David Levy is arguably the least competent and shallowest politician in Israel. Levy was for years the butt of jokes that would make the Dan Quayle jibes look tame. Levy is a talentless demagogue, a man whose chief credentials are his hair blower. A man who is the walking definition of pompous, who believes that pompousness makes you look deep. A man who changes his political positions more often than most people change their gotkas.

Levy, under Shamir, had joined Modai in 1992 in a hawkish opposition cadre to Shamir, establishing a series of hawkish "hoops" through which Shamir must leap to get Levy back in the Likud. Now Levy is setting himself up as wannabe leader of the Likud's dovish wing, pressuring Netanyahu to be more pro-Palestinian, more generous with the next round of Israeli "redeployment" and surrender. Levy has long lead the Likud's "Social Lobby," devoted to preserving the Likud's attachment to socialism and populist statism and expanding the cradle-to-grave welfare state that already makes Sweden look like Scrooge.

Levy's entire career is based on his presumed ability to attract Moroccan Jewish votes in Israel. Moroccans Jews are virtually the only Jews in Israel who commonly cast votes based on sub-ethnic group solidarity, other than perhaps Russian immigrants (although I submit the Russians vote not ethnically but as an immigrant special interest group). Levy is sometimes thought to be attractive to Sephardic voters generally, although I doubt it, and in any case Sephardic-nationalist voting has long gone to Shas. I have long believed that on net the Likud loses voter support by having Levy on board, because more voters are turned off than Moroccan voters attracted.

The Likud has long pandered to Levy because of its belief that Levy could deliver the Moroccan vote. It has dumped honors on Levy, always being careful to make sure that Levy never actually takes hold reins of power, from which he could make nation-damaging decisions. In Levy's honor the Minister of Foreign Affairs position has long been defined as a powerless but high-profile honor, much like Israel's "Presidency," and the Foreign Minister in Israel has far far less power than, say, the Secretary of State in the US. Levy is also frequently the "Deputy Prime Minister," another empty honor.

Before the last elections, Levy had bolted the Likud and set up his own party, Gesher, whose platform was welfare socialism. Instead of welcoming this as a chance to jettison an electoral liability and cleaning up the Likud's image, Netanyahu among other qeationable acts of appeasment, boosted the powers of Levy's yeslings within the Likud.

The result, overnight after Levy returned to the Likud, the Likud-with-Gesher-inside was polling the same as the Likud alone without Gesher the week before. The Likud then went on to perform a second sort of Likudesque reverse Hannuka miracle, by which Netanyahu took the election at the same time that Likud-cum-Gesher lost Knesset seats compared with Likud before the elections.

Netanyahu's pusillanimous sucking up to Levy before the election was a forewarning of how he would negotiate with the PLO and run Israel's defense policies. In other words, Bibi John Major brought us Oslo Lite.

And what of Levy? He is joining other erstwhile Likud hawks like Roni Milo, trying to stake out the dovish ground to the left of Labor. This week he is hectoring Netanyahu and telling the world's press about how Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace and not appeasing Arafat fast enough.
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