What, in fact, do the protest organizations want? Senior political commentator Amit Segal expounded on the topic in his weekly column in Yediot Achranot – and explained why it is doomed to failure.

According to Segal, “eliminating the legal reform was an ambitious goal of the protest organizations. It was almost fully achieved. But behind it is the real, much more ambitious, unprecedented goal: that the next government, unlike all 37 of its predecessors, will not include any religious party.”

Avigdor Lieberman, Segal wrote, was the first to mark the goal back in February.

Segal continued: “The thwarting of the Yom Kippur tefillos already indicates the direction: the secular against the religious.” Segal noted the messages of support from Yair Lapid and protest leader Shikma Bressler, messages that were replaced a day later with obstensible calls for reconciliation.

“It’s a pretty bad tactic,” he explained. “First, from a political point of view: even according to the blackest survey for the current coalition, the opposition parties have no possibility of forming a government without a religious party, since as can be remembered, Ra’am is a religious party – very. A protest whose trademark is Israeli flags will find it very difficult to form a coalition based on Abbas and Tibi.”

“But this is also fundamentally a mistake. The success of the protest was due to the fact that it avoided the traditional disputes, literally, in Israeli society, in which the right cannot lose. The majority of the people support the Likud way in the political debate, and therefore Achim L’neshek furiously tore up signs saying ‘Enough of the Occupation’ at the Kaplan rallies.”

“In a Bibi-No Bibi debate, the result will almost always be a paralyzing draw. But in the debate between liberals and conservatives, there is a majority of liberal Jews, including a large part of the Religious Zionist sector. It was the only battle of the year and it was decided in every poll against the most conservative coalition in Israel’s history. Confrontation about the Kol Nidrei and Neilah tefillos frames the discussion as a debate between the Jews and the Israelis, in which the Jews have had a clear majority for years.”

And who is the main political loser according to Segal? Benny Gantz, whose voters are on both sides of the fault line.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)