Yet the Right is complacent, perhaps because everyone is busy with the Herculean task of assembling the next governing coalition. Likud officials are all waiting to find out what positions they will receive. Even the hawks among them have therefore fallen silent. The organizations of the Right are on sabbatical, waiting for the political leadership.
After an aggressive electoral campaign by the rightist parties in which they stressed the need to bring as many of their members as possible into the Knesset, the public is left waiting for them, including Jewish Home legislators who promised a different kind of leadership and “something new.”
Unfortunately, the Jewish Home seems to have lost its bearings. Instead of initiating a discussion of concerns of a construction freeze in Judea and Samaria, or warning about the danger that terrorists will be let loose, it is spending energy fighting against the Ya’alon Plan and for the advancement of the Bennett-Lapid alliance. This is what matters to them? This is what they were elected to do?
What is in store for the alliance with the Yesh Atid party? The National Religious Party already did the same thing ten years ago, when it made a similar deal with Yair Lapid’s late father. That partnership failed to hold up under pressure. The deal they made gave Tommy Lapid most of what he wanted and gave Ariel Sharon the majority he needed to uproot Gush Katif.
Who is the senior defense official in Yesh Atid? Former ISA head Yaakov Peri. Peri is one of the leaders of the Geneva Initiative. Is he really going to stand with the Jewish Home when push comes to shove?
The general nationalist public, including Israelis in Judea and Samaria, is resting peacefully, putting its trust in the new politicians it has elected. It will be interesting to see when the public figures out that it has to guard its own interests.
Originally published in Makor Rishon on February 15, 2013, under the title, “Obama and the Jewish Problem.” Translated from Hebrew by David Greenberg.