Deputy Transport Minister Tzipi Hotoveli (Likud) discussed the upcoming elections and explained that voting for Yisrael Beytenu can be a “dangerous” thing.
In an interview with Erel Segal on Galei Israel Radio, MK Hotovely attacked both Avigdor Liberman and Moshe Kahlon for “taking a sharp leftward turn” and zigzaging ideologically.
She warned: “It’s not [an impossibly] horrific scenario to see a situation in which two top players, Kahlon and Liberman, whom we have already seen beginning to wink hard leftward, steal votes from the right to the left, and we find ourselves in the opposition.”
“Really, they are all our brothers, but there is smugness in the right wing, if people can afford to tell themselves – ‘I’ll vote for him… no, I will vote for the other guy.’”
She explained that there are people who want to go with Liberman because of “his hatred of Arabs,” and other people “may be tempted” to vote for Kahlon, without taking into account that they may not recommend Binyamin Netanyahu for the position of prime minister.
“So Naftali Bennett and the Likud will unite and together they will have 35 seats, 40 seats. How will it help them vis-a-vis almost 30 seats of Kahlon and Lieberman? It will not help,” concluded Hotovely.
If the leftist parties manage to unite and become the largest party in the next Knesset, and should they gain the support of Yisrael Beytenu and Kahlon’s new party, they could conceivably be tapped by President Reuven Rivlin for creating the new government. This scenario appears unlikely at present, because it is hard to see Liberman agreeing to sit in coalition with Meretz, or hareidi parties sitting in a coalition with Lapid.
Hotoveli’s comments against Liberman are they latest in a string of stinging criticisms of the one-time Likud ally, following an apparent lurch leftward by his party, which recently drew up an alternative peace plan which would see Israel cede significant amount of territory to the Palestinian Authority.
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