Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and new Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met last night to discuss both state and internal Likud business. They failed to set a date for the Likud primaries, but it is assumed that the election will take place at the end of November. Sharon, Netanyahu and Moshe Feiglin are vying for the party's top spot. Netanyahu says he needs extra time to organize his campaign, while Sharon wants it earlier for that very reason. Some Likud members are pushing for a rotation agreement between the two. Feiglin, the dark-horse candidate, has received requests to withdraw so as to enable a Netanyahu victory. His Jewish Leadership Movement responded,
"For the first time in the history of the State of Israel, the Jewish nation has been given the right to vote for a Jewish State, the right to be itself. Even if the majority prefer to remain in the prison cell of the current consciousness, even if the majority will still not make use of the key to freedom that we are offering it, from this moment on the key lies in its hands... Those who are pressuring us to remove our candidacy because they think they will gain something from Netanyahu, are in fact proposing to improve the jail conditions at the price of losing the key."
"For the first time in the history of the State of Israel, the Jewish nation has been given the right to vote for a Jewish State, the right to be itself. Even if the majority prefer to remain in the prison cell of the current consciousness, even if the majority will still not make use of the key to freedom that we are offering it, from this moment on the key lies in its hands... Those who are pressuring us to remove our candidacy because they think they will gain something from Netanyahu, are in fact proposing to improve the jail conditions at the price of losing the key."