Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his first post-election gambit.
Netanyahu has offered Yamina party chairman Naftali Bennett the first seven spots on the senior Likud Knesset list in exchange for recommending Netanyahu for the first attempt to build a government coalition when his party meets with President Reuven Rivlin next week, according to Hebrew-language journalist Amit Segal at Israel’s Channel N12.
The proposal includes a promise of seven places out of the first 37 places on the Likud list in the next two election campaigns, regardless of when they will be held.
In addition, Netanyahu offered Bennett representation in the same ratio in the Likud Central Committee and among party functionaries; in essence, to fully integrate Bennett and his Yamina party into the Likud, which would comprise about 17 percent of the total membership of Likud. Netanyahu met earlier this week with Likud Central Committee Chairman Haim Katz to obtain his consent to the move.
On Wednesday night, Netanyahu said in his first public statement since last week’s election results were announced, “The people made their will known clearly. . . The public has given the right-wing parties a clear majority of 65 seats,” referring in the count to the New Hope party of Gideon Sa’ar and Bennett’s Yamina party.
Netanyahu said that a right-wing coalition with Likud, UTJ, Shas, Religious Zionism, Yamina and New Hope would be stable and able to rule for years to come, making it possible for “all Israelis to benefit,” he said. “It can be established right away. . . and that’s what is required.
“Any government other than a right-wing government will be a left-wing, unstable government and will be established in clear opposition to the ideology of the great majority of the public that voted for Likud and for other right-wing parties,” he said. “Such a government with its internal contradictions would destroy all our achievements in recent years and would collapse very fast. It would be a great disaster for the State of Israel.
“I appeal to you, Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar, it’s no secret that we’ve had differences over the years, but we’ve known how to get over them and work together for the benefit of Israel’s citizens,” Netanyahu appealed.
“The public decided that we have to sit together. I call upon you: come home, come back to your natural home, to the right,” he urged.
“Let’s unify and together and build a stable national government… a unified, stable, right-wing government that will look after, as we always have, all the citizens of Israel,” he added.
For years, Bennett and Shaked have been asking to join the Likud, and in fact their departure to become independent in 2013 was due to being blocked by Netanyahu. If Bennett and Sa’ar were to agree, Netanyahu said he could create a right-wing coalition containing Likud, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), Shas, the Religious Zionism party led by Bezalel Smotrich, Yamina and New Hope.
In response to his call, Sa’ar said that if Netanyahu agrees to step aside, he would join a Likud-led coalition. “I will fulfill my commitment to my voters,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Religious Zionism party said chairman Bezalel Smotrich’s “concern is the people, not appointments. Bennett will continue to make every effort to establish a good and stable government that will pull Israel from the chaos.”
On Tuesday, Smotrich told reporters he would back Netanyahu in his bid to form a coalition in accordance with an agreement signed between the two. Smotrich said Netanyahu made an agreement to “establish a right-wing government that will preserve the Jewish identity of the country, strengthen the settlements (in Judea and Samaria -ed.) and carry out needed reforms of the judicial system.”
At present Netanyahu still does not have a majority due to the opposition by Bezalel Smotrich to forming a government with the votes of the Ra’am party headed by Mansour Abbas.