It was autumn 2010. Sitting in his tiny Jerusalem office, Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri began heating up the engines as he prepared for his prodigal return to politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who formed his second government just a year and a half earlier, was enjoying coalition stability and quiet, with the chairman of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, serving as his defense minister and the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, Avigdor Liberman, (with 15 seats) as his foreign minister. Shas (with 11 seats), headed by Eli Yishai, controlled the Interior and Housing ministries. The opposition was led by former Minister Tzipi Livni, then the leader of the Kadima Party — the largest party in the Knesset, with 28 seats.
For years, Deri continued to consult with his two good friends, Liberman and former Minister Haim Ramon. Now, however, he started to meet also with other political players and re-established his outstanding relationship with the secular media. Then just 51 years old, he talked about forming a new party that would compete with Shas, even while he planned a takeover of the very party he was forced to leave. Over the course of these endless conversations, he put together imaginary coalitions and examined all sorts of potential political scenarios. In all of these, he played a central role as the leader of a large party.
Two years later, he returned to politics, chiseling out a place for himself in the Shas party leadership before the 2013 elections. At the time, he discovered that the politics he once knew so well had changed. Two young politicians, former Minister Yair Lapid and Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, had just entered the fray, and as it turned out, they spoke a whole new language.
Deri wasn’t the only one having a hard time reorienting himself to this changing political system. So did former Prime Ministers Barak and Ehud Olmert, former Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, former Knesset speaker Dalia Itzik and former Minister Meir Shitreet. So did also many other major figures, who dominated Israeli politics for the past two decades.
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