Lieberman Making Efforts to Create Anti-Netanyahu Alliance

By Staff, Agencies

Member of the ‘Israeli’ entity’s parliament [Knesset] Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beytenu party, called on other leading opposition politicians to form a new bloc to oppose Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in the next round of elections, according to Wednesday reports.

Lieberman made the offer to opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party, Yamina party chief Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar, who recently broke from Likud to establish the New Hope party, according to multiple Hebrew media reports.

The bloc would aim to challenge Netanyahu’s Likud party and its longtime ultra-Orthodox allies in possible elections, which appear likely to happen in the spring.

The alliance would need to bridge significant gaps between the parties, and would still fall short of the parliamentary majority needed to form a governing coalition, according to recent polling.

Lieberman made the proposal in a letter to the three other party chiefs, the reports said.

He did not call for the other parties to run under his Yisrael Beytenu faction, but proposed setting up a “mechanism” for choosing who would lead the bloc and the order of a potential list for Knesset representatives, according to the reports.

Lieberman acknowledged disputes between the parties, but said they should announce a united front, agree on several core principles and then hash out disagreements later.

All four of the party leaders bitterly oppose Netanyahu, but a joint platform would be forced to accommodate the center-left Yesh Atid, right-wing and secular Yisrael Beytenu, ‘national’-religious Yamina and center-right New Hope.