Que sera, sera……

For the last few days Israeli President, Shimon Peres, have had visitors. They are all trying to convince him that they are the ones he should ask to form the next Israeli government with their leader being the prime minister.
Politics is like a game of poker. It is all about “how to play the cards”.
People were speculating about the possibility for the two biggest parties, Kadima and Likud, to join forces in a “rotation” government. This would make Tsipi Livni the prime minister for the first two years while Bibi Netanyahu would take over for the two last years of the period.
Suggesting that Bibi Netanyahu would sit “waiting on the bench” for his time to come was more than optimistic…..As Kadima won with only one more seat in the Israeli parlament, Netanyahu knew that from that point everything depended on how he deals with the bunch of “cards” given to him.
Avigdor Lieberman is in many ways a winner. He will not be the prime minister, but he has the power to decide which of the two others he will join forces with. That again, of course, depends on who will give him the best bargain.

Israel still have rockets coming from Gaza. We have had four of them in Gan Yavne the last two days…….The Palestinians do not know how to “play their cards” to the best for their people. None of Israel's candidates for forming a new government are into playing “any kind of game” neither with Hamas nor with the Palestinians.

I was in the Galilee yesterday on a trip with colleagues. We visited several Druze villages and met with leaders for their community. Being neither Jewish, Arab or Christian they pointed out the importance of Israel being strong. We were told that these villages actually support either Lieberman or the Jewish religious parties. The word strong was used over and over.
They know what it is like to be a minority and understand the importance of being strong and united. They are very nice and soft spoken to whoever is considered a friend, but if people do not belong to that category they do well in not getting too close. Their understanding of being strong is nothing else that to be able to fight an enemy. Whenever they feel threatened they go by the toughest rules of all.
There are 100.000 Israeli Druze. They do not have any dream or wish for a Druze home land, but would like for Israel, Lebanon and Syria to reach an agreement to make it easier for them to visit and to be united with other Druze communities in the neighboring countries.
We started our tour yesterday by visiting the grave of Sheich Abu Youssef Amin who was one of the greatest leaders of the community until he passed away in 1993 ( at the age of 105) We were received by his grandson.
Around the walls there were photographs of the Sheich with leaders from Israel as well as from abroad. We were told why and how the Druze community has supported Israel from the very beginning and that they will continue to do so.

We had a couple of Arab tour guides on this trip. On our way back to the bus they looked at one another as one of them said: “ This sounded like an election campaign for the Likud Party”

Elin Elkouby