[Israeli Politics:] Mercy killing for terminally ill [Shinui] party

Ha'aretz ^ | 14 January 2006 | Yossi Verter

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Shinui Chair Yosef Lapid last night. Avraham Poraz and five other Shinui MKs have announced they will resign from the party. (David Bachar)

Mercy killing for terminally ill party

By Yossi Verter

Shinui's 170-member council did a great kindness yesterday to Yosef Lapid, Avraham Poraz and the rest of Shinui's feeble and failing leadership: By their vote, they shortened the party's death and moved up the final blow the party would have received in any case on election day, March 28.

The question of whether Lapid and his colleagues will completely abandon politics or set up a new party called Shinui A or Shinui B is irrelevant - because the role of Shinui, whatever costume it wears, was over on December 20, the night that Ariel Sharon split the Likud and established Kadima. The four seats that the polls still show it receiving in the upcoming elections will now be divided among Kadima, Meretz and Labor.

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Shinui captured 15 seats and became the third largest bloc in the Knesset in the last election by campaigning as a centrist party, the voice of those between Likud and Labour. With Kadima now having successfully captured the center and with it's secularist policies largely unpopular Shinui was in trouble to begin with.

Will Shinui be missed? Not if Kadima is successful. Will the two halves of Shinui run and capture a few Knesset seats? Maybe. Who cares?

FWIW, the founder of Shinui, Professor Uriel Reichman, is part of Kadima.

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Israeli politics ping. Alouette should be happy about this.