Outgoing Transportation Minister Betzalel Smotrich (Yamina) sharply criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in an interview with Yisrael Hayom which will be published in full this Friday.
"I am at peace with the decision to sit in the opposition," Smotrich said. "This was the right decision to make. We could not permit ourselves to enter a coalition in which we would have been treated in such a demeaning manner by Netanyahu. I hear that he claims that he didn't slam the door in our faces during the negotiations with us. Well, of course he didn't - because he never opened the door in the first place."
According to Smotrich, "We didn't demand any political price from Netanyahu that he wasn't capable of paying. None of us asked for the Health Ministry portfolio. Edelstein got that despite the fact that he never asked for it. He tried to sell the Health portfolio to Blue & White but it didn't work out. And no one wanted the Transportation portfolio either. It was only at the last minute that [Netanyahu] managed - with great difficulty - to persuade Miri Regev to take the Transportation Ministry.
"We didn't ask for the Religious Affairs Ministry either," he added. "He would have had to fight with Deri over that if we had. All we asked for was to be given positions of real significance."