Kahlon's comeback doesn't worry Netanyahu
Former Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon's popularity after the cell phone reform he championed might be enough to establish a mid-sized party, but his lack of diplomatic or security experience will pit his path to the premiership.
One day after former Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon's April 8 announcement that he plans to return to politics, a new poll offered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a sweet moment of pleasure amid all the crises he faces. The negotiations with the Palestinians have fallen apart, another employee complained about the prime minister’s wife and there is talk of new elections among members of both the coalition and the opposition. While none of these has caused the prime minister serious harm, they have been a nuisance.
According to polls published by Israeli TV Channel 10 and Israeli daily Globes, a new party headed by the former Likud minister would win 10 to 13 seats, taking most of its votes from the center-left parties, and particularly from Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid. While that’s not bad for someone who hasn’t even created his party yet, it is a disappointing result for the most popular politician in the Likud. Based on the results of the poll, it looks like Kahlon will be unable to attract voters from the very party he left. A Channel 10 poll predicts for the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu party alliance two more mandates than it currently holds.
Kahlon's interview with Yedioth Ahronoth made major headlines after Kahlon accused the Likud of “folding up the social banner.” Netanyahu read that line and got nervous. The proximity of Kahlon’s indictment of the ruling party to the release of the state comptroller’s scathing report that the state has abandoned hundreds of thousands of its poorest citizens fit together well and added momentum to the former communications minister’s comeback.
Yet, while the polls were good to the Likud, Netanyahu’s relief is only temporary. Now that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi have been forced out of any race over criminal charges, Kahlon is his next threat to face. As the next elections grow closer, the question of whom would Kahlon recommend to the president to form a government will increasingly bother Netanyahu. And there is also Netanyahu's nightmare scenario, in which Kahlon teams up with Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman to topple him as prime minister.
