Likud calls on Bennett to show ‘responsibility,’ team up with far-right

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party calls on New Right leader Naftali Bennett to drop his opposition to running with the far-right Otzma Yehudit faction in the upcoming elections.

“The right must do everything now to prevent [the] wasting of votes. Unfortunately Bennett wasted votes in April and in the last elections [in September] he pushed out Otzma [Yehudit] from his party,” Likud says in a statement.

“Just as Orly Levy found herself in the same party with Tamar Zandberg of Meretz and just as in the Joint List communists and Islamists joined one slate, the responsibility is on Bennett to form a technical bloc in order to save right-wing votes,” the party adds.

Netanyahu has called for parties to the right of Likud to run on one slate, claiming any votes that go to right-wing factions that fail to enter the Knesset could keep him from getting a majority together with allies in the March 2 elections.

Bennett opposes teaming up with Otzma Yehudit and was quoted earlier today saying that allying with the party, which is led by followers of late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, could “cause damage for generations.”