Likud golden boy Kahlon awaits more survey results before deciding whether to set up competing party

Moshe Kahlon, arguably the most popular minister in the outgoing coalition, is awaiting the results of a wide-ranging survey due Thursday night to decide whether to bolt the Likud and set up a new party to run in January’s elections, Israeli TV news broadcasts reported on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Israel Radio reported that Likud MKs urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring Kahlon back to the party, even if it meant securing him the No. 2 spot on the Likud list.

Minister of Communications Kahlon surprisingly announced two weeks ago that he was stepping down from the Knesset for a “time-out” and would not run for a seat with the Likud in the January elections. He stressed, however, that “obviously I’m not leaving the Likud,” and promised to work for the party to ensure it won the elections.

On Monday night, he chaired the Likud Central Committee meeting at which the party approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal for a joint Knesset list with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu. Netanyahu publicly embraced Kahlon at the event, and declared warmly, “Moshe, you were born in the Likud, you’ll stay in the Likud, you’ll always be in the Likud and you’ll help the Likud win the next elections.”

Kahlon smiled and acknowledged the audience’s ecstatic applause.

According to the TV reports, at that very moment, a survey commissioned on Kahlon’s behalf by one of his associates, Modiin-based politician Shimon Sussan, was being conducted by pollster Rafi Smith to examine how many seats a new party led by Kahlon could win in the next elections. The findings, published on Wednesday, suggested Kahlon could win 20 seats, and that this could rise to 27 if he was joined by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

Channel 10 said last night that another finding was that if Kahlon allied with the Labor party, they would win 32 seats.

Kahlon was reported to be awaiting further polling figures before making a final decision.

The shock new potential opposition to Netanyahu dominated political debate on Wednesday, to the extent that Netanyahu was asked about Kahlon at his press conference with French President Francois Hollande in Paris.

“He explicitly told me that he was staying in the Likud. He said the same thing publicly and I believe he will stay in the Likud,” Netanyahu said, half-apologizing to his host that he had brought domestic Israeli politics with him.

Kahlon had not originally intended running against Netanyahu, and was quitting the government and taking a break from the Knesset because it was made clear to him that he would not be given a front-line ministerial position in the next government, Channel 2 said. Now that he’d seen such encouraging initial poll findings, however, he was seriously considering establishing a new party that would mirror “widespread Israeli attitudes.” In other words, the report said, the party would be relatively right-wing in terms of dealings with the Palestinians and relatively left-wing on socioeconomic matters — Kahlon’s specialty.

Kahlon, 51, who also currently serves as Minister of Welfare and Social Services, is “the most popular minister in Israel,” pollster Smith said on Wednesday. “He would take seats from all the parties — Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas and even Labor.”

Kahlon was elected as a Likud MK in 2003 and quickly became a popular figure in the party and in the Knesset. Political analysts see Kahlon — one of seven children of immigrants from Libya — as a vital link between the Likud’s top leaders and the rank-and-file Sephardi supporters of the party. He was one of only two ministers of Sephardi origin in the Likud ranks in the outgoing government.

Channel 10 claimed many Likud party activists, angered that the Likud has not focused sufficiently on economic problems afflicting the party’s lower-middle-class Sephardi voting base, were ready to jump ship along with Kahlon.

Some pundits, however, have also raised the possibility that the whole idea of a Kahlon campaign might be a clever tactic hatched by him and Netanyahu. In this theory, Kahlon leaves the Likud and forms a party that draws voters from the center and center-left, for whom economic issues are more pressing than diplomatic-security issues. He then brings this party into the next Netanyahu-led coalition.