Inside Israel Today: Speculation Central

you're listening to inside Israel today with your Hoffman on the land of Israel Network hello and welcome to inside Israel today here on the land of Israel Network on the land of israel comm where we have only a little bit more than two months ahead of our September 17th election and I have absolutely no idea what is going on anymore ladies and gentlemen we have no idea who's running with who anymore until then who can predict anything about this election everything is very much up in the air and will be decided in the days ahead nothing has actually even changed since the election was initiated because everybody's waiting for that August 1st deadline when the lists will be submitted and until we know what the lists are going to be speculation is fruitless and so having said that I know nothing here we have on the line Jeremy Sultan who is a political analyst who is very close to enough telly Bennett and the eletric head Jeremy thank you for coming here and inside Israel today thank you and it's great to be with you Gil what's going on well that's that's pretty much what that's the beginning of just about every conversation I've had over the last month to six weeks I think what what you said there at the top is really the thing that all of us need to remember at the moment everything is speculation and on August 1st we'll have a 10:00 p.m. we'll have all of the answers in and until now until that point what we're going to do is talk about the various possibilities and scenarios because if we don't then we wouldn't be doing our jobs as analysts and also there'd be absolutely nothing for people to read so I think it's important to go ahead and explore a lot of those scenarios I can tell you this is also a very very big time for a scenario polling this is also very time for private polling the public polls are interesting however as ever in his notice there's a lot less of them this time versus the cycle of the April election and that's because pollsters are working just as hard as they were in the past it's just this time there's a lot more interest in checking all the various scenarios and this is being done not only by the parties that are looking at their own possible scenarios and situations this is also been done by people who are looking to see what competitors might do and how they might need to react as well that's a very good point Jeremy people don't realize that the polls that they see on TV those are the unprofessional ones where they ask only one question and they want an answer very quick whereas there are there is an industry in Israel of actual very professional polls that are being taken as we speak right now in which the final this that will impact the final decisions that these parties are going to be making about how to run together and with whom exactly so over the next two weeks and we're ready on Tuesdays so two weeks and three days that's going to be what a majority of parties are going to be focusing on I can tell you the most interesting one that I've not seen reported since I've seen a lot of them that have been reported the most interesting one that I've seen is the scenario polling for a lipid we Berman risk and in this time out yes it's definitely far outs but that's the thing about scenario poll and you check a lot of different things whether you think they make sense or not and you try to look at the results and see if in the end that's something that you can live with or if sometimes you end up seeing that things are a little bit different than what your gut feeling was and that is really the point of polling it's the best thing that we have in terms of tool to gauge the public opinions so that politicians don't make a you know don't make decisions from their gut and just on impulse that they try to get again it's you know at a times flawed scientific methodology since there's a margin of error that a lot of times can put you with in the electoral threshold but it gives you the best opportunity to try to gauge what the Israeli people are thinking because if Israeli politicians go ahead and listen to people around them most the time they'll think that even if they're getting four seats in the polls that they have enough support to be Prime Minister you're talking about a or Barack who thinks he's running for prime minister when he has only four seats in the polls who's actually even said that in his own private policies getting four seats yet he still thinks that he's running for prime minister okay so ladies and gentlemen you have a very cute baby in the background and we don't want that baby silenced this is Israel we're very proud to be a society that focuses on children and not on work and that is one of the things that make is real great we are rebuilding the Jewish people after the Holocaust and I think there should be a baby crying in the background of every show here on the Land of Israel Network so please don't silence that baby Jeremy so you mentioned they rode Barak so we'll start with the left and then we'll move on to the right this might be the only show on the Land of Israel Network that does that so starting on the left the latest speculation is that the Amir Peretz and a would brock can't get along 12 years ago Amir Peretz was replaced by a would Barak as labor leader instead of letting him stay on for a few days as Defense Minister fired him by fax on a Friday afternoon while Amir Peretz was in the prime minister's office talking to Homer and the chief of staff of the army about whether to attack Syria that weekend and since then they haven't exactly been able to get over that particular disagreement and so it's looking like labor will be running with merits maybe a draft somehow tippy Livni orally levy and leave it would Barak out in the cold with those four seats on the borderline of the threshold is that the most likely scenario Jeremy or is there something new going on that I don't know about well I think it's very interesting in terms of worldly lady and her options right she has options from the Likud from blue and white also as you mentioned from the various parties to the left as well I don't know which one she's gonna take I think obviously she's looking to see who's going to give her what she wants in terms of the ministerial position and I think she's also probably going to wait until the last minute because she wants to bet on the winning horse for whatever reason people seem to think that God still does have a shot at forming a coalition I'm sure we'll get to that in a moment but I think she's gonna wait until the last minute and she'll be one of the last names to join perhaps not even making a decision until two or three days out in terms of CP leavening my understanding is she'll only come in if everyone goes in on the left meaning merits labour and the Israeli Democratic Party for that to have a rock yes of Iraq for that to happen as you mention will be very difficult you have a lot of egos it makes more sense to have two of the three just in terms of what is actual actually doable however see if he leaves me who left the political scene after she called the entire left to get together and to unite under one list to defeat Netanyahu the only way that she could really justify coming back after sitting out to the April election is if she could point out that she's coming back as plana Gabi Ashkenazi well if you will as this this large idea of getting everyone that is to the right of the joint list and to the left of blue and white together they're in one big party we saw a nice real hyeyeon polled that if you do have such a list of the four big personalities that I just mentioned of Horvat spirits Barack and evening the potential is 19 seats but as we also mentioned the public polls are not as accurate as a lot of the private ones that is being done and I would doubt that private polls would have it at 19 seats simply because that would require a very very large number of voters to leave blue and white which I just don't see happening at least at this point in the campaign where again a majority of Israelis would rather consider themselves in terms of van tenants in yo camp they'd rather consider themselves center than actually go ahead and put themselves on the left side of the political map okay so it's interesting you just have 19 seats potentially for a party running all together to the left of blue and white and there was a famous Israel high ohm pole yeah that found that there's 19 seats ready on the right of the Likud if everybody runs together how seriously do you take that poll and what is the likelihood of the six or seven rabbi tau no rabbi out there the party called no I'm six or seven parties they're on the right to unite together well again about the same the same entity that's ordering the pole you're talking about the same pollster taken out around the same date published in the same paper if I recall and yes I mean in in that poll in which they get 19 seats unlike the blue and white not necessarily dropping as much as it should and now Polly actually do see the Likud dropping down to 25 seats which would have just a six seat difference between a hypothetical I eletric had list of what they pulled there is five parties a tent pole raft house party maybe because the deadline is registering new parties has already passed it's very difficult to take a lot of these jokes as serious but I do know that people like to look at every potential scenario not an old party he can run with it yeah if you go ahead and you buy it in your able file and meet all the requirements which again he needs to make sure he has a professional stand to help him through he can go ahead and move forward with that but what they did look is if the five parties of Haman AHA - bye Judy - Kumar / National Union along with is a hoot and oats my you deeds that if the five of them ran together yes that would be 19 seats I think that say again as I said very interesting in terms of a starting point in terms of public poll I'm not so convinced that that would be the final result in terms of what election would bring us of course it depends a lot what's going to happen on the Likud list and what would happen of course within who is the leader of that list I think it's quite obvious that I electric head would bring a lot more votes than rabbi Rafi parents would it's obvious to you but not obvious to Rafi parents that's possible that it's not obvious to him it's also possible that it's obvious to him and he's trying to posture as much as possible so that he's in a position where he might not have to give up that position we have to point out that in terms of the five parties we talked about that the bike you do Mnet's of campaign funding the seats of Rafi parents moti yogev indeed Salman is well as Roth le Ben de Haan from the avi party that ran together with Louie coud and broke off and is now part of them so when you do have the money that does help you with in negotiations and there is no secret that there are a lot of negotiations going on between the various parties on the right I'd say the biggest questions that people are asking themselves internally is number one how how does the hoots and Faye Glenn sit in when feiglin still thinks that he can appeal to non right-wing voters despite the evidence of the electoral results that showed that he was not able to as well as the question of it does bringing in oats ma which is a kahana's party does that drive away more votes then it brings in by bringing them in Velen said he's disgusted by oats mine faithlyn's party it's basically falling apart it's there's a lot going on behind the scenes with that there is indeed a lot going on behind the scenes in all of the five parties I've heard of even internal disagreements within each one of those parties that we talked about and as you mentioned there are other potential ones that might join you still have also a leash I who almost ran with the Union of right-wing parties it was a question up to the last minute if you would join that or not so there are a lot of question marks on the right a lot more than on the left there are a lot more personalities there are a lot more parties also unlike the parties that we mentioned on the left you do have a lot of interesting situations such as the fact that you would have to accommodate both Naftali Bennett anion shake head in hyena Kadesh if you look at by to D the significant amount of support that motio give has who won the Central Committee votes there he also has a lot of sway in terms of what's going on there beyond what Roth Rafi Peretz has so you have a lot of personalities that feel that they need to get something tangible in terms of the next government so it makes it very difficult to play around with the cards of shuffling that deck but but whatever happened to July 15th Jeremy yeah Natali Bennett said all along don't talk to me until July 15th then I'm gonna really figure things out and I believe July 15th came and went and nothing happened I fifteenth was yesterday and if you look at a lot of reports that you might see from this morning on Twitter and on various gossip blogs of Tsurugi and coop and so on and so forth you'll see that there are various reports of meetings between shaked people Bennett's people by 2g people others as well are included in some of those articles so it's very since you know I'm not in position to authorize officially I'm saying there's a lot of reports that are there that what one could look at that could come to the conclusion that yesterday was the start of a different chapter in terms of the talks and negotiations whether they're official or unofficial of as being official now in an unofficial before because July 15 happened I said if if I'm going ahead and looking at the reports that I found on my Twitter feed and I'm sure they're on your Twitter feed as well that they would indicate that they've gone for some a more unofficial and indirect fashion to something that resembles more of a negotiating team as well as more official type of talks and yesterday was the 15th okay so I yell it is really the the biggest factor here she has a decision to make and the longer she waits with a decision the more she gets compared to Tippie Livni as the indecisive person who can really fit in any party and that might make her look bad you see her making a decision by the end of the week in because of her reputation potentially being on the line here I think you have two sides of this there's the positive side the thing that until she makes a decision every day they are going to talk about her as we are right now every day they are going to print various speculation for her but it's whatever stuff she might be doing there will be other people conducting various polls checking what she is doing and she will continue to be the talk of the town that is a positive aspect of her decision not to make a decision yet the negative part is as you pointed out it looks indecisive it looks like she's waiting for the best offer and it looks like she's acting as a politician and calculating what it is that she is trying to do and I understand that in a lot of circles that's looked upon is very negative the third aspect that sort of puts the two of those together is that Israelis do have a short memory and if we are going to look at the fact that when a decision does need to be made on August 1st that still leaves 47 days for an election for an actual election campaign to happen and most likely within a few days or at the most a few weeks people will forget the decision-making process which led her to the decision and instead we'll be focusing more either on the horse race between the leadership of the various parties that are horse racing towards the finish line or towards the issues and policy which in in some countries happen to be the focus point in election campaigns but not in Israel um Jeremy I think I caught you into contradiction there because on the one hand you're saying which makes a lot of sense that August 1st the campaign really starts for real and before that anything had happened won't be remembered and therefore yellowjacket can get away with negotiating with however many parties she wants orally Levy can get away with negotiating with however many parties certain or not answering the phone from any of the parties and then actioning herself off in the last 24 hours fine I get that but meanwhile you gave me a veiled eulogy for Benny Ganz who is purposely not said anything yet even when national TV even when they had this week their campaign of official launching that I myself did not attend and as opposed to the last election I went to all their events and read every word of his speech which was translated into English and still did not find the single sentence worthy of being put in the newspaper yeah your lip each speech was also translated into English and I didn't find anything particularly exciting there why eulogize them now when they haven't really started yet they're saving the goods for after they know what their real competition is on both sides on August 1st I think the understanding that I have from the blue and white camp is that and this is also from talking with some of the rim Ches that there there math has Coughlin's voters not moving to Likud and and gone you have lieberman who's no longer part of the right-wing camp and a potential partner for them and they think that they don't even really need to say too much a big reason of why they haven't done anything until now is because they're trying to make a decision whether in this campaign that's going to start August 2nd just a Friday but I guess for blue and white they can do that on a Friday and they have in the past as you remembered dumb stuff every Friday to do some is really annoying so so I'll tell you that they're trying make a decision whether they need to be running against Likud or if they have to go more to the left because if you do have this super party that opens up on the Left what is going to happen as a result of that is that there is the potential that this who'd Barack let party or Amir Peretz LED party or at sea believe me I doubt that would put Horvitz at the top but whoever leads that party could potentially pull enough votes away from blue and white to put them in a situation where they're more or less not a big gap between the two parties again I would still assume that the blue and white party would be larger but if we have a situation where blue and white is is lowered down from let's say 35 seats to something like 25 seats and this big party on the left ends up getting something let's say like 18 seats or 20 seats you have a situation where it's very difficult for them to them turn around to Lieberman or to the ultra-orthodox parties which seems to be one of the plants that gunz's is looking towards it's it's going to be just very very difficult for them and because of that they're not sure they want to start their campaign and go too far to the right because they might have to bring it back and go to the left afterwards so they're not gonna say anything until August 1st till they know and this is of course the promise of centrist party where you don't know if you're campaigning to your right or to your left until you actually know who your competitors are so especially a centrist party without actual views well of course the the common denominator between the parties on that list is that none of them like Netanyahu yeah and and that's fine and that's yeah I wouldn't call that a policy what I've actually heard very interestingly from a lot of the diplomats that I've met with that blue and white pretty much sell themselves to to a lot of diplomats as Likud without Netanyahu which I think makes it very difficult for people to take them seriously within the diplomatic community but I think that also a lot of people within Israel sort of feel the same way and if you do go ahead and someone like you has read their platform they have tried to go very much to the right on a lot of issues and sort of have tried to mirror a lot of the positions that a lot of people on the more liberal side of the Likud such as my neighbors who felt an instant suck an egg be feel and perhaps a lot less then what we see from a lot of other people in the injera but that anyone but Bibi campaign that's what it's all about in this election just like it was in the last election and when it'll accept that in this election will be even harder to form a government afterward and the one common denominator that there will be is hate hatred of Netanyahu no one will be you can have very strange bedfellows because as long as they agree on that one issue that might be the only issue that 61 people can agree on at all so if that's the only issue that there is that's a very serious threat I again I'm just not so convinced like I said we have a situation where the IRB's are not able to nominate somebody in the president's house that are not able to vote for a government that they don't agree and even if we look if such as the security net that they provided for the Rabine government that was in the middle of the term they've never actually as non-zionist parties went and helped form a Zionist government and I've heard from talking with some of the Arab MKS that they don't really see much of a difference between guns and Netanyahu when they're looking at a party that has three IDF chief-of-staff in it that have a quite a large body toll in terms of Palestinian deaths on their backs they don't necessarily see a lot to benefit from that let's remember the air parties voted for an early election they voted with the government without going government in coalition to put us in this situation of having a September election and it's very possible that the fact that Gallants is building on them is going to be again his downfall in the September election well thank you so much for your time here and helping us get our thoughts together ladies and gentlemen please don't listen to this show beyond the next few days because all of it could be outdated a few days from now which is the beauty of democracy the only thing that will endure from this show that we know is truth is that baby crying in the background editor please don't take that out because that is the ultimate truth Thank You Jeremy thank you Gil and thank you listeners for being with us here inside Israel today have a great week ahead hopefully that next week we'll all be a lot smarter Shalom from Jerusalem hear Israel uncensored on the Land of Israel Network at the land of israel comm check out my latest show this week with the one and only Israel made I'd hear how things are developing for the Jewish community in Judea and Samaria we believe that it's part of Israel we believe that it will be part of Israel but if you come to a court of law we are Israeli citizens living in the military government ruled area which is not fully sovereign in the State of Israel you don't want to miss this show only here on Israel uncensored on the Land of Israel network at the land of