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Could new Israeli party topple Netanyahu’s Likud?

For the first time in years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confronted with polls that place his Likud party second and not first.
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Since the end of Israel's second war in Lebanon in 2006, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never experienced such a clear deficit in Israeli public opinion polls against any rival. This week, on Feb. 21, it happened with the establishment of the Blue and White Party. The new political platform of chiefs of staff — led by three reserve lieutenant generals (Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya’alon and Gabi Ashkenazi) plus one television presenter (Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid) — has taken the public opinion polls by storm and opened a 3-10 mandate lead over Netanyahu.

For the first time since he returned to power in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself facing a rival of his own weight. A last-minute scaremongering campaign against the Arab enemy and the terrible security dangers like Netanyahu waged in the last week of the 2015 campaign won’t work this time. On the last election day in March 2015, Netanyahu warned voters that the Arabs were ‘’coming in droves’’ to the polls. This time things are different. If the prime minister says “The Arabs are coming,” he won’t find the lightweight Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni (who headed the Zionist Camp in 2015) facing him, but three heavyweight rivals and decorated, experienced generals: the 20th chief of staff, Gantz; the 17th chief of staff, Ya’alon; and the 19th chief of staff, Ashkenazi. And so, the average Israeli voter (who votes at the end of the day for a “sense of security”) could also find it among the camp opposing Netanyahu. The prime minister has lost his greatest asset, which is none other than the weapon of scaremongering — the indefatigable mandate engine that he has developed over the past decade. Barring a dramatic change at the last minute, this new game will end in a photo finish.

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