Whose interest is served by making Aryeh Deri into a new messiah? Who is paving the way for his return, ceaselessly bombarding us with messages to the effect that he "is about to return" and that "it's final"? That "it's final" has been going on for several months now, like a never-ending saga. So who, are what, is behind this news phenomenon called Deri? Could it be the ultra-Orthodox? Perhaps, although a significant number of them don't want him back. The Right? Definitely not. Deri's Shas brought us the Oslo Accords - not exactly a virtue in the eyes of the Right. Who, then, is really interested in Deri's return. Ah yes, the Left. Not out of any great love for Deri, but out of its loathing for Netanyahu. But the affectionate headlines in Yediot Aharonot are a double-edged sword. This is the same newspaper that hounded Deri in the 1990s as the biggest criminal of them all, and is now making him out to be the Left's great hope. Ever since the 1977 election, which upset the conventional political order and exposed a new balance of power, the Left has attempted to siphon off votes from the Right by lining up behind "security-oriented" politicians (like Rabin and Barak), whom the public perceives as being committed to Israel's security interests. Now they are trying to position Deri at the head of something, in the hope that he will steal votes away from Shas and the Likud in favor of some delusional leftist coalition. Deri should remember that the media's love for him is conditional. The minute he no longer meets its expectations - say, next time, under pressure from his supporter base, he votes against some move by the Left - Yediot and the rest of the leftist media will turn on him as a false messiah, a loathed anti-Christ, publicly smearing him as the vilest of criminals. We should also keep this in mind, since Deri's power comes from a distinctly conservative electorate - people who vote for Shas, Likud and the like. At the moment of truth, when Deri is called upon to support a coalition of land withdrawals and devastation, when he is asked to approve with his own hands another Oslo Accords, he won't do it - unless he wants to commit political suicide. Deri owes his status to the public, so when push comes to shove he will act according to the wishes of the constituency that brought him to power. Therefore, there is no reason to get too worked up about Deri's return to politics. Haim Ramon and the people at Yediot know they are playing with manipulations and speculations. Everyone, including Deri himself, are graduates of the "stinking maneuver" [a failed attempt by the Left to bring down the Shamir government in the early 1990s]. They are also graduates of the bloody Oslo agreement - one speculation on our fate too many.
That, Deri certainly must remember.
