Yesterday, Shaul Mofaz beat former party leader Tzipi Livni in the Kadima primaries. But why was Livni bested?
+972Mag’s Noam Sheizaf suggests that a combination of Livni’s failure to join Netanyahu’s government and the fact that less than half of the members of Kadima actually voted in the primary contributed to Livni’s loss.
Haaretz reports that a Kadima party official linked Mofaz’s victory to the voting patterns of Israel Arabs, who prefer him by a substantial margin.
Yesterday, Haaretz published profiles of both Mofaz and Livni, but today’s news is all about Mofaz. Despite the leader-elect’s statement to Livni (“Tzipi, you belong with us”), Livni is expected to take a hiatus from politics.
Mofaz seems to have rejected Shas’ Eli Yisha’s proposal to join the Netanyahu government. He made it clear that Israel now has a political alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government: “We leave this night united in an effort to win the hearts of Israel’s citizens,” he said. But the question remains: Can Mofaz, in fact, defeat Bibi?