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Feiglin confirms ‘advancing’ toward a deal to pull out of Knesset election

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“I would give up the run [for Knesset] in exchange for a position in the government,” Feiglin told Army Radio.

By World Israel News Staff 

After stating just a day earlier that reports of his withdrawal from the Knesset election were “fake” news, Zehut party leader Moshe Feiglin confirmed Wednesday that he had been meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on advancing a central issue in the Zehut platform, saying that a deal was, in fact, in the works to get him to drop out.

“We are advancing toward an agreement by which I would give up the run [for Knesset] in exchange for a position in the government, and the main thing: opening up the cannabis market. I will bring the agreement to Zehut members and we will decide,” Feiglin told Army Radio on Wednesday.

Aside from his right-wing views concerning the Temple Mount and transferring Arabs out of Judea and Samaria, Feiglin has also promoted “libertarian” views and a call to legalize marijuana, at least for medical purposes.

“I have just come out of a meeting with the prime minister surrounding the issue of cannabis reform,” Feiglin said in the radio interview.

“There is finally an opening for hope that patients will receive life-saving medication,” he added.

Media reports on Monday said that Feiglin and Netanyahu were reaching a deal that would entail the Zehut leader pulling his party out of the September 17 election in exchange for a senior ministerial position.

“No agreement has been signed,” Feiglin, a one-time MK representing Netanyahu’s Likud party, posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning, adding that the party was organizing to move “full steam ahead” toward getting elected to the Israeli parliament.

Later in the day, he said that there was an element of “fake” in the reports of his decision to withdraw from the race, even as he acknowledged that he was facing “heavy pressure” to pull out.

Netanyahu has urged right wing parties to avoid splintering and some have united on joint lists, but Zehut and another right-wing party, Otzma Yehudit, continued to run separately.

A recent poll found that together they would waste over 4 percent of right-wing votes as neither is expected to cross the electoral threshold.