No unity deal with Likud, pledges Jewish Home memo

An internal Jewish Home document leaked to the Israeli media indicated that the party would not create a joint list with the ruling Likud party in the upcoming elections.

“Unity with Likud will not happen,” it pledged.

The memorandum, which was sent to the NRG news site Thursday, also terms Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman a “leftist,” and calls for Jewish Home MKs to go on the offensive against him.

Turning to center-left leaders, the document said that the best way to keep Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni from running the next government is “a very strong Jewish Home.”

The memo was meant for party members, in order to lay out exactly what the party’s positions and message are.

Earlier this month Naftali Bennett, the Jewish Home leader, said that he has an arrangement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from attacking each other during the upcoming election campaign.

Speaking in Washington, DC, at the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum, Bennett added that he and Netanyahu “want to form a strong national bloc.” Despite his own rising popularity, Bennett said he was not “obsessed” with becoming prime minister.

The Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home won 12 seats in the 2013 elections. Recent polls show it rising to at least 17. Bennett opposes Palestinian statehood, would annex 60 percent of the West Bank, and urged the government to destroy Hamas once and for all in Gaza during the summer’s conflict.