It’s not me, it’s you: 8 things to know for January 2

1. Heads did roll: Labor leader Avi Gabbay’s unceremonious dumping of the Zionist Union alliance and Tzipi Livni like a bad habit is sending shockwaves through the political system, raising questions about his leadership qualities and where various leftist candidates may go from here.

• The daily Haaretz includes two references in headlines (at least in English) to Gabbay beheading Livni, Islamic State style, reflecting just how poor a show Tuesday’s press statement came off as.
• “He slit her throat in front of the cameras after several minutes of verbal torture. Those present at the Zionist Union faction meeting had a tough time dealing with what they were seeing. They averted their eyes and some of them even blurted out words of protest. Immediately afterward they went back to their daily routines,” writes Yossi Verter in one, nonetheless predicting that the spectacle may yet cost Gabbay dearly.
• “Gabbay’s divorce from Tzipi Livni — with no advance warning, on live TV in front of the cameras — will enter the history books as one of the cruelest maneuvers ever — and the look of surprise on Livni’s face will be enshrined in the pantheon,” writes Tal Shalev in Walla News.

2. ‘Like a violent husband’: Livni herself accused Gabbay of trying to take her down a notch with the display for the media, telling the Hadashot news channel that “I know he thought that maybe he would stand there and pose and look all macho, but time’s up, these kinds of things are finished. The idea that you will stand there and put a woman down publicly is done for, no more.”

• She also tells Channel 10 news that she did not feel put down, “just surprised.”
• Yedioth Ahronoth’s Yifat Ehrlich takes the idea of the breakup as a sexist move even further. “Gabbay gave her a gut punch, while rudely trying to put her down publicly. She sat below, he stood above, speaking. Now suddenly the whole speech sounds different,” she writes, noting an earlier part where Gabbay talked about his tough childhood. “It sounds like a batterer giving excuses for his violence, explaining that it’s because he was beaten in his youth, and so he’s allowed now to smack his wife.”

3. Gone girl: Not everybody is rallying to Livni’s side. Right-leaning Israel Hayom joins in with Gabbay, giving her its own kick in the tush. “The serial abandoner gets abandoned,” reads the tabloid’s front page headline, referring to her political migration from Likud to Zionist Union over the last 15 years, and inside there appears to be nothing less than joy at watching what seems to be the implosion of the left.

• “Livni’s constant opportunism is infamous even in the Israeli political scene,” the paper writes.
• “Livni is a woman for whom no method is out of bounds, characterized by her lack of faithfulness,” columnist Smadar Bat Adam writes in the same paper, going through all the people she has two-timed, from Likud to Ehud Olmert to Shaul Mofaz.

4. Matchmaker, matchmaker: Yossi Beilin in the same paper predicts that Labor will turn to Meretz for a union, which is exactly what Likud would like to see as it would allow them to portray the left-leaning party as extreme left.

• The fact is, though, the divorce leaves the field wide open for any number of combos, which is exactly what Livni was hoping to build.
• Livni has for a while been meeting with people in the center-left in the hopes of building a bloc that can give a “fight to Netanyahu,” Yedioth’s Sima Kadmon writes. “It was clear to Gabbay that if a camp like this formed, he would be the first tossed to the side.”
• The paper looks at several of the different scenarios, from Livni running with Benny Gantz (low chance), to Gabbay getting together with former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi (not high), to Livni joining up with Ehud Barak (reasonable chance), to everyone running separately, which it seems to think is the most likely — “though all the people who want to have a chance at being prime minister should understand that none of them alone have a chance against Netanyahu.”
• “None of the leaders of the center-left have any confidence in each other, which is why now – assuming Livni’s party will run again on its own – there are at least six parties occupying the center-ground,” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer writes.

5. Secret grinch: Hadashot news reports that Gabbay kept his plan to boot Livni so secret that he didn’t tell any confidants for fear of leaks, and hand-wrote his speech so it wouldn’t be left on a computer or printer somewhere for someone else to find.

• According to the report, he decided on kicking her out last week, but had to wait until Gantz formed his own party to make it harder for them to join together, and to wait for a deadline to pass that will make it difficult for her to take any of Zionist Union/Labor’s war chest on her way out.

6. Forget who will run with whom. Nobody even knows what anybody stands for: Amid all the infighting and party splitting, there has been almost no talk of policy, with many candidates having no platform, at least not publicly.

• Addressing this lacuna, two non-Israelis, David Makovsky and Dennis Ross, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank write in Yedioth that the candidates will have to clarify their positions on a number of defense and foreign policy issues, to say nothing of domestic policy.
• “Beyond the diplomatic and symbolic support it has given Israel, the Trump administration has left Israel almost alone to deal with the challenges posed by Iran in Syria and Lebanon and Russia’s presence. With Russia hardening its positions regarding Israel’s freedom to act in Syria and Lebanon, what do Netanyahu and his challengers intend to do about it,” the two write.

7. Mission accomplished? Israel did not get any answers on that front Tuesday, but it got more of that symbolic support, first with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying the Syria pullout doesn’t mean there’s any less support for Israel.

• Just a few hours later, Honduras, the US and Israel put out a joint statement saying that Tegucigalpa will advance talks to move its embassy to Jerusalem, along with Israel opening an embassy in Honduras.
• The statement also included a vague promise “to strengthen political relations and coordinate cooperation on development in Honduras.”
• This likely refers to Honduras’s demand that it get some Israeli tech know-how to help it develop, and closer ties with the US. According to Reuters, “Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off aid to Honduras, a poor nation of less than 10 million people, over caravans of migrants crossing Mexico heading for the U.S. border.”

8. Fly straight: Netanyahu also held talks with Chilean president Sebastian Pińera, and discussed getting a direct flight between Santiago and Tel Aviv that overflies Africa.

• Chile’s Latam airline just launched its first direct flight (well almost direct as it stops in Sao Paulo), but the flight has to go all the way around Africa. A look at a map shows why Netanyahu has been so keen to advance ties with Chad and possibly Sudan to shorten that flight path.
• The Philippines Daily Inquirer reports that Philippine Airlines is looking into launching a direct flight to Israel as well in the next few months, “to bolster tourism and trade while providing an easier means for Filipinos to achieve their Holy Land ‘bucket lists.’”
• As with many other places, though, the use of Saudi airspace is the biggest possible block. Air India recently started using Saudi airspace for flights to Israel and Philippine Airlines wants to as well, to shave an hour or so off the flight time.
• Manuel Tamayo, undersecretary for aviation at the Department of Transportation, tells the news site that Manila is working on securing a final agreement with Saudi Arabia to use its airspace.