The Likud election campaign will be launched Tuesday and the party is set to add two hundred thousand votes to bring a 61-seat bloc to the right-wing camp.
According to a report in Israel Hayom, Likud MK Miki Zohar is currently formulating a detailed game plan, dubbed the "200,000 votes" program. At the heart of the plan is the understanding that Likud is missing some 200,000 votes to reach the 61 mandates required for the establishment of a right-wing government. One hundred thousand votes are from Likud members who in the previous elections simply did not make it to the ballot box, and the rest are those who "crossed the lines" to the leftist parties.
The latter include the so-called "soft-right" people. These are right-wing voters, for example, that were in parties such as Kahlon's who voted for Blue and White and Liberman; members of the Ethiopian community; immigrants from France; Anglos; haredim; emigrants from the Soviet Union; those from Israel’s “periphery”; and quite a few non-Jews.
MK Zohar proposes to focus on these populations with the help of rallies and visits by Netanyahu, focused public relations campaigning and response to the individual needs of those populations. He believes that different populations, for example, the non-Jews, can be recruited by recruiting about 12-13 mayors of cities like Shfaram, a mixed Druze-Muslim-Christian city in northern Israel, who support Netanyahu, and offer a detailed public relations campaign.
According to MK Zohar, Arab cities also have large populations that do not deal with matters related to Israel and Palestinian issues, and what really matters to them is the economic and educational future of their children. “Not everyone connects to the messages of [Joint Arab List MKs] Tibi and Odeh,” he says. “There, too, they want to live in economic well-being, it's important for them to make a living and for their children to have a good education."
Regarding the Ethiopian community, MK Zohar proposes public relations field work through mediators - Likud's new MK Gadi Yevarken, and veteran MK Avraham Neguise. In the background stands the promise released this week to bring several hundred Falashmura members to Israel, and also the establishment of the committee to examine the work of the department for police investigations, regarding violence against members of the community.