One Jerusalem 1 - Mere Rhetoric 0:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition appeared to be crumbling on Tuesday when Israel Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman held an ill-fated meeting with Olmert and Shas warned that it could leave soon, as well. Lieberman plans to convene the Israel Beiteinu faction and then a press conference (scheduled for 10:30 a.m.) at the Knesset on Wednesday. Barring a last-minute surprise, he will submit a resignation letter to Olmert that will take effect 48 hours later on Friday. "All the answers will be given at the press conference," Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post following a meeting of the Israel Beiteinu secretariat in the capital. Aware that Shas would soon be the only right-leaning member of the government, the party's mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, issued a directive Tuesday for it to leave the coalition as soon as serious negotiations begin on the fate of Jerusalem.

Turns out when we said that Lieberman wouldn't leave the coalition because it would force Shas's hand and effectively bring down Olmert's government, we were right about everything except the part where we said Lieberman not leaving the coalition. Looks like we called that putt a little too early. We should have known that we were in for some bad karma when Arab MKs from openly treasonous parties came to the same conclusion about how the Gaza raid would affect Lieberman - although naturally they added a healthy dose of conspiratorial nonsense about Olmert's motives and conveniently left out the months and months of Palestinian rocket fire that forced Olmert's hand.

If you're looking for some inside baseball about how coalition negotiations will go down, make sure you check out Gil Hoffman's piece about internal Meretz and UTJ calculations. The money graf is all the way at the very bottom. Because where else would you put it?:

Gal-On said, "Meretz has an ethical obligation to insist that Olmert accept responsibility for his blunders and resign. Meretz can't join an Olmert-led government even if it negotiates a peace agreement," Gal-On said. "Another prime minister in an alternative government can make peace. The peace camp is not a refuge for failed leaders."

Actually it's kind of exactly that, but why quibble? And since we're kind of whores when it comes to pageviews, we've saved the most intriguing part of the article for after the jump. It's totally irrelevant to the coalitional calculations, so we don't feel too guilty about making you click through to see it: