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Blue and White infighting: Ya’alon calls Lapid ‘a liability’

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Lapid “has become a liability” because of a “campaign of hate that is causing us damage,” said Ya’alon, according to a Channel 12 TV report.

By World Israel News Staff 

As the Blue and White bloc works on its campaign for the Knesset election scheduled for September 17, a serious rift within the amalgamation of a few different parties has been reported.

Former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon is charging that former finance minister Yair Lapid, “has become a liability” because of a “campaign of hate that is causing us damage,” according to a Channel 12 TV report.

Blue and White was formed from new parties that were set up by Benny Gantz and Ya’alon, both former IDF chiefs of staff, and Lapid ‘s Yesh Atid party, which had already served in the Knesset, including during the period of 2013-2015, when it was a member of the government coalition.

During that government’s term, with Haredi religious parties outside the coalition, legislation was passed to increase military service among ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Ya’alon’s criticism of Lapid relates to the argument that if Lapid did not have strained ties with Haredi parties, Blue and White could have formed a government with them after the April 9 parliamentary election as an alternative to a coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s Likud party and Blue and White each won 35 seats in the 120-member Knesset in the April ballot.

In his tirade, reported to have taken place in what was a closed meeting, Ya’alon also charges that Lapid has moved leftward ideologically.

Ya’alon is a former member of Netanyahu’s Likud party. Gantz has been trying to sell Blue and White as a unifying party.

Ya’alon criticized the rotation agreement that had been reached between Gantz and Lapid, under the terms of which the two of them would each serve as prime minister – Gantz for the first two-and-a-half years, assuming Blue and White could form a government after the April election.

Ya’alon met with haredi journalists on Tuesday, according to the Israel Hayom daily, in an apparent attempt to drum up greater support from that sector ahead of the September election. Afterward, Ya’alon posted on Facebook that “Haredi society is important to us. It is an integral part of who we are and it will continue to be.”

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