MK Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home party reaffirmed Monday morning that her party and Likud have agreed to refrain from attacking each other
“We have decided to talk in a positive manner, so as not to harm the right-wing bloc,” Shaked told Channel 10.
“It is important to us that there will be a strong bloc, that mandates will not drip away from us and the Likud, to parties that disguise themselves as right wing but are not – like Yisrael Beytenu and Kahlon’s party,” she added. “That is why we think that the best thing for the right wing in Israel is not to attack each other.”
Jewish Home Chairman, Naftali Bennett, told the Saban Forum Sunday that he and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “have an arrangement where we don’t attack each other during these elections.”
“Last time I was strongly attacked by Likud,” he noted, “and ultimately we want to form a strong national bloc which, obviously in my opinion, is good for Israel.”
Liberman’s land swap plan
Yisrael Beytenu’s chairman, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, supports a withdrawal from areas in pre-1967 Israel that have an Arab majority, and wants those areas swapped for parts of Judea and Samaria as part of a peace settlement that some believe can be reached with the Palestinian Arabs.
“With regard to Israeli Arabs, the arrangement must include the exchange program between territories and populations,” he wrote in a document published a fortnight ago. “Such an arrangement with the Palestinian state will allow Israeli Arabs who do not identify with Israel to become part of the Palestinian state.”
“Such a move would solve first the problem of the Arabs in the Triangle and Wadi Ara, adjacent to the Palestinian Authority, who will be able to become citizens of the Palestinian state without having to leave their homes,” he added.
The swap refers to the area known as the Triangle in east-central Israel. The area includes the cities of Tayibe and Tira, in which about 300,000 Arab citizens live.
Kahlon’s newfound leftism
While Liberman’s position is not new, Moshe Kahlon, a former hawkish Likud minister who broke from Likud earlier this year and launched his own party, veered sharply leftward only recently. “We will not waste an opportunity for peace and will not hesitate to vacate territory,” he said, describing himself as “right of center, like the Likud of the past.”
Kahlon really means what he says, according to an ally, ex-MK Carmel Shama-Hacohen. “He said it clearly, he did not use doubletalk. The public will decide. People are allowed to change their opinion and fit it to the changing reality,” opined Shama-Hacohen.
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