It's unclear whether the prime minister ever foresaw the power of this political snowball, still gaining speed as it barrels downhill with no end in sight. When he announced primaries for the Likud leadership would be held at the end of January, he knew it would cause a few shake-ups in the political system. He estimated that it would cause a frenzy in the Likud and, he hoped, also in Kadima. Political life goes on as usual, for now, but no one can predict if matters are going to spiral out of control. Mark your diaries: On January 31, the Likud will hold leadership primaries. Meretz will hold its primaries on February 7, and on March 27 Kadima members will vote for their party leadership. Meanwhile, Yair Lapid, Noam Shalit and former police major general Moshe Mizrahi have announced their entry into politics. Teva CEO Shlomo Yanai quit his job and other public figures are busy planning their dive into the political waters. This is all happening when national elections are only due to be held in November 2013. So if that's the situation, is it any wonder that senior ministers and political activists say that what looks like, and smells like, elections, will ultimately lead to elections- The last thing Tzipi Livni is interested in now is primaries. In recent months the Kadima chairwoman has done everything in her power to prevent what she considers to be her nightmare. Only a few weeks ago, she passed an internal party vote according to which no Kadima member was to deal with internal elections until the end of the Knesset's winter session. Ultimately, however, she gave in to the pressure within her party and now those elections will be held in March. Kadima already began losing its clout during the summer's protest rallies for social justice. MK Shelly Yachimovich's election as Labor leader also substantially hurt Kadima, which dipped under the 20 mandate line in the polls for the first time. Despite the demand for party primaries by perennial rivals Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter, Livni hoped that, over time, the poll numbers would improve. That didn't happen. Fortunately for Livni, Mofaz, Dichter, Meir Sheetrit, Yisrael Hasson and others demanded primaries and even got Knesset members to sign up for them, and then subsequently hesitated, which allowed her to easily push their demands aside. But then Yair Lapid came along. FORMER Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whom the political system rejected just three years ago, is once again a key figure. After Yair Lapid consulted him before entering politics, this week Tzipi Livni also asked to meet with him. She was following the advice of Haim Ramon, who is close to both Livni and Olmert. Olmert isn't the only friend Ramon and Lapid share, although he probably is the most dubious of them all. The fact that both of them wanted to meet specifically with Olmert is seen by many as a moral and ethical flaw they share. Meretz Knesset faction leader Zahava Gal-On said about this that "the wooing of Ehud Olmert by Livni and Lapid is legitimizing those guilty of corruption." Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich said: "First it was Yair Lapid and now it's Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni who are playing up to the accused Olmert. This poor behavior makes a mockery of the attempts made by our legal institutions to see that justice is done, and it's a wrongful act signaling the public that corruption and crime at the top levels of leadership are no big deal." Lapid's entry into politics quickened Kadima's downfall in the polls to below 15 mandates. In some of the polls, Kadima even finished as the fourth or fifth-sized party, trailing Yair Lapid, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party and Labor. Livni then understood that time was working against her. The last Kadima primaries were held when the party was at its strongest. It seemed clear to everyone then that whoever won the primaries would be the next prime minister. After all, a coalition was already essentially in place. At the time, no one estimated that in the end, through a series of hasty and mistaken decisions, Livni who ultimately won the primaries -- would dissolve the serving government. Now the primaries are being held at a time when Kadima is fighting for its life. Its position has never been as bad as it is today. This week a senior Kadima member compared the party's primaries to a struggle between passengers trying to find a lounge chair on the deck of the crippled luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia, which hit a rock and capsized off the Italian coast and whose captain shamefully fled first, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Indeed, the battle in Kadima will be a bloody one and within the party there is talk that it will inevitably lead to a split. It is already pretty clear that Livni won't serve in a party headed by Shaul Mofaz, and Mofaz won't continue to serve under Livni. What might speed up the split is also the fact that both of them have alternatives for the day after the primaries. If Livni wins, Mofaz can quit together with Avi Dichter, Meir Sheetrit, Otniel Schneller, Yulia Shamalov Berkovich, Avi Duan and perhaps some others and form an independent faction. Such a faction could even join the government until elections. On the other hand, if Mofaz wins, Livni and some of her supporters could quit Kadima and join Yair Lapid. An alliance between Lapid and Livni is almost a given. Not only do they have the same pool of voters and express the same opinions, but they share a large number of mutual friends: businessmen, lawyers, and advertising execs who all live in the same part of the country, frequent in the same cafes, earn the same salaries and share the same political views. So from their standpoint, the battle between Livni and Lapid is one within the family. One can only imagine how happy the members of this "White Tribe" would be if Lapid and Livni ultimately run together. One of the Kadima members most disappointed with Livni is Avi Dichter. Contrary to Mofaz, Dichter wasn't among Livni's enemies at the beginning. After she was elected party chairwoman, Dichter quickly aligned himself with her leadership and was there to help her to the best of his ability in the Knesset elections. In return, Livni appointed him head of the party's Election Day headquarters. Dichter began feeling disappointed after contact between some of the party's MKs and some of Netanyahu's people, who were attempting to split Kadima, was exposed. Dichter thought that Livni should hold primaries to strengthen her leadership. She refused. It seems that today there's nothing Livni regrets more. But what led to a real rift between Dichter and Livni was her ignoring his proposed "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People," proposed in August 2011 which, among other things, would have made Hebrew the only official language of the state of Israel, while Arabic would be given a special status, and the Hebrew calendar become the official calendar of the state. However it was mainly the corruption within the party's machinery that led to the arrest of Kadima's director-general and his aide in one case, and the treasurer and some other workers in another case. Dichter was shocked by testimony that he received on the conduct of party management officials, and even more shocked by what he perceived as Livni's constant support of the atmosphere of corruption inside Kadima. Dichter plans to run in these primaries as well, although he knows he won't win. And what will Dichter do if Livni is elected? One of the possibilities he would like to consider is in fact joining the Likud. "Dichter is clearly a center-right person, he joined Kadima when the party created by Arik Sharon was really center right," says an old friend of Dichter's who's considered a colleague. "In certain ways he's better suited for the Likud than for Kadima headed by Livni, who has swerved to the Left." The talk of Kadima's primaries this week concealed the person who only last week managed to drive the whole political system crazy. After entering politics too early, Yair Lapid lowered his profile, and having quit his weekly TV show is now maintaining contact with the public via his personal Facebook page. Lapid expressed many thoughts last week, among them his opposition to the local authority strike, while one of his future party's stars -- Herzliya Mayor Yael German -- was one of the strike's strongest supporters. He also announced that the number of activists supporting him rose to 4,000 within a week. Lapid denied the rumors that he plans to join Kadima and announced his intention to establish an entirely independent list. Meanwhile, he's has been signing up people to that list. One of the names mentioned is National Student Union Chairman Itzik Shmuli. But Shmuli has completely different plans. Two weeks ago the union president, who was first in the public eye during last summer's protests, packed up his belongings and moved to Lod. Most of his political activity is centered there now, while he tries to convince his friends to do as he did and move to a problematic town and make positive changes, which he sees as a Zionist mission. If you ask his friends where he stands politically compared to Lapid, they answer that Lapid is courting the left-wing secular Tel Aviv population, while Shmuli is courting a completely different sector. After Lapid's joining the race and Yachimovich's election to Labor Party head, there seems to be no more room for another center party. But Shmuli is examining the field before jumping into politics. Contrary to Lapid, he's waiting. When the time's right, he'll also make the jump. Lieberman is also waiting. According to his supporters, his political steps will be determined by his lawyers' preparations regarding his legal status. If he is indicted on charges of corruption, fraud, and obstruction of justice, Lieberman will have to resign, but could ask for a quick trial or a plea bargain and return triumphantly to the next Knesset. That's if he's not considered to have committed a crime involving moral turpitude. The only problem Lieberman has now is Netanyahu. Lieberman doesn't believe the prime minister. According to senior members of Yisrael Beiteinu, Lieberman is convinced that after the Likud primaries, Netanyahu plans to move up Knesset elections to around September 2012. Lieberman assesses that Netanyahu wants to see a weakened Yisrael Beiteinu, with the Likud growing at its expense. The assumption is that as long as the court has not ruled on his case, Lieberman will have to moderate his political statements. But it is with these statements and these issues that Lieberman usually takes votes from the Right, particularly from the Likud. In such a case, Lieberman will prefer to run a campaign focused on civil matters and those related to religion and state. That way he won't anger the judges and state prosecutors, his supporters say, while simultaneously draw supporters from Lapid and Kadima. Lieberman believes that this is Netanyahu's working premise, and whether it's right or wrong, that is why things have been very tense between them in recent weeks. But before the ruling on Lieberman's legal affairs and the Kadima primaries, there will be internal Likud elections, which really created the current storm. Netanyahu's challenge is to get more than 70 percent support and block the rise of 'Jewish Leadership' faction head Moshe Feiglin. Despite his guaranteed victory, Netanyahu is taking the elections very seriously. This week, for example, he held two assemblies, in Netanya and Netivot, and next week he will attend more. The goal is to increase the turnout as much as possible. On the Likud's internal election day, elections will also be held at all the party's branches. Most of them have reached agreements on who will get the jobs on the branch council and the party's central committee, which means there won't be elections in those branches leading Netanyahu to add delegates to the Central Committee in the big cities which disrupted everything. Weeks later most of the branches were again able to reach agreements. From Netanyahu's viewpoint, these agreements are bad. It means the activists won't vote. That is how the initiative was launched to return money from the registration fee to candidates whose branches have a high turnout. Thus a candidate who paid NIS 500 for the right to be chosen to the Likud Central Committee can get his money back if he succeeds in bringing party activists to the voting booth. The candidates who will definitely get their money back are those in the Likud's Ramat Gan branch. The voting rate in Ramat Gan will be high and there is no talk of deals there. It's a free-for-all. The battle over Ramat Gan looks like one of the most fascinating in the Likud, even more than the elections for party leader, which were actually decided a while ago. It has all the ingredients: Power struggles between the ministers and MKs, the mayor and members of the municipal council, Feiglin's supporters, wheeler-dealers, Kadima members returning to the Likud ,and even a group of motorcyclists. Nonetheless, the most interesting is the battle over the Likud Council presidency. Even though it is a temporary job of only a few months, it is a powerful position. MK Danny Danon plans to run mainly to prevent any attempt to guarantee a spot on the Likud Knesset list for Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the members of his Atzmaut [Independence] Party. But that's still just a side battle. The real clash will be over the expected attempt by the party's central committee to regain its power to choose Knesset members. If such a proposal is made, it almost certainly will pass. Netanyahu will do everything he can to prevent such a scenario from taking place. But which MK or minister is strong enough to stand up to the Central Committee to prevent this move from being passed- That is why Netanyahu is considering running for the post himself. If Netanyahu is Likud Council president, the contentious matter will never come up for a vote. Another possibility being discussed in the party is to appoint Minister Ze'ev Binyamin Begin or some other similar figure who has nothing to lose and can stand up to the pressures of the Central Committee members. With the prime minister, the ministers and the members of the Opposition concerned with all of these issues, who would believe we aren't already in the midst of elections.
If it talks like elections, and walks like elections...
Kadima, which is now fighting for its life, is at a new low • This week a senior Kadima member compared the party's primaries to a struggle between passengers trying to find a lounge chair on the deck of the crippled luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia.
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