About a month before this year's second round of elections, senior leaders of the Blue and White party made a point of announcing from every possible platform that they were certain that a mutiny in the Likud was only a matter of time, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be removed as chairman of the Likud immediately after the election, with someone else taking over for him. The impetus behind this idea was the Blue and White party’s No. 2 candidate, Yair Lapid. His notion sounded convincing enough to create political and media buzz.
“The mutiny in the Likud has already begun,” Lapid said resolutely in an interview with the Walla News website in the first week of August. He supported his remarks with insider information, saying, “Senior Likud officials have been talking to me about it by phone. … We know the truth. The mutiny in the Likud has already begun. … They will not go to a third round of elections just because Netanyahu wants immunity from the indictments facing him. If there is a deadlock, we will have the good sense to form a unity government made up of the Blue and White party without Netanyahu but with [Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor] Liberman.”
