Netanyahu’s former defense minister to run for premiership

While announcing his intentions to launch a new party and run for prime minister, Netanyahu’s former defense minister discounted any chances of uniting with Likud. 

Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced his intention to run for prime minister of Israel on Saturday.

“As I said when I resigned, I will run for the national leadership,” Ya’alon said at a cultural event in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

“I know how hard it is in politics, but I care about this country,” he continued. “I am now forming a new party.”

Ya’alon expressed at least some consideration to joining forces with an already existing party in the Knesset.

“I do not like the fracturing into small parties,” he said. “I am building my political power now, and when needed I will be happy to see unity.”

However, Ya’alon dismissed any possibility of uniting with Netanyahu’s Likud party, in which he had served as defense minister.

“Today, even Jabotinsky would not have been elected in their primaries,” he claimed, referring Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, on which the political philosophy of Likud is based.

Most recently, Ya’alon criticized the State Comptroller’s report that detailed failure on the part of Israel’s leadership, including Ya’alon and Netanyahu, to take preemptive steps before launching Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 against the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist organization. Sixty-eight Israeli soldiers were killed in the operation.

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News