With elections three months away, Israelis were looking forward to a campaign driven by domestic issues. There was a craving for an ordinary national debate on issues like cost of living and wage gaps and the relationship between the ultra-Orthodox minority and the mainstream. The rise of the social protest movement, the transformation of the Labor Party’s focus from peace to social change, the growing disaffection among working class Israelis, many of them conservative Likud voters, with the government’s economic policies—it seemed like Israel would finally enjoy a political season like that of any normal country.
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