Netanyahu apparatchik Bitan says no chance of alternate government

Likud MK David Bitan tells Channel 12 news that his party is for elections, dismissing the possibility of an alternate government being formed by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We want elections,” he says in an interview from a bustling Knesset hallway.

“I don’t see any chance for a government like this. There are things that need to be finished so we are dealing with them,” he adds.

“It will take a few days but there will be elections,” says Bitan, a Netanyahu apparatchik who nonetheless has publicly opposed forming an alternate government instead of going to elections.

Bitan also vows that the Islamist Ra’am party won’t be part of a Likud-led coalition, a consistent claim belied by public disclosure of Likud-Ra’am contacts a year ago.

He attempts at first to push the Likud claim that it never considered bringing Ra’am into its coalition a year ago, but later changes tack, instead claiming that the party is now out of bounds because “since it entered the coalition it created a lot of problems.”