the number down even further as Labor voters return to their traditional home and other floating voters migrate to Yair Lapid's new Yesh Atid (There is a future) party. Lapid is the son of Tommy Lapid, a prominent journalist who built the Shinui party into a major party in 2003 where it served as Ariel Sharon's major coalition partner in lieu of the normal religious parties. Yair Lapid is also a major television personality in his own right. This will continue a trend of a strong floating vote that has been going on since 1999. Elections will probably occur sometime between November of this year and the spring of 2013. Here is a link to a Ha'Aretz editorial saying that Kadima's time is past and it deserves to disappear.

Epilogue:  It turned out that Netanyahu's and Hanegbi's bid to split Kadima failed as they managed to attract less than the one-third required by law to count as a separate faction. Hanegbi rejoined the Likud without any of the others. This provoked a number of editorials, including this one in Israel Hayom (Israel Today).