Tel Aviv – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a last-minute media blitz on Thursday to counter what appears to be a rising tide of support for his main opponent in next week’s election, the centrist Zionist Union.
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The latest opinion polls show momentum shifting to Zionist Union after weeks of running neck-and-neck with Netanyahu’s Likud, and Netanyahu again warned voters who have abandoned his party for like-minded challengers that without their votes, he could lose.
Forecast to win up to 24 seats to Likud’s 21 in the 120-member parliament, Zionist Union hopes the gap will be wide enough to persuade Israel’s president to ask its leader, Labour party chief Isaac Herzog, rather than Netanyahu, to try to form a coalition government after Tuesday’s balloting.
“If the gap between the Likud and Labour continues to grow, a week from now Herzog and Livni will become the prime ministers of Israel in rotation, with the backing of the Arab parties,”
Netanyahu said in an interview published in The Jerusalem Post.
Under his Zionist Union alliance with centrist Tzipi Livni, Herzog would serve as Israel’s leader for two years and then hand over to the country’s most prominent woman politician for the remainder of their government’s slated four-year term.
In the right-leaning Jerusalem Post and the Israel Hayom free sheet, an ardent supporter, Netanyahu focused his message on Israelis who want him as prime minister but plan to vote for his potential partners in a Likud-led coalition.
Gilad Erdan, a Likud cabinet minister and Netanyahu confidant, said he expected the prime minister to give interviews to other Israeli media outlets in the next few days as part of a bid to bring “supporters of Likud and its ideological path back to their (rightful) home”.
In Israel Hayom, Netanyahu complained that “right-wingers mistakenly thought that I would be elected in any case, and therefore thought about supporting other parties”.
He told the Jerusalem Post that a Zionist Union-led administration “will cause such a monumental shift in policy that it is a danger, and anyone who wants to stop it has to vote Likud to narrow the gap”.
Likud’s weakening in the polls appeared to indicate that Netanyahu’s contentious speech on March 3 to the U.S. Congress against a potential nuclear deal with Iran had little impact on Israeli voters long accustomed to such warnings from a leader now in his third term.
Netanyahu’s opponents, while acknowledging the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, have made Israel’s high cost of living a focal point of their campaigns and cautioned against diplomatic isolation over his tough policies towards the Palestinians.
In the two interviews on Thursday, Netanyahu again made security his top talking point.
Herzog and Livni, he said in the Jerusalem Post, would “completely prostrate themselves to any pressure” to trade land for peace with the Palestinians and to accept an Iranian deal.
“Our security is at great risk because there is a real danger that we could lose this election,” Netanyahu said.
Thets good news, should the wise-guy bibi know that his baby speech in congress ruined him.
Unfortunately Israel’s non-Frum public, who have no knowledge of Torah and therefore no understanding or Seichel of anything, still believe if you’ll only bribe the nice, poor oppressed pali’s with more land from Israel, they’re going to be come peaceful and love us. How they didn’t see clearly from the Gush Katif/Gaza experiment which ended in unprecedented disaster, that appeasement of terrorists never works and only emboldens them to demand more, proves that they have no Seichel and live in a dream world, because of their lack of Torah. Hopefully it won’t take an even worse and more dangerous lesson to wake these people up to the truth about who their “peace” (piece) partners really are. Sick, sick, sick.
Bibi is not prime minister material he is great as a spokesman and even foreign minister. proof is he keeps getting soldiers killed and still losing to HAMAS and cant get the knesset to deal with the traitor Arabs in it, this is good news.
We really need someone who will solve Israel’s economic crisis. The closest best candidate would be Lapid. We must rid oursleves of Israel’s socialist system that enpowers the low income earners and leads to major income inequality. Israel must switch from a system that rewards low income or no earners to one that rewards the middle class. When doctors and lawyers walk out witha net income lower than their nieghboor learning in kollel or and who has a cash business we have problems. For starters family subsidies should be rewarded as earned income tax credits not just anyone that has a child. So if “both” parents work they get credits in the form of subsidies otherwise nothing. There should be housing tax credits for earners just as the system in the USA where you can count the mortagage payments as a deductible. That automaticlly only applies to people that work since its built nto the tax system.
There is an overwhleming consensis across all aisles tea party and progressives alike that a system where middle and low income earners are rewarded is the best system.
For some insane reason, the economy has become the main issue, where our security should be the main concern.
There are definitely some economic issues that need to be fixed, but overall, the Israeli economy is doing pretty well.
Netanyahu is around too long and people don’t remember what the stagnant economy was under the socialism of the Labor governments. It was Netanyahu, when he was Finance Minister, that created a more capitalistic economy that mostly worked.
The main problems in the economy were issues that weren’t resolved from the Labor years, like the government owning and controlling 95% of the available land and the bureaucratic nightmare within the building permit process. That mostly fuels the cost of living problems.
The poor is definitely an issue, but nobody anywhere in the world gets out of poverty by relying on government subsidies and welfare for their income.
#9 You dont’ even realize how bad your economy is. Till doctors and lawyers stop getting taxed at 100%, Till Vat taxes on essentails like cars and houses are lowered you will never fully solve the problem. While its research and technology is A1, israel’s healthcare system stinks. there are still far too ma ny traveling to the USA for healthcare. why? becuase they have unversial healthcare. That does not work.Yes Bibi unwinded certain government controled industries. But we really need alot more progress than that. I agree the leftists are even worse. personally I wish stanley fisher was in charge.
#9 Yes America is bad and not perfect too. But its still very far from Israel’s socialist system. Personally. B”H I work and make a middle income salary. Due to my family size mortgage etc.. my federal income taxes are almost nothing which is fair. Its the local governments that starve us on their real estate taxes. But on a federal level its a pretty fair system.