Lapid, Liberman, Kahlon said to discuss alliance

Ex-finance minister Yair Lapid and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman held talks in recent weeks to discuss the possibility of a merger deal between their respective Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beytenu parties, a Yesh Atid MK said Thursday.

The Knesset member, former welfare minister Meir Cohen, added that Moshe Kahlon’s nascent party, Kulanu, was considering joining forces with Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beytenu as well to form a joint list for upcoming elections.

However, Yisrael Beytenu and Kulanu later each issued separate denials of the reports, insisting that there were no merger negotiations between the two parties.

“We do not know of such contacts, and as we declared recently, we are running alone in the next election,” an official Yisrael Beytenu statement read. Kulanu issued a similar statement as well.

According to a previous Channel 10 report, the three politicians have been discussing a potential alliance for weeks.

While that report indicated that the chances were slim to none that the three parties would formally and fully join forces, it said that the three could cooperate in other ways, including presenting a united front on whom to recommend for the premiership following the elections, and agreeing not to target each other during the campaign in the run-up to the March 17 election.

According to a Channel 10 poll, a trilateral alliance between the parties would win 33 seats.

Kahlon, a former communications minister popular for reforming the Israeli telecom field, increasing competition and greatly lowering cellphone call prices, left the Likud party before the last elections in 2013. His new party is expected to receive around 10 seats according to early polls.

The Yesh Atid party currently holds 19 seats in the Knesset, while Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, which ran on a joint ticket with the Likud in the 2013 elections, has 13. According to a recent Knesset Channel poll, Yesh Atid would drop to 12 seats in the upcoming election, and Yisrael Beytenu would receive 10.

On Wednesday, Hatnua party head Tzipi Livni and Labor party leader Isaac Herzog announced a merger between their parties, in a bid to establish a large center-left political bloc and remove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2015 elections. Under the union agreement, the two will share the prime ministership on rotation, with Herzog as prime minister the first two years and Livni the last two years, should they win the upcoming elections.

While the Herzog-Livni merger will be hard-pressed to attract right-wing voters, Yesh Atid and Kahlon potentially have a broader appeal. It is hard to predict what effect a merger with Liberman, who is associated with the hawkish right, would have on Yesh Atid and Kahlon’s party.

A Channel 10 poll on Tuesday indicated Labor could become the Knesset’s largest party if it joined with Livni’s Hatnua and Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima party, winning 22 seats compared to Likud’s projected 20. However, the survey indicated that the Israeli right would still have an easier time building a coalition than the left.

The Channel 10 survey also saw 22 percent of respondents citing Herzog as their preferred prime minister, with Netanyahu just one point ahead at 23%.

Previous polls have shown Netanyahu well clear of potential prime ministerial rivals.

Adiv Sterman and Lazar Berman contributed to this report.