Big Surprise

16 Tevet 5769

Actually, there are two, big non-surprises here. Check out the report by Gil Ronen, with graph adapted by Arutz 7 (IsraelNN.com):

"The ruling Kadima party commissioned a poll on Day 2 of Operation Cast Lead to assess how the war affected its chances at the ballot boxes in the upcoming elections, News1 reported Sunday."

Non-Surprise #1:
The war is an election ploy.

Non-Surprise #2:
Labor has been gaining votes. Before the war began, they were projected to receive only eight mandates if the elections had been held at the time of the poll.

However, Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni (Kadima), as well as Defense Minister Ehud Baraq (Labor), may be surprised to learn that Labor has been gaining votes, not at the expense of Netanyahu's Likud Party, but at the expense of Kadima. Kadima also seems to have lost a vote or two to the left-wing Meretz Party. It is hard to tell, with gains by both Meretz and by United Torah Judaism [UTJ] of one mandate.

Livni and Baraq may also be surprised [as, quite frankly, so am I] to learn that Netanyahu's potential right of center/right-wing coalition has risen in the polls from 61 to 63 mandates. Although not significant on the surface, many have been expecting Likud to lose mandates to Labor in the polls, not gain any.

However, it seems that the usually Arab-loving, Israeli news media have finally realized that Hamas is an enemy, one which needs to be dealt with aggressively, and that negotiations as this point would only result in more Qassam rockets and Grad missiles landing on homes in the northern Negev and Shefellah Regions, all the while inching closer to Tel-Aviv,...yet another non-surprise.

Cross-posted on Esser Agaroth.