Israeli Press
Channel 12 analyst says Likud fears Eisenkot will repeat its 2006 collapse
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Likud strategists see in Gadi Eisenkot the ghost of their worst election, the Israeli broadcaster Channel 12's political analyst Dafna Liel wrote on Sunday.
In 2006, Liel recounts, Likud crashed from 38 seats to 12 while Amir Peretz's Labor took 19 — largely by winning Likud's own voters in Mizrahi development towns. Labor beat Likud in 17 of 25 such towns, took Sderot, and cut Likud in Dimona from 44 percent to 10.
Eisenkot worries Likud for the same reason, in her analysis: the son of a Moroccan family raised in Eilat, a Golani fighter who became chief of staff, a father bereaved in the war — a biography that crosses the tribal line. The surest sign, she writes, is that Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef mused he might "repent" and Likud's Dudi Amsalem said he would gladly see him in the party.
Having found that personal attacks on Eisenkot only strengthen him, Liel reports, Likud will shift its fire to Yair Golan, calculating that tarring the Democrats' leader is easier and damages Eisenkot by association.
She also decodes Gilad Erdan's surprise candidacy: not a race for four or five seats but a bid to become the address for Likud voters done with Netanyahu who will not cross to the centre. Likud's own fear, she writes, is that Erdan ends up a feeder for Avigdor Liberman's new right-wing bloc.
The seats in question decide the coalition that will set annexation and Gaza policy after 27 October.
