A Channel 2 News poll released on Thursday found that if the Likud and Jewish Home parties were to run together, they would win 33 seats and be the largest party in the Knesset, but the Jewish Home was quick to dismiss the idea of the two parties uniting.
“There will be not be a union and there is no point in dealing with cheap spins, but rather with substance,” sources close to Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett were quoted by Channel 2 as having said.
“The Jewish Home will continue to stand up for its principles against a Palestinian state and against the dangerous ideas of the left that led us to disaster after disaster and will bring missiles to Highway 6 and terrorist tunnels to Kfar Saba,” said the party, adding that the idea of a joint list with the Likud is “unfounded”.
The Likud also ruled out a joint list with the Jewish Home, saying that the results of the poll were expected and, as such, “a union, if it is even being considered, will only happen after the election.”
Thursday’s poll, carried out by Midgam for Channel 2, indicates that a Labor ticket, after the merger with Hatnua, would receive 24 Knesset seats.
Likud would receive 23 seats; Jewish Home 15; Yisrael Beytenu 8; Shas 9 and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) 8.
If Likud and Jewish Home ran together, the poll shows, they would drop in combined power to just 33 MKs, as opposed to a sum total of 48 if they run separately. A similar effect was felt in the last elections, when a combined Likud/Yisrael Beytenu list fared worse than the two did when they were separate.
Meanwhile on Thursday, MKs Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni, launched their election campaign in the Gaza Belt region that was hard-hit by Hamas rockets over the summer, where they sharply criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his management of Operation Protective Edge.
“Operation Protective Edge achieved deterrence and security, but the test will be over the long-run,” said Livni. “The prime minister wrote wonderful books about how to fight terror, but he is the one who in the end spoke with them and held negotiations,” noting on the Cairo talks that led to numerous ceasefires before a final truce.
“Unfortunately Netanyahu doesn’t distinguish between the military front and the political struggle and he is weak against terror,” charged Livni.
The Likud fired back at the criticism, saying, “The public will have to decide who will maintain security – Livni and Herzog who want to give up, give in and concede land, or Netanyahu who will fight Hamas and ISIS and not give in to international pressure.”
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