Yossi Verter

As a Haaretz-Dialog poll taken earlier this week demonstrates, the finance minister's only ray of light is that his party, Yesh Atid, would score the same number of seats if the elections were held today.

With new taxes and government spending cuts looming, less than a fifth of the Israeli public appears to be satisfied with the freshman finance minister's performance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, has a negative approval rating.

The finance minister's mistake was not in causing Israel's huge deficit, but in claiming he would protect the 'working man' long after it was clear he could not.

While Netanyahu and Lieberman disagree in public, Lapid is quietly advancing on his own ambitious plan. However, surprisingly, the finance minister has kept mum on the Arab League's proposal.

A month after Israel's new government took office, ministers have already advanced a series of measures destined to appeal to the middle-class. What does it matter if reforms come at the expense of others, such as the ultra-Orthodox?

With the holidays at an end and the Knesset summer session starting, the prime minister is about to test the wisdom of keeping his friends close but his enemies closer.

As Yair Lapid finishes up the budget proposal, both he and interest groups most likely to face funding cuts are rushing to the press (and to Facebook) to get out their version of the truth before the other guy does the same.

As the defense minister, until just 24 hours before Obama landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, Barak was responsible for the two countries’ strategic relations and served as Netanyahu’s envoy to Washington.

Our beloved president still leads the yearly Haaretz popularity poll of Israeli leaders, but this year he is accompanied by deposed Knesset Speaker MK Reuven Rivlin.

After this week's last-gasp, behind-the-scenes machinations involving ministerial portfolios, it's time to celebrate. Or not

Sometimes you need someone from the outside, someone like Obama, to tell it like it is: Israelis, you've got a great country, but you've got to stop the occupation.

68 Knesset members voted in favor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s third government, but its composition is far from uniform, and its partners are hardly in his pocket.

Steinitz and Shalom, who held the most important positions in the past governments were convinced they would win them again. As the shock that they've been left with the scraps sets in, it's Ya’alon, Elkin, Erdan and Sa’ar with Cheshire Cat grins.

The new government isn't the one Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted, and the Finance Ministry isn't the one Yair Lapid dreamed of. Both are starting out with quite a bit of mutual resentment.

Lapid's Yesh Atid party to receive five portfolios, including the finance and education ministries; Likud's Sa'ar and Erdan battling over the interior portfolio; meeting between Netanyahu, Lapid, and Bennett postponed to Thursday.

Dr. Yair Lapid didn’t put it on a diet, he performed gastric bypass surgery by pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dramatically lower the number of ministers.

After the coalition negotiatons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a real problem: distributing the remaining portfolios, or the crumbs, to the Likud MKs.

On Saturday night the negotiating teams met for an all-night marathon. Agreements will probably be signed on Monday − unless a last-minute crisis breaks out.

Lapid’s insistence on the Foreign Ministry was the major stumbling block to forming a government. While he would doubtless make a good foreign minister, it now seems he’ll accept the drudgery of the Finance Ministry instead.

Without the Labor Party leader, Israel's Haredi parties are doomed to the hell of opposition.

Come Sunday, Netanyahu will likely receive a two-week extension to form a government, and he seems ready to give up hopes of including the Haredim. But what if, against all odds, another election is necessary this summer?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no mood to enjoy Purim. He's halfway through his allotted time to build a coalition, but struggling to break the alliance between new boys on the block, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett.

At a joint press conference Livni and Netanyahu stressed that their mutual goals had trumped their disagreements and paved the way for the agreement.

Tzipi Livni, like other politicians that came before her, will have to yield to coalition politics in the pursuit of her pet cause - reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.

At this stage, no one, including Netanyahu himself, knows what his government will look like on March 15.

The prime minister's senior partners in Israel's new government, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, are the faces of the younger generation that will one day usurp him, and he knows they can unseat him at any time.

The whole syndrome of amateurishness, criminal negligence, and the attitude of 'trust me' and 'it will be okay,' which evolved for dozens of years, seems to be concentrated in this one disaster.

Voters who decided to vote Kadima instead of Labor will wake up to hear that Livni is courting far-rightist.

It's amazing what three weeks can do. Before the fighting, the campaign dealt with issues that today are ancient history.

The bottom line of the complete Winograd report is that there is no bottom line. More precisely, there are plenty of bottom lines and everyone is welcome to pick his own.

The barrage of verbal missiles being hurled at Ehud Barak by his rivals in the Labor Party shows that they too have perceived his growing strength.

Olmert's November has started well. Apart from the minor matters of scandals and police inquiries

One thing is certain: Ehud Olmert is not Sharon. For better or worse. Sharon was a master of ambiguity, especially on election eve. When Sharon spoke of painful concessions, nobody knew what he meant. When Sharon spoke of a Palestinian state, everyone said, "It will never happen on his watch."

For some reason, the prime minister is not acting according to his own best interests - while he is more popular than ever, he is putting off elections while Netanyahu, plummeting in the polls, is calling to hold early primaries.