THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

It is the Likud party that has enabled him over the years to chip away brick-by-brick at Israel's democracy, undermine the judiciary, discriminate against Israeli Arabs as well as Jews of color, alienate the American Jewish community, and torpedo any prospect of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To be sure, the Likud party has long since lost its conscience as it continues to support its leader, whose manipulative skills are surpassed only by his deviousness and ever-insatiable thirst to stay as prime minister to his dying day - to hell with Israel's future.

And what about the other political parties? Why is it that after three elections, there is still no consensus to form a government? Had the business of the state assumed priority and consensus emerged in developing a cohesive strategy on how to deal with the difficult issues the country must grapple with and set aside personal ambition, a government could have been formed following the first election.

But that was not the case. Not a single party has advanced specific policies to address the rampant poverty that affects nearly two million Israelis (representing 23 percent of the Israeli population), half of whom are children, in a country that has, in relative terms, one of the strongest economies in the world.

Not a single party has a comprehensive plan as to how to fix the broken healthcare system in a country that has some of the most advanced scientific and technological research in medicine worldwide.

Not a single party is paying any attention to the continuing discrimination against some Sephardic Jewish communities and especially against Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of the population. They are accused of being disloyal and their representatives are shunned away from participating in the political affairs of the state; but then they are expected to support the government's treatment of the Palestinians in the territories as the perpetual enemy to justify their draconian policies.

Not a single party is addressing the growing emigration of disillusioned Israelis who are fed up with government's paralysis and corruption and have lost faith in the country's future. The number of those leaving Israel is greater than the number of immigrants into the country that was supposed to be the promised land for the Jews.

Not a single party is trying to remedy the destructively escalating social and political polarization between the secular and the orthodox, between Arab and Jews, between the haves and have-nots in a country that faces mortal enemies in a region awash with instability, violence, wars, and deadly rivalries for regional hegemony.

And above all, not a single party has come up with a realistic plan to end the seven decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has and continues to consume the Israelis from within, having still no end in sight. Not a single leader of any of the parties can say where Israel will be in 10 or 15 years if there is no solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

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