Center-left at the altar

With the Knesset vote to dissolve parliament and send Israel to the polls just a day away, the political rumor mill is grinding away in top gear in the Hebrew media. Just keep in mind that 99 percent of what’s reported will end up being grossly inaccurate by the time elections roll around in March (this is part of the process).

The biggest rumor at the moment is the possible union of Labor and Hatnua, especially after the two parties’ leaders flew off to Washington, DC, together. Haaretz reports that both sides agree that internal polls showed that a joint list would yield a greater number of seats than if both parties ran individually.

“The deal still isn’t finished. There are still a few open questions, but it appears that understandings about running together have already been reached,” a source taking part in the talks between Labor and Hatnua tells Haaretz.

Yedioth Ahronoth says the deal is “almost final” but not yet inked. Both reports indicate that in the augured arrangement Livni would be given the No. 2 seat in the Labor-Hatnua list. It says that both sides are going to wait a few days to make the official announcement — at very least until the Knesset is officially dispersed.

Israel Hayom also cites senior Labor officials saying that Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog is weighing the possibility of integrating Livni’s Hatnua party into its list in the upcoming campaign. They say the Labor Party list would reserve two seats for Livni and another senior Hatnua party member in the top 10, but such a move would require Labor Party committee approval.

The report says that Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid is also courting Livni, seeking her inclusion in his party list. “The assessment is that each side will consider a joint run of the three parties [Yesh Atid, Hatnua, and Labor] together through one agreement or another, to join up before the elections or thereafter, in order to reduce as much as possible the chances of Netanyahu forming another government,” the paper’s political correspondent writes.

Labor sources are quoted in Haaretz saying that Lapid is an electoral burden and likely to pull down the number of votes the center-left bloc would get.

What no paper makes note of is that in the past decade Livni has drifted from the Likud party to Kadima, then Hatnua, and may imminently join forces with Labor, making her shift from right to left complete.

Rumor has it Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to climb down off the election tree this weekend, just before the Knesset votes to dissolve itself Monday, Yedioth Ahronoth reports, citing anonymous political sources.

The paper says that Netanyahu met with his erstwhile ally Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman Saturday night at Liberman’s home, where the Yisrael Beytenu leader was mourning the death of his mother. The two spoke at length alone, the report says.

It cites the unspecified political sources saying Netanyahu tried to convince Liberman to help him put together an alternative governing coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties, a move which would boot the Yesh Atid and Hatnua parties from the government without sending the country to elections.

Netanyahu’s office is quoted dismissing the rumors as “spin by left-wing parties” and insisting that the Knesset will be disbanded.

Outside the wild world of Israeli politics, Haaretz writes about a series of United Nations reports which document regular contact between IDF officers and fighters with various Syrian rebel groups operating on the other side of the border.

In a report from almost precisely a year ago, the UN force reported that in September 2013, Syrian opposition forces brought an injured man to the ceasefire line and handed him over to a waiting Israeli ambulance. No fewer than 10 instances like this were documented in the following November, the report says.

The paper buries the lede, however, and only mentions toward the end of the massive report that there was activity other than the treatment of injured Syrians. On June 10 of this year, the UN observers said they discerned IDF soldiers hand boxes over to opposition fighters on the Syrian side, Haaretz says. The contents thereof are not disclosed. Another incident at the end of October recorded by the UN involved the IDF opening the gates and uninjured Syrian men crossing into Israeli territory.

Yedioth Ahronoth buries its report about convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s medical emergency on Page 8. Pollard was hospitalized Friday after losing consciousness. The paper reports that Livni and Herzog, who were in Washington over the weekend, asked American officials to release the man because of his medical condition, but were told that there was no threat to Pollard’s life.

Israel Hayom devotes a full 14 pages to covering election noise, but eventually gets to non-elections material, such as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas saying that six million Palestinian refugees are waiting to return, and so is he.