As President Shimon Peres prepares to begin the process Wednesday evening of choosing Israel’s potential Prime Minister, front-runner Binyamin Netanyahu is asked to get tough with Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman, who is playing the “spoiler” role.
Kadima’s only hope of forming a coalition is to entice Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party (15 seats) into a national unity government with the Likud. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni has reached a partial understanding with Lieberman – but this still does not address the fact that the Likud refuses to join a Kadima-led government under any circumstances.
Likud leader Netanyahu is thus the natural choice for Peres to choose to put together a government, most pundits and political sources feel. Even leading Kadima figures have been saying, off the record, that Livni has no chance of putting together a governing coalition. At most, some of them – such as Ministers Chaim Ramon and Tzachi HaNegbi - are hoping for a rotation government, which the Likud has turned down.