Likud MK Miri Regev responded on Friday morning to the “secret deal” exposed the previous evening by Yisrael Beytenu MK Faina Kirshenbaum, through which a “centrist” bloc had previously been agreed upon to oust Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in elections.
According to the deal, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Moshe Kahlon’s new Kulanu were to have banded together to form a government.
“The secret deal of Yisrael Beytenu to oust Netanyahu was revealed, the tie between Yisrael Beytenu and Lapid makes me nauseous,” said Regev.
The MK drew two conclusions from the exposed plot.
“One, we need a large Likud to ensure the governing ability of Netanyahu as the next prime minister,” said Regev. “And secondly – if you chose Liberman, you chose Lapid, yes Lapid, the one who turned the government into a kindergarten and didn’t enable advancing reforms due to his ego trip.”
The details of the deal were exposed by Channel 2 from a private conversation Kirshenbaum had.
Kirshenbaum claimed that before the corruption scandal embroiling Yisrael Beytenu “the polls predicted that we would get between 16 and 18 seats and we agreed on a centrist bloc with Kahlon and Yesh Atid. To this bloc, assuming that Netanyahu would have resigned, we would have added the Likud and formed a large national bloc that could have solved a lot of problems and led a lot of moves.”
The move would allow Liberman to be prime minister, said Kirshenbaum. She added that “the option of a left-wing government does not exist, they cannot form a coalition and are unable to increase their support. There should be a nationalist government that is as broad as possible. I do not think that Buji (Yitzhak Herzog) and Tzipi (Livni) should be part of it.”
Yesh Atid and Kulanu both denied the reports, while Yisrael Beytenu refused to comment.
Kirshenbaum resigned from the Knesset due to suspicions of her involvement in the corruption scandal surrounding senior members of the Yisrael Beytenu party; she has taken the right to silence over the scandal.
