[jrochkind1]

I was replying to the comment, "you aren't going to form a coalition with parties radically different than yours."

But yes, it seems politics world-wide, the US certainly included, is increasingly more about personality, affect and identity/community -- and sheer competition for power between different players -- than it is about policy platform, agreed. Sometimes between parties which are actually not that different from each other. I think we may be agreeing with each other.

I think the reason that a "national unity" coalition government in Israel seems so unlikely currently may not in fact be that the major parties "are radically different from each other". (The coalitions formed may be, because of the outsized influence of minority parties on the flanks necessary to build the coalition, which is the whole topic of this thread -- why don't the major parties form a coalition to avoid that? I suggest the reason they don't is not that they are radically different from each other, disagreeing with the comment I was replying to)