Bezalel Smotrich
Bezalel SmotrichYonatan Sindel/Flash90

MK Bezalel Smotrich, who chairs the Religious Zionism party, on Wednesday responded to an announcement by Yamina MK Amichai Chikli, saying that he does not intend to support a government with the Left.

"There are those who earn their [next] world in one hour," Smotrich said. "The truth is, I read this letter again, with tears of emotion in my eyes. It is simple and pure truth. Things are told as they are. It is the ethical and honest discourse which we are so sorely lacking in politics."

"Thank you so much, Amichai."

Turning to Yamina's number two, MK Ayelet Shaked, Smotrich said: "Now it's your turn, Ayelet. Prove that you have ethics and a spine and that you are not being dragged after [Yamina Chairman MK Naftali] Bennett, towards a place where you lose your way."

Earlier on Wednesday, Chikli wrote to Bennett that he "believes that going to fifth elections is a very bad possibility, a last resort," but that he won't support unseating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu "at any cost."

Citing his party's promise not to sit with the leftist Meretz, not to crown Yesh Atid leader MK Yair Lapid prime minister, and to form a right-wing government, Chikli said that perhaps his party would not be able to fulfill all its promises, "but we do not have the right to break them all. Forming a government such as this would be in complete contradiction to the Yamina party's basic identity."

"Yamina, to my understanding, is an integral part of the nationalist camp," he wrote, adding that the party should not help negate the votes of over a million Israelis who voted for the Likud party. He also noted that a "unity" government would be easily able to avoid dealing with sensitive national issues.

"I have faith in the purity of your intentions, and therefore in the name of a great many of our voters, I ask that you rethink this process," he concluded.