Netanyahu eyes journalist Caroline Glick for Likud Knesset slot

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may offer US-born journalist Caroline Glick a safe slot on the Likud’s list for the March 17 elections.

Glick, a senior staffer and columnist of The Jerusalem Post, a writer for Makor Rishon and a senior fellow of the US-based Center for Security Policy, would be given the 11th slot on the Likud Knesset slate, Hebrew media reports said Saturday night.

Glick clearly identifies with the Israeli right in her writings, although she has been critical of Netanyahu, notably over the 2011 deal to release more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners to secure the release of Gilad Shalit from Hamas in Gaza, which she called immoral and irresponsible.

A Likud official told Haaretz that Glick’s was one of a number of names being considered.

Netanyahu had offered the slot to another Israeli journalist, Arel Segal, last week, but was turned down.

Meanwhile, Zionist Camp co-leader Tzipi Livni indicated Saturday night that she would not be willing to sit in a coalition with Netanyahu. “I don’t see myself as a partner in the path of Netanyahu and (Jewish Home leader Naftali) Bennett,” Livni told Channel 2 in an interview. Livni made clear that she was speaking personally, and not on behalf of the Zionist Camp, the merged party comprising Isaac Herzog’s Labor and her Hatnua.

The Zionist Camp’s declared candidate for defense minister, ex-Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin, meanwhile, will not be given a slot on the party’s Knesset slate, it emerged. Yadlin had said in a TV interview last week that he could serve as defense minister without sitting in the Knesset.

The Zionist Camp’s woyld-be finance minister, former Netanyahu economic adviser Manuel Trajtenberg, by contrast, is set for a Knesset seat, with reports that he will be placed in the 11th slot on the party list.

Earlier Livni and Yesh Atid party chief Yair Lapid warned in separate interviews Saturday that Netanyahu was wrecking Israel’s relationship with the White House for political gain.

Livni and Lapid, who were both high-ranking members of Netanyahu’s coalition until he called new elections and fired them in December, were relating to the latest incident to deal a blow to Jerusalem’s ties with Washington: Netanyahu’s announcement that he will address Congress on March 3, a speech he did not coordinate with the White House and which is largely expected to attack the policies of President Barack Obama vis-à-vis Iran.

Likud Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, however, said Netanyahu was acting out of “concern for Israel’s security” in preparing to speak to Congress about the dangers of a bad deal with a would-be nuclear Iran. “No prime minister would have turned down the invitation to speak” to Congress, said Steinitz.