As Likud siphons its votes, Yemina’s leader accuses Netanyahu of seeking to crush religious Zionism

Netanyahu “wants, it seems, to eradicate religious Zionism and also the ideological right,” she said. 

By World Israel News Staff

“The prime minister is on an unprecedented attack against us, on the Right. In fact, he wants, it seems, to eradicate religious Zionism and also the ideological right,” Yemina party Chairman Ayelet Shaked told Ynet on Sunday.

Shaked was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy of drawing votes away from her party to the Likud by appealing to her right-wing base.

Among such moves during the campaign, Netanyahu promised that no Jewish settlements would be uprooted, visited Hebron, site of the Cave of the Patriarchs, and most recently announced that he would annex the Jordan Valley and “all Jewish settlements.”

Shaked told Ynet that Netanyahu had done nothing to advance Jewish building in Hebron, even though she had paved the way for the construction of new Jewish housing in a “wholesale market” in the city which only required his approval to move forward.

She also said that the prime minister’s Jordan Valley announcement hid the negative parts of the “deal of the century,” Trump’s Mideast peace plan set to be revealed immediately after Israel’s elections on Tuesday.

She showed a map which she said was Trump’s plan. Shaked said it called for most of Judea and Samaria to become part of a new State of Palestine. Shaked said only a strong ideological right-wing faction within the next government could prevent a Palestinian state from forming. (The Likud has denied that the map is accurate.)

Shaked told Ynet that Netanyahu may already be planning to form a “left-wing government under his leadership.”

“It certainly makes sense, otherwise there is no explanation for this unprecedented attack on us,” Shaked said, noting that Netanyahu employed the same strategy of taking votes from smaller, right-wing parties in the last elections. The result was that her party didn’t pass the electoral threshold, she said.

“He is making a big mistake. He made the same mistake in the previous elections, and because of this he failed to form a government” in April, Shaked said.

Ayelet ShakedLikudYemina