Party leaders, MKs start voting, warning of fifth election if no decisive result

23 March 2021, 9:41 am

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Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman (L) casting his ballot in Nokdim on March 23, 2021. (Yisrael Beytenu/courtesy)

Many party leaders and prominent politicians have already cast their votes in the election, the fourth in two years, preparing for a day of relentless campaigning in hopes of handing their parties a last-minute boost.

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman votes at his home community, the settlement of Nokdim, and repeats the claim that these elections were called because of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to “evade” his corruption trial.

Also among the first to vote is Shas leader Aryeh Deri, in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem. He calls on voters to show up and “bring about a decisive result, we can’t go to a fifth election.”

United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov Litzman casts his ballot at a voting station in Jerusalem, during the Knesset elections, March 23, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Fellow ultra-Orthodox MK Yaakov Litzman, the former leader and current No. 2 of United Torah Judaism, votes in Jerusalem, saying, “Haredi Jewry and everything that is sacred to the Nation of Israel hang in the balance.”

Yamina No. 2 Ayelet Shaked casts her ballot in Tel Aviv, saying the party “can this time finally put an end to this endless election loop.” She adds: “I promise that if you vote for us there won’t be fifth elections.”

Labor leader Merav Michaeli hasn’t voted yet, but she pays a visit to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where former prime minister and Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in 1995.

“These are very important elections, they are wide open and in our hands,” she tells reporters. “I came here to the place where it all was halted, because I promise to return to Rabin’s path. We mustn’t give up,” she says, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.