Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked was interviewed on Channel 12 News on Saturday night and stated that she does not intend to drop out of the race for the Knesset, despite polls showing that her party, the Zionist Spirit, does not pass the electoral threshold.
"I am running till the end. We see that in the current political constellation there are a lot of right-wing voters, both from religious Zionism and from the responsible statesmanlike right, who are currently sitting on the fence. We will convince them that the Zionist Spirit is their home. It takes time, this is a new party that is taking shape, it takes some time for the people to understand that this is their home, but there is no other ethical, responsible, statesmanlike right-wing party that also says the most necessary thing - 'Stop the fights between the camps, let's form a government.'”
"We are currently on an upward trend in all channels, in all polls. You need to know that what is happening right now, before the elections, is not related to what happens after the elections. If you take the poll taken 70 days before the last elections - Gantz did not pass the threshold, Gideon Sa'ar had 16 seats, so many more things can turn around," said Shaked.
"We saw that Ben Gvir and Smotrich united, there is a huge public - the entire moderate and mainstream religious Zionism, which disapproves of politicians who call for the boycott of Jews and not to let them enter a synagogue. The entire statesmanlike right-wing which has values, that does not want a government that fires the Attorney General and passes a law exempting the Prime Minister from the Penal Code, these people will find that their home is with us."
"I understand the feelings and anger of the voters of Yamina. I regretted it in real time and I still regret it today. But they need to look at the bigger picture. In the bigger picture, I was faced with a very difficult decision: After I tried to form a right-wing government and Smotrich torpedoed it, and then Gideon Sa'ar also torpedoed it, I had to make a decision as a politician and as a leader - do I form a government or take the country to elections?" continued Shaked.
Asked about being a part of a government with the Ra'am Party, she replied, "I have not changed my ideology and I have not moved a millimeter from my values. I was the right-wing marker of this government. Zehava Galon said this week that ‘Ayelet Shaked was the most significant minister in the government’, why? Because I stood up for the values of the public that voted for me. This government was no less right-wing than all of Netanyahu's governments."
"I was the right-wing marker and if you look at my actions, both in the Interior Ministry and as a senior minister in the government, you will see that we preserved our values and the values of the public that sent us there. A politician cannot always make the easy decisions."