I may form new party if I’m declared a rebel
Netanyahu at Mimouna: New hope for upheaval
Yamina MK Amichai Chikli will consider forming a new party if he is declared a hostile rebel who has left without following proper procedure, he told The Jerusalem Post in a phone interview on Saturday night.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s governing coalition will face a key test on Monday morning when the Knesset House Committee convenes to consider his request on Chikli. The proposal is expected to pass despite a boycott of the vote by Ra’am (United Arab List).
Chikli sent the committee a list of 98 campaign promises broken by Bennett, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and other Yamina ministers and MKs. He said there was no legal basis for calling him a rebel, which he said was a procedure legislated to block MKs from defecting in return for political appointments.
“We are ready for a legal battle,” he said. “I don’t fit the category of rebel, because I didn’t trade my ideology for any post or have 50 million shekels of renovations done on my home like Bennett. He offered me any job possible if I would quit the Knesset, allow someone else to enter and enable his tricking the public. But I’ve remained a simple MK with no driver and no special conditions.”
Chikli said he had not asked the Likud for a reserved slot on the party list, which made the rebel label even less relevant for him. By law, if he is declared a rebel he cannot run for the next Knesset w Zionist Party. There is a liberal, Zionist, traditional public looking for a new framework and I could join one or form one.”
Chikli said he will only decide when there are elections on the way. Bennett’s step against him is intended to deter former coalition chairwoman Idit Silman and other potential rebels from voting against the coalition. Party leaders will meet on Sunday with Bennett to coordinate a strategy for passing the proposal.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Mimouna celebration in Or Akiva on Saturday night that he sensed new hope that he would soon return to power and “get the country back on the right course.”
United Torah Judaism leader Moshe Gafni said in a holiday interview with Walla News that he is strongly against holding elections. He said he would prefer that a new rightwing government be formed in the current Knesset.
of her policies undermined her efforts to appear more moderate.
According to the last published polls on April 22, the gap between them widened to around 11 percentage points. To reverse that trend, the nationalist needed to land a major blow in the presidential debate on Wednesday night. It didn’t happen.
Le Pen avoided repeating her disastrous debate performance of 2017 but she had difficulty fending off Macron’s attacks, especially on her economic policy, and failed to shine. Her team says the media has been too critical of her performance.
In the days since the encounter, Le Pen ramped up efforts to cast herself as a woman of the people while feeding a perception that Macron is an arrogant leader who understands nothing of the struggles of the working class.
She told voters on Friday that the president was trying to “brutalize” her during the debate and that “the disdain” he showed her was reflective of how he sees the French.
Étaples was a perfect spot to try to drive that point home. It’s a working class town in the north separated by a river from the glitzy seaside resort of Le Touquet – Paris-Plage, where Macron has a home and where residents are more educated and optimistic about their future than Le Pen’s supporters.
In Figeac, Macron called for “unity” and “balance.” Earlier, in the radio interview, he said that he had made mistakes which benefited Le Pen.
“She feeds on the things we haven’t managed to do,” he said, “things that I haven’t succeeded in doing myself, namely quelling a certain anger, responding to demands quickly enough, and in particular, succeeding in giving the prospect of progress and security to the French middle and working classes.”