Deputy Transportation Minister and prominent Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely is working towards forming a united right-wing bloc to run in general elections early next year, including Likud, Jewish Home and Moshe Kahlon’s new party. Polls show such a bloc would do well, and impact considerably on the character of the next prime minister.

On Wednesday, Hotovely called on Kahlon to “join a major right-wing bloc whose values are your values.”

“Despite Kahlon’s departure from the Likud he would be a fitting partner for the next government, and together with him and with the Jewish Home the Likud will lead the state after the elections as well,” Hotovely said, claiming that a “wide right-wing bloc” would be truly representative of the Israeli voting public. 

Polls conducted by both Channels Two and Ten show a new party led by Kahlon gaining anything from 10 to 12 seats in the Knesset.

The attempt by senior Likud officials to woo their former colleague – as well as rumors of a pact with the Jewish Home party – come amid a marked cooling of relations between Netanyahu and his once-close ally Avigdor Liberman, who heads the secular right-wing Yisrael Beytenu.

In particular, many Likud officials are said to be concerned over Liberman’s recently-leaked “peace plan”, which would see large portions of Israeli territory handed over to the Palestinian Authority. Liberman accompanied the announcement of his party’s platform for territorial concessions by claiming “there is no escaping” the abandonment of the ideal of maintaining the entire land of Israel – much to the bemusement of former nationalist allies.