In coalition push, Likud to confer with ultra-Orthodox, Kulanu
Negotiating team in marathon session, seeking to initial an agreement by Tuesday
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Members of Likud’s coalition negotiating team were set to hold marathon talks Sunday with representatives of Shas, United Torah Judaism and Kulanu, in an effort to reach a coalition agreement and initial it by Tuesday, having reportedly drawn close to an agreement with the three parties.
Likud representatives are expected to meet Monday with negotiators from of two other parties with which they seek to form a coalition, Yisrael Beytenu and Jewish Home.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to ask the president on Monday for a 14-day extension so that coalition talks with Jewish Home and Yisrael Beytenu can be completed.
Netanyahu met on Friday with Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman and Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett.
In his meeting with Netanyahu, Liberman said that his party would insist that legislative reforms passed by the previous Knesset on the conversion process and on the drafting of yeshiva students to the army would remain unchanged, Haaretz reported.
Jewish Home representatives would not discuss their chairman’s meeting with Netanyahu, though sources said that some progress had been made.
Shas is insisting that one of its Knesset members, Yitzhak Vaknin, be made a deputy Knesset speaker – a position that he has held at times over the past two years – despite the low number of seats the party won in the recent Knesset elections. Likud has reportedly offered a compromise in the form of a rotation of that position with a member of United Torah Judaism, the report said.
Meanwhile, Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog maintained that he intends to lead the opposition, not join a unity government.
“A government of 67 MKs is about to be established,” he told journalist Ben Caspit at a cultural event in Tel Aviv on Saturday. “I said right after the elections that we would be going to the opposition. That’s not a default choice; it’s a preference.”
Herzog added that he and Netanyahu had spoken three times since the elections, but never one-on-one, referring to a report on Channel 1 that he had met secretly with Netanyahu.
Still, Herzog said, he had not ruled out the possibility of joining a unity government.
The Times of Israel Community.