Senior Labor MK raps Herzog for keeping coalition option open

Zionist Union politicians on Sunday continued to pile on the criticism of faction leader Isaac Herzog’s flip-flopping over joining the coalition.

“I’ve never seen a slammed door that still had a crack,” MK Eitan Cabel told Army Radio on Sunday, referring to past statements by Herzog that the door to talks had been “shut” or “slammed shut.”

Despite being spurned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in favor of Avigdor Liberman and his rightist Yisrael Beytenu party in coalition talks last month, Herzog said Saturday that there was still a chance his center-left opposition party would join the government if Jewish Home were pushed out.

“Netanyahu knows precisely what the terms are,” Cabel maintained. “If there is a new situation in which all of Israel will look on and say, ‘You have no choice, you must make a major move,'” then the party would consider it, he suggested. “But we are not there,” Cabel added.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) on Sunday said it was unlikely the Zionist Union would join the coalition.

“It is right to expand the government at this time, because we are really facing large internal and international challenges,” Erdan told Army Radio. “But based on what I see in the Labor Party” — one of the two parties, along with Hatnua, comprising the Zionist Union — “my cautious assessment is that that won’t happen.”

Herzog’s softened stance to the prospect of entering the coalition met with pushback from Labor MKs on Saturday, with one warning that Labor risked irrelevance if it continued to seek to join Netanyahu’s government rather than to replace it.

“At this rate the Labor Party will change from an alternative to Likud to an alternative to Aleh Yarok [‘Green Leaf’ — a tiny party that campaigns for legalization of marijuana],” said Labor MK Erel Margalit, “both in size and in the sense of the fantasy we’re living in.

“Netanyahu has established the most extremist government in the history of the nation and instead of bringing him down, we’re waiting outside in the rain for him to let us in, in return for his throwing around some words about peace and regional initiatives,” Margalit lamented.

Labor MK Mickey Rosenthal also expressed extreme skepticism at the prospect of Netanyahu seriously advancing any peace initiative.

“The prime minister has no intention of ceding anything,” he wrote on Facebook. “Netanyahu is not capable of a significant historic act. He only wants to bring the Zionist Union into the government to serve as a fig leaf, in anticipation of the diplomatic tsunami Israel faces.”

Rosenthal warned that Netanyahu’s peace overtures “create expectations in the Arab world, expectations that will beget disappointments that will sadly lead to crises and escalations.”

MK Shelly Yachimovich, Labor’s number two, warned that the “cooing of peace doves” accompanying recent statements by Netanyahu and Liberman would soon be replaced with visions of them “decapitating those birds and baking them in the oven, stuffed with whatever remains of the Labor party if, heaven forbid, it joins them.”

She added that the party would support a peace push should Netanyahu truly show willingness to pursue such an initiative. “If Netanyahu and Liberman will lead to a real [peace] process, our finger will be there [for the requisite Knesset votes]; we will be a constructive opposition,” Yachimovich said.

But she stressed that this was “far from the state of things at the moment.”

On Monday, Netanyahu partially endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative that Israel has long opposed as one-sided, offering to negotiate with the Arab world regarding the parameters of the plan, which promises Israel full diplomatic ties with 57 Arab and Muslim states in return for cementing a peace accord with the Palestinians. On Thursday night, Netanyahu also reportedly told US Secretary of State John Kerry he was saying “yes” to regional efforts to advance the peace process.

“The Arabs don’t believe Liberman and Netanyahu. They want to see action,” Herzog said.

Netanyahu and Liberman vowed to pursue a peace agreement with the Palestinians, to which Bennett replied that he would “stand as a fortified wall against historic mistakes.”