Yisrael Beytenu candidate calls for unity government with Likud, Blue and White

The Yisrael Beytenu party intends to call for a unity government made up of itself, Blue and White, and Likud, according to the party’s third-highest candidate, Yevgeni Soba.

He stresses that the actual results of the elections have yet to be released, but indicates that the party is pleased with the forecasts.

“The results speak for themselves,” Soba tells The Times of Israel at Yisrael Beytenu’s campaign headquarters in Jerusalem.

All three major television projections show no clear majority for Likud or Blue and White without Yisrael Beytenu.

“We got a mandate for a wide, national government,” Soba says.

He says the next government needs to be “without the ultra-Orthodox, without the messianists,” in an apparent reference to the right-wing religious Zionist parties.

Soba says that while this is the larger, strategic goal, the party will consider reasonable alternatives if they are presented and seem more feasible.

“This is the strategy, but tactically, I don’t know. Maybe [party leader Avigdor] Liberman just now made a deal with Netanyahu, maybe he made one with Gantz,” he says.

Judah Ari Gross

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