Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon said Binyamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid have been expending a great deal of energy blaming each other for Israel's high prices, claiming it's all the fault of the “other guy.”
All three are the “other guy,” jabbed Kahlon, saying in an interview Wednesday they all share responsibility for Israel's economic mess from their coalition government.
Speaking to Yedioth Ahronot, Kahlon said that only he had the answers to reduce the price of food, apartments, and other necessities that many Israelis complain are currently too expensive.
“We look at results, not talk,” Kahlon said. “They can talk all they want, but with all the talk, has the price of apartments gone down? Have the wage gaps in Israel narrowed? Did the cost of living go down? No; everything is more expensive, and the price keeps rising. Anyone who was a member of this government – including Naftali Bennett – is to blame."
That said, Kahlon does not rule out joining a government led by any one of the three – or by Labor head Yitzhak Herzog.
“We will have our list of demands, including implementing our plan to reduce the price of housing and the cost of living, and the dissolution of the Israel Lands Administration, to make it easier to market land for development. We will join any government that cooperates with us, we are not ruling anyone out," he said.
In a separate interview with Arutz Sheva, Kahlon said Wednesday that he considered Kulanu to be a middle-of-the-road party politically.
“We are at the center of the political map, with a list that has various opinions on how to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians," he said. "We will support any agreement that strengthens Israel.”
With that, Kahlon stressed that he is much more concerned with economic and social matters.
“The supposed debate between left and right is a political fiction,” because the stances of both Likud and Labor are remarkably similar regarding how to deal with the Palestinian Arabs he said, noting that one half of the Labor leadership, Tzipi Livni, was in charge of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the current government.
“But we have people who work and can't pay their bills, who can't buy a home, who can't afford an education,” said Kahlon. “We established this party to ensure that the social and economic agenda would be prominent in the next government. We have adopted the social agenda the Likud had in the past, but abandoned."