Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday morning accused New Hope's Gideon Sa'ar and Yamina's MK Naftali Bennett of lying when they claim to be unwilling to sit under Yesh Atid chair MK Yair Lapid, Israel Hayom reported.
"When they say, 'We won't sit with Lapid as prime minister,' they're simply lying," Netanyahu said.
"They want to move votes from the Right to Lapid's leftist government," he said. "They need Meretz and Labor in order to form a government - they have no other way to do it. They need Lapid as prime minister, or as prime minister in rotation."
"Today we are a step away from a full and stable right-wing government. Without rotations, without parity, without a government within a government. [It will be] a government which will bring Israel out of the coronavirus pandemic, which will advance Israel's economy, which will continue to protect security, which will bring us back to life. We're on the way there."
Regarding the polls, he said: "According to our internal polls, we right now have the potential to win 40 seats: Thirty or so seats we see in the polls, and there are another nine. What do those nine do? They sit at home. They are Likud voters but they sit at home and wait for us to come take them. Do you remember that in the previous elections there was talk about 300,000 Likud voters who we had to bring in? So now there are nine Knesset seats who are sitting at home and waiting for us to bring them, and that's our job."
"Something amazing is happening in the Arab sector," Netanyahu added. "There is an enormous change happening. We see Israeli Arabs coming to the Likud, because they understand that we are going to continue taking care of them, that they don't need the parties which disappointed them. We will finally put an end to the crime in that sector. We put 21 billion shekel into an economic plan, and we will take care of infrastructure as well."
When asked about the economic aid, Netanyahu promised that if the bill does not pass before elections, then "on the first day of the right-wing government we'll form, I'll bring an aid plan to give 15 billion shekel to citizens."
Regarding the concerns about the coronavirus vaccine, Netanyahu said: "We're fighting not only our political rivals, but the media as well - it is trying to create a different picture. Media outlets around the world are saying the opposite. Israeli media is creating a picture that everything is not fine, but around the world everyone is saying that what's happening in Israel is a miracle. In the rest of the world, people wait for vaccines. Only in Israel are vaccines waiting for you."