It hardly matters whether Trump accepts leadership of a party that currently sits in the Coalition or in the Opposition.
Jerusalem, July 7 - Opposition politicians voiced both frustration and slim hope today upon encountering public opinion surveys showing that incumbent Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu remains the unassailable leading candidate in any upcoming elections, but that there does exist someone with greater popularity among Israelis, who might therefore pose a credible alternative, if the Opposition can persuade him to vie for the premiership: US President Donald J. Trump.
A series of polls now show Trump as better suited to the position of Israel's prime minister than even Netanyahu, who has long dominated Israeli politics and against whom no one has so far posed a sustainable, credible threat. That has persisted despite years of corruption allegations and an array of opponents who have attempted to weaponize even the institutions of the State against him, and despite wall-to-wall criticism of the complacency under his watch that allowed the October 7th, 2023 massacres and the resulting war to happen.
That is poised to change, polls indicate, if Donald Trump accepts chairmanship of any of the Israeli political parties slated to participate in the next parliamentary elections - no later than October 2026, but sooner if the current Netanyahu government collapses.
The pollsters noted that it hardly matters whether Trump accepts leadership of a party that currently sits in the Coalition or in the Opposition. "Even if he goes up against Bibi for leadership of the Likud itself, he could win," explained statistician Amsankt Nimmerleinstag of Tel Aviv University, who analyzed the data. "We should probably expect a mad scramble among most of the parties in play to attract Trump to head up their respective lists for the next elections."
The parties themselves, while acknowledging the temptation, expressed some reservations. "Our assessments of Trump are all so contradictory, and he's so unpredictable, that it's anyone's guess whom he might choose," admitted MK Meirav Mikhaeli of The Democrats, a merger of progressive parties Labor and Meretz. "If you believe all the rumors circulating online, Trump has had it with Bibi. Great! So have we! But then two hours later Trump is on air praising Bibi. The prospects of recruiting Trump are... uncertain."
"Yeah, I'm not sure we ant to open than can of worms," agreed centrist Opposition Leader Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid. "And I'll admit I wouldn't want to give up leadership of my party. I know I have an ego. I think on top of that, with all the allegations flying around that opposition to Bibi is funded from abroad, even though that was mostly an Obama-Biden thing, it's not tenable to outright invite a foreign leader to just take over. Sounds like a bad precedent."
Please support - our work through Patreon.
Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL