Booooooooooooring (sorry, I’m a bit hyper)
I’m still finding it virtually impossible to be interested in the coalition building process. Discussing it is just a waste of time.

Sharansky’s Yisrael Ba’Aliyah is joining the Likud, though. So now the Likud is 40 seats. Israeli political analyst Hanan Crystal offered an interesting explanation for this on Reshet Bet radio station today. He said that in the past (back in the “Shtetl Collective” days - he didn't say that, I did), because Israeli Arabs didn’t want to vote directly for Mapai (the predecessor of the Labor Party) they established Arab parties that were affiliated with the party but ran separately. Eventually these parties started faltering in the elections and were reabsorbed into the “mother” party. This, according to Crystal, was the process Yisrael Ba’Aliyah also went through. They left the Likud so as to run separately on the immigrant ticket but always remained affiliated with the Likud. Now that there is no need for a separate “Russian” party, as we saw in the elections because most of the ex-Russians voted for Likud, there is no reason why “Yisrael Ba’aliyah” should not be reabsorbed into the Likud.