Over the past few days, more than a few leading activists and heads of local branches of the Likud Party received personal phone calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was contacting them to make sure that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon ranks high in the list of Likud candidates for the 20th Knesset.
In the Likud of just a decade ago, Ya’alon, a former chief of staff and a respected defense minister, who made the transition from the Mapai-style left (today's Labor Party) to the embrace of the right, would certainly have been elected to a high spot on the party list without any help. But this is the 2014 model of the Likud, which has been taken over by powerful right-wing groups and settlers. In this Likud, Ya’alon could well find himself appearing on the list after such darlings of the settlers as Knesset members Miri Regev, Danny Danon and Zeev Elkin.
