Moshe Gafni
Moshe GafniTomer Applebaum

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), who chairs the powerful Knesset Finance Committee, declared Tuesday that his party would remain loyal to the right-wing bloc established by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and that UTJ will not sit in a government with Blue and White MK Yair Lapid.

Speaking at the TheMarker economic conference Tuesday, Gafni said that UTJ would remain a part of the right-wing bloc.

“I have something in common with [National Union leader Bezalel] Smotrich and [Jewish Home chief] Rafi Peretz – and I even have some things in common with [Joint Arab List MK] Ahmed Tibi. And I’ll even speak with Yair Lapid; but I won’t sit in a coalition with him. Even his tenure as Finance Minister was a big failure, I would sit and talk with him.”

“We’ve been aligned with the traditional sector of the population ever since Rabbi Eliyashiv’s famous speech, in which he said at a Degel HaTorah [party] conference that the traditional public is on the Right.”

“If you break it down today, the general picture is that the [religiously] traditional public is on the Right. If that will change and the traditional public will go elsewhere, then we’ll have to consult with our rabbis. But so long as things remain the same, we won’t change.”