Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz is considering joining his faction with Naftali Bennett’s national-religious Yamina party to form an alliance for the coming March elections, according to a Channel 12 report Monday evening.
The report drew cries of false news from Blue and White, scorn from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and a cryptic response from Yamina that didn’t reject the notion.
Gantz’s centrist party has been hemorrhaging member lawmakers ever since the Knesset dissolved and new elections were called near the end of last month. A recent poll predicted the party would not even muster enough votes in the election to enter the Knesset.
Bennett, who last month said he was aiming to become prime minister, has not ruled out aligning with Gantz, the report said, noting that Bennett is caught in an internal party spat with MK Bezalel Smotrich and his far-right National Union faction.
Gantz has conditioned joining with Yamina on Smotrich not being on the combined parties’ slate, as he is seen by Blue and White as being too extreme in his positions, the unsourced report said.
In addition to bringing top-notch security credentials to Yamina, Gantz, the defense minister and former IDF chief of staff, would also carry some NIS 20 million in party funding, according to the report.
Bennett prefers to patch things up with Smotrich, a fellow religious-Zionist, however, Channel 12 said. READ MORE
