Finance Minister and Religious Zionist Party chairman Bezalel Smotrich has warned that Ofer Winter's decision to run independently in the upcoming elections could, in his view, cause irreversible damage to the right-wing bloc.
Winter announced his new "Amcha Yisrael" party earlier this year.
Speaking in an interview with Ynet's "120 and One" podcast, Smotrich explained, "Winter is a highly accomplished officer, a good and worthy person. I very much wanted him to join us. But in my view, he has embarked on an irresponsible course. There is a 99.9% chance he won't cross the electoral threshold."
"Anyone voting for him is throwing their vote in the trash, and that is what will bring the left to power, establish a Palestinian state and harm Israel's Jewish identity. It endangers the country and would be a disaster for security. They will evacuate the communities and farms we established. They say so themselves."
Asked whether he was calling on Winter to withdraw from the race, Smotrich replied: “Unfortunately, I don't think he's listening. So I'm telling the people of Israel: Understand what's at stake. We don't gamble with Israel's security or our future. I worked very hard before the electoral lists were submitted to get all the parties to the right of Likud to run together. I wanted to run with Winter and [Otzma Yehudit chairman National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir not because we think alike - it would have been a technical bloc, with everyone going their separate ways the next day."
Regarding the possibility of including Zionist Arabs, such as Yoseph Haddad, who is on Winter's electoral list, Smotrich clarified: "I don't see any problem. We are not against Zionist Arabs. Do we have a problem with the Druze? They are our brothers."
At the same time, Smotrich reiterated his firm opposition to including Ra'am (United Arab List) in a coalition, explaining, "I did a doctorate on the Islamic Movement. This is the method of taqiyya, concealment, in which you hide your true objective and accumulate power through legitimate civilian activities - education, welfare, culture, healthcare. Once you've accumulated that power, you use it in order to achieve the objective, which is the destruction of the State of Israel."
Stressing that he would not join a unity government with the "bloc of change," Smotrich added, "I don't turn my back on my partners. I will not be a fig leaf in a government that engineers public consciousness and calls it unity.
I am part of the national camp, which shares a broad common ground of Jewish identity, Zionism, love of the land, settlement and a certain security outlook. Anyone who identifies with this set of values is certainly welcome to join."
Regarding the security risks posed by the Palestinian Authority and terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria, he said, "I think we need to go to war in Judea and Samaria. [We need] to do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terrorist authority. We've already done it. There are three empty refugee camps there, where we evacuated the population for its own protection and cleared out all the terrorism."
"I want to kill all the terrorists and collect all the weapons. That means I'm not playing make-believe.
"We need to tell the IDF: Just as you dismantled Hamas in Gaza, there must be no terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria - no terrorists, no weapons, no tunnels. And if you turn vehicles into weapons and use them to ram people, as happened last week, then you will not drive cars on our roads."