Israel's coalition game: Netanyahu, Eisenkot play political bluff - who will blink first?

Welcome to Israel's Rip Van Winkle season. Also known as coalition negotiations.You could go to sleep now and wake up when there's a government and miss remarkably little. You'd sleep through the leaks, the trial balloons, the rumors of imminent breakthroughs, and the categorical denials of things that turn out to have been true on Monday and irrelevant by Thursday.This is the season when it's hard to tell what's real, what's posturing, and what's simply wishful thinking.When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls for a “unity” government, does he mean it, or is he trying to make Yashar head Gadi Eisenkot look like the one standing in the way?If he means it, why use the reception after the Knesset swearing-in, a rare moment of national grace, to launch a broadside against Ra'am and the Joint List? He called for unity in the same speech in which he accused both parties of wanting to destroy the Jewish state, an accusation bound to rankle some of the very people in the change bloc he wants to bring into a unity government.By that evening, predictably, Eisenkot's party had called off its scheduled talks with the Likud, citing the speech.Why not use the occasion to extend an olive branch to those he would like to form a unity government with?When Eisenkot writes to Netanyahu urging…