Likud MK: Why does Labor never blame Palestinians for peace failures?

“There’ll be no progress” with the Palestinians with this government, says Labor’s Isaac Herzog, “and all the promises to the contrary are empty.”

Tzipi Livni can try “but she’ll run into a wall.”

Herzog says “there’s not an ounce of faith” between Netanyahu and his coalition partners. He quotes Lapid saying Netanyahu has lost control of his own Likud party. “And Lapid is right… The party of government is collapsing.”

He quotes Livni saying in the past that Netanyahu “stirs up hatred” between the sectors of Israeli society, and predicts relentless in-fighting in the coalition, vowing that Labor will battle the government in the economic and diplomatic spheres.

Ofir Akunis (Likud), who will serve as a deputy minister liaising between the government and the Knesset, recalls that critics thought the last government wouldn’t survive a year, and it managed four.

“I don’t accept this picture of Israel as a country where everything is bad,” he says. “It’s not perfect… but it’s certainly not all bad.”

Akunis ridicules opposition claims that the new government will make no progress toward peace, asking why Labor and other opponents “never blame the other side” — the Palestinians — for the lack of progress.

And while Labor’s Herzog talks about Likud falling apart, Akunis says, it is Labor that needs to worry about disharmony in its ranks.