Strident Likud MK says she is open to ‘serious offer’ to join another party
After primary places her in 20th spot on slate, Tally Gotliv says she refuses to be ‘treated as a doormat’ by Netanyahu, but admits she has yet to receive a firm offer
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Controversial Likud MK Tally Gotliv said Monday that she was open to joining other political parties, following her poor showing in the Likud party primary two weeks ago.
“My dedication to the prime minister and to the right-wing government has always been immense,” Gotliv wrote on X. “I literally threw myself on the barbed wire for the prime minister and the right-wing government. I do not expect applause, but I certainly will not agree to be treated as a doormat.”
Gotliv is currently slated to be in the 20th spot on the Likud party list after she came 12th in the primary but was pushed down due to a high number of reserved slots granted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The final deadline for parties to submit their electoral lists to the Knesset is September 8. Recent polls have predicted Likud will receive 19-22 seats in the October 27 national election.
Gotliv on Monday accused Netanyahu of “accepting the advice of those around him and seeking to politically eliminate me in the primaries.” She said he “excluded me from the Likud campaign” and has “chosen to push me to a hidden corner in the background,” and that the party continues to “portray me as a weakening force within Likud.”
“If I were to receive a serious offer from a party that would respect my electoral strength and my clear ability, with God’s help, to serve as a minister in a highly significant position, I would consider it very carefully on behalf of my voters,” Gotliv wrote. “For now, no such offer exists.”
Channel 12 news reported on Monday that Gotliv is threatening to leave the party entirely if Netanyahu does not place her as number 12 on the list, currently one of the prime minister’s unfilled reserve slots.
The outspoken MK has at times been a thorn in the side of the prime minister, and has made a name for herself over her past four years in the Knesset for causing controversies and disrupting proceedings.
Most prominently, Gotliv faces potential prosecution for publicly identifying the partner of anti-government protest leader Shikma Bressler as a security agent while sharing baseless conspiracy theories about Hamas’s October 7 attack. The Knesset voted in June to grant Gotliv immunity after the attorney general announced plans to indict her; such immunity would expire when Gotliv is no longer a member of Knesset.
Gotliv, a former lawyer known for defending sex offenders, has called members of the Israeli judicial system “enemies of the government,” accused security forces of “treason,” and advanced the conspiracy theory that the October 7 massacre was enabled from within Israel’s security establishment.
Last year she was even disavowed within her own party for calling a court security guard a “Judenrat,” or Holocaust-era Jew deputized by the Nazis, when, due to her incessant interruptions, she was removed from a court hearing.
The Times of Israel Community.