Poll: If elections held today, Olmert would be thrashed by his rivals

If elections were held today, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would suffer a resounding defeat at the hands of a number of political rivals, according to a Channel 10 poll broadcast Wednesday.

When asked who would be their preferred prime ministerial candidate, 30 percent of those polled said Netanyahu, while 18 percent picked Labor MK Ami Ayalon.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak (Labor) came in third with 12 percent, followed by Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman (7 percent), Olmert (3 percent) and Defense Minister Amir Peretz (1 percent).

According to the poll, 57 percent of Israelis say they want immediate elections, while 72 percent say Olmert should not continue to serve as prime minister.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834426.html

Anything would be better than that. Labor needs to purge the old guard like Peres and follow the path of Rabin. That's the best hope. I hope the Israeli people, Israeli Jews (secular and religious) particularly, can rally around the banner of peace and national coexistence, aligned with the progressive aspect of some early Zionist thinkers.

If they would unite around one candidate. Note from the poll that if you add together the two Labor candidates then it is the same as the Likud candidate.

But the prospective replacements don't look that great either. I suppose there is Ayalon. If it were Bibi and Ayalon, how would it go? If you take Barak and Ayalon and Peretz and Olmert, you get 34%, which is still less than Bibi and Lieberman. And would the IDF take orders from any of them? Would any of them have the clout to do something useful, different? It's like watching a train wreck.