Labor’s Michaeli slams tax plan, admits party may have to merge with Meretz in next election

Labor party leader Merav Michaeli joins other opposition heads in lambasting the government’s plan to redistribute local taxes from wealthier municipalities to poorer ones, echoing Yair Lapid’s sentiment that it is “theft.”

At the start of her faction meeting, Michaeli says that if the “outrageous” initiative passes, her party will join a petition against it to the High Court of Justice.

“We won’t let them take the public’s money to use for political purposes,” she says.

Asked by a reporter about Labor MK Gilad Kariv’s call last week for the party to join forces with fellow left-wing party Meretz in the event of new elections, Michaeli says: “There is definitely a need to find a different way to run in the next election. I am checking and speaking about this with various officials.”

Michaeli has faced intense criticism for refusing to merge the parties ahead of last year’s election, despite efforts to bring the two struggling parties together. Meretz, which ran independently, fell just below the electoral threshold, essentially stripping four Knesset seats from the bloc opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and solidifying the victory for the latter’s hard-right coalition.