Five polls, released Thursday in advance of Tuesday’s Israeli election, all agree that the Likud-Beiteinu list will win, but not on much else. Daily newspaper Ma’ariv, as well as Israel Radio, gave the merger of Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu 37 seats, while daily paper Israel Hayom had it at 35, daily paper Yediot Aharonot had it at 33 and Channel 10 had it at 32. All the polls say the Knesset’s right-wing/haredi parties’ bloc will outnumber the center-left/Arab parties, though the polls also differed on that margin. All of the polls had the center-left Labor at 15 to 17 seats, making it the second-largest party.
Israeli law prohibits media from releasing polls the week of the election, so Friday is the last day publications will be allowed to publish polls.
The controversy over President Obama’s reported comment that "Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are" continues. After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot back, former centrist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert backed Obama at a press conference, asking, "Is it in our interest to get into a blatant confrontation with the strongest man in the world?" Sephardi Shas leader Aryeh Deri also claimed that Netanyahu "made a mistake" by tacitly supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney last year.
"The U.S. is a great asset of ours that we need to guard and not debate," Deri said in an interview with the news website Walla.
