For weeks now, polls have been showing a rise in the popularity of the Yamina party, headed by MK Naftali Bennett, mainly at the expense of the ruling Likud party led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
On Tuesday, the Likud party issued a sharp statement attacking Yamina, following an interview granted by MK Bennett to the Kikar Hashabbat haredi news website, during which Bennett said that, “The person who broke up the right-wing bloc was Netanyahu, together with the haredim. All I asked for [in return for joining the coalition] was the Health portfolio, in order to ensure that the country wouldn’t end up where it is today.”
In response, the Likud party said in a statement that: “The ‘Brothers’ Agreement’ is back, this time on steroids. After Naftali Bennett refused to recommend Netanyahu to the President [to form a coalition, following the last round of elections], he decided instead to support Yair Lapid [head of the secularist Yesh Atid party] as a prime ministerial candidate. Yesterday, he announced that he was supporting Lapid’s proposal to bring Netanyahu down next week. And today, Bennett announces officially that ‘there’s no such thing as a right-wing bloc.’ Instead of establishing a satellite party, he would do better to ally himself formally with Yesh Atid.”
The Yamina party was not slow in issuing a response of its own: “Netanyahu and Lapid have formed their own kind of political alliance. During the entire period of the coronavirus crisis, Lapid and Netanyahu have been dealing solely with political issues instead of focusing on gaining control over the epidemic, concerning themselves with the livelihoods of a million unemployed Israelis, and rehabilitating the economy. This is what has led to the current dreadful situation in which we find ourselves.
“As long as they are not willing to set political considerations to one side and address the true needs of the day, neither of them deserves to be prime minister. Unfortunately, during the past six months, Netanyahu and Lapid have proven that only politics interests them, and therefore, it seems likely that the coming elections will see the Yamina party, under the leadership of Naftali Bennett, voted in to manage the country.”