The right-wing leader said her faction was working harder for Netanyahu than he was himself.
By World Israel News Staff
“We’re working harder than Netanyahu to make him prime minister,” said Ayelet Shaked, head of the Yemina faction, to a group of supporters in a Galilee town on Wednesday night.
Shaked also leveled criticism at the prime minister for taking shots at Yemina in an apparent attempt to siphon off votes from it. “He is dealing with us all day instead of dealing with growing the bloc,” Shaked said.
“She [Shaked] is the new Tzipi Livni,” Netanyahu told party members at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. “She shopped herself between parties.”
Netanyahu was comparing Shaked to Livni, a former Likud MK, who abandoned the party and joined several others during her career.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu told Likud politicians during the Tuesday meeting “that the party’s strategy would continue to be to woo voters away from its satellite parties on the Right, especially Yemina, which he said was a fair target because it is not at risk of failing to cross the electoral threshold.”
Shaked criticized Netanyahu’s strategy and said that he should instead be focusing on convincing voters of two other right-wing parties, Otzma Yehudit and Zehut, that they are throwing away their votes.
Neither party will pass the electoral threshold according to polls. (Israeli parties must achieve a minimum 3.75 percent of the general vote in order to enter the Knesset.)
Yemina is expected to win 10 Knesset seats, according to the most recent Kan public broadcasting numbers.
Netanyahu also said of Shaked that “she has no principles, and she might not recommend me after the election.”
The Yemina party was quick to address Netanyahu’s statement. On Wednesday, Naftali Bennett, a leading member of Yemina, said the faction would back Netanyahu.
“I will say this as clearly and explicitly as possible: The Yemina party will recommend Netanyahu as prime minister of the State of Israel,” Bennett said.