da party bosses won

The Israeli Likud leadership primaries are over and as expected Netanyahu was voted party leader. Surprisingly enough, Moshe Feiglin did quite well by capturing 23% of the vote. Taken from the Jerusalem Post:

Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu was reelected Likud chairman in Tuesday's party primary, defeating the two Likud activists who challenged him - Moshe Feiglin and Danny Danon - by a hefty margin. As polls were closing, Netanyahu won 73 percent of the votes, while Feiglin had 23% and Danon 4%. The numbers were based on a count of 80% of the votes.

Bibi’s Consiglieres and Capo Bastones suggest dissent will be eliminated from within the Likud. The house cleaning starts with Feiglin apparently:

Netanyahu's associates expressed satisfaction with the turnout and said he would now turn his attention to defeating Olmert and Labor chairman Ehud Barak in the next general election. The Likud chief's associates also said he would continue fighting Feiglin, possibly petitioning the High Court of Justice to expel him and his supporters from the party.

Feiglin has a right to feel pleased as he managed to double his share of the vote since the 2005 primaries. One of Netanyahu’s premises in his victory speech, (heavy sarcasm use on the word “victory” due to fact that 60% of Likud members couldn’t motivated to get out and vote for Bibi in the first place) is that he promises to go out and court a more moderate fraction to the Likud rather than seek reconciliation for the growing divide within the Likud from the national religious fraction. I wonder what Ze'ev Jabotinsky would say of Bibi now?