Likud presses opposition to end Netanyahu boycott, as Herzog challenges party’s rhetoric

Likud lawmakers urge opposition parties to join a broad unity government during their consultation with President Isaac Herzog, arguing that the bloc’s boycott of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blocking national unity.

MK Yoav Kisch calls for a “broad national government” of Jewish-led Zionist parties, saying Israel could not meet its challenges under a government reliant on Arab parties that “support terror.” He accuses opposition leaders of boycotting Likud and says the boycott has “done enormous damage” to Israel.

Herzog asks Kisch what Likud is prepared to sacrifice to secure a unity government. Kisch says he does not know, but insists the opposition needs to end its boycott and “come and talk with us.”

MK Miri Regev says Likud is extending a hand to the opposition, but argues that Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot and his “disaster bloc” are instead willing to sit with the Joint List.

Herzog pushes back: “He didn’t say he would sit with them.” He also challenges Regev’s rhetoric, telling her, “If you want to extend a hand, you can’t call it a ‘disaster bloc.'”

Regev says Likud only rejects parties that support terror, accusing Arab lawmakers of refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization. Herzog notes that Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas had said during his party’s consultation that he supported disarming Hamas.

Likud representatives also accuse Yashar No. 2 Yoram Cohen of omitting, during his consultation with Herzog earlier in the evening, the party’s condition that coalition partners recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Herzog replies that he “didn’t notice.” Cohen said during their consultation that parties in their bloc must commit to dismantling Hamas.

Incoming MK Talik Gvili, who joined Likud after her son Ran Gvili was killed and abducted to Gaza during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, urges politicians to restore the unity she said had prevailed at the start of the war. “You have the power to unify us,” she tells Herzog.

Asked what the government would do differently from its past four years of rule to reduce polarization among the Israeli public, Regev deflects blame to the opposition, saying that Netanyahu’s government had not led the national protests against it over the past four years.