Will this woman be Israel's next political star?
As Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis promotes her newly formed party, her popularity already points to a changing of the old guard in Israeli politics.
Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis announced the establishment of a new party March 6. Opinion polls published in the days that followed were flattering, and it seems that the old, established parties with strong social platforms have reason to be worried. True, her latest achievement exists only on paper, but the recent Hadashot poll that awarded her new party five seats is telling.
Intriguingly, the poll gave her more support than the leader of her former party Yisrael Beitenu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The poll gave him only four seats, meaning that he could find himself below the threshold and out of the Knesset in the next election. Levy-Abekasis left Yisrael Beitenu in a huff in May 2016, when she was excluded from negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that eventually put Liberman in the Defense Ministry. Liberman also decided not to make Levy-Abekasis a minister even though she was second on his list and a highly regarded Knesset member in her own right with an impressive record of social legislation.
