The Jewish Home Party on Friday afternoon, before Shabbat, issued an ultimatum to the chairwoman of the Zionist Spirit Party, Ayelet Shaked, and demanded that she split from Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser.
The Jewish Home made clear that the party does not intend to serve as a "fig leaf" for a secular party that cannot implement the religious worldview on which the Jewish Home is built.
"We did not come to look for a seat or a work arrangement, our goal is to promote the values of religious Zionism in the next Knesset and we will not be able to do this with the current composition or with the offer we received from Ayelet Shaked. With no choice, we will run separately with a team that will see before its eyes the good of religious Zionism," the party said.
Shaked’s party does not pass the electoral threshold in all the recent polls that have been published, and as such she is interested in forming alliances, among others with the Jewish Home and its leader, Yossi Brodny.
Hendel, who is against an alliance with Jewish Home, made clear on Thursday that he is opposed to the idea of being the one to complete 61 seats for a narrow right-wing government. "Those who come here, to the Zionist Spirit, cannot want for Netanyahu to have 61 with Ben Gvir, it doesn't work," Hendel told the Knesset Channel.
In conversations with Shaked, Hendel raised the concern that Brodny would complete a 61-seat majority for Benjamin Netanyahu in a narrow right-wing government, if the party passed the threshold, a move that goes against the Zionist Spirit's position which insists on the establishment of a broad unity government.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)