Yair Lapid's crucial choice

Lapid won the election for two reason the first is that if there is one thing secular Jews love its hatred of haredi and Lapid who had no other real policy went for the popular policy (anti haredi ones ). The other parties didn't run very good campaigns. Shelly turned away many swing votes with her announcement she would not join a right wing coalition and she also alienated traditional Labor voters by insisting Labor was a centrist party not left and that fell into the hands of Meretz. Likud ran a bad campaign themselves the Liberman indictment turned Russian voters away and the party. Lapid kept his mouth shut just gave smaller speeches to smaller groups telling them all what they wanted to hear. There is a difference between making a good and shrewd politician to a man who can do well in an election, Lapid himself was amazed at the number of seats he got. Now it looks like Lapid may well be holding out and encouraging his little pet Bennet to also refuse to join because if Bibi can't form a coalition within the next 2 weeks Peres will call for another round of elections and without there being any real politics between the two elections Lapid will say how the reason we are having elections again is because Bibi refused to ditch the religious parties etc turn this into a purely populist issue election such as blaming the haredi for all the countries and as champion of anti hared issues and the government being unable to actually do anything ( because couldn't get a coalition ) and Lapid will have a real chance at winning the election and being the next PM which might like the secular anti haredi elite reasons to jump for joy but the country will be the biggest looser both because taxpayers had to shell out another billion shekel to hold a second election and because responsible politicians will have been replaced by opportunists who care about themselves rather than the country and who not only do not have any political experience of their own but don't have anybody in their party with experience.

I agree with every word of Shavit's article - BUT if Yair Lapid draws Shavit's conclusion, and breaks away from Bennet, what will stop Bennet from joining Likud Beiteinu, Tzipi Livni, Shas and the Charedim - in a government that will indeed use up any remaining international credit that Israel still has?

Dear Ari, when France decided to uproot it's settlers from Algeria - a significant distance from France - they did it. There is no such thing as a point of no return. There is only a question of political will and courage. We Israelis appear to be lacking at least in the latter, if not the former.

as usual, the haaretz reads the reality map differently from the most of the voters. the voters that gave lapid 19 mandates didn't do it to advance the ari shavit's agenda. otherwise they would vote meretz or hatnua. so, don't try to bring it through the backdoor. when i read the reality map i see a huge chunk of the population not contributing anything to the society while leaving from my taxes. i also see more and more of my money going to these people that only grow in numbers. i don't know whether i would like the state that has a worthless peace agreement with the pa but in which most of the population lives in the middle ages and asks, requests, me to support their way of living. unlike yourself, i have a real job and can easily find employment in most of the western countries. when people like myself leave, i doubt that those remaining will be reading haaretz.

What would have his father, Yossi Lapid, advocate to his son today were he alive? Since Yossi Lapid, it's understood was former PM Ariel Sharon's good friend, and Ariel Sharon became more politically centre with establishing Kadima, wouldn't it make sense that Yair Lapid should feel obligated to join this broad coalition led by PM Netanyahu? Probably so.