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March 7, 2021 7:13 pm
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Yamina Party Head Bennett Predicts Solid Right-Wing Majority After Election This Month

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avatar by Benjamin Kerstein

Yamina Party member Naftali Bennett attends the Srugim conference in Jerusalem on Sept. 2, 2019. Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Former Israeli defense minister and head of the right-wing Yamina party Naftali Bennett predicted a massive Knesset majority for the right following elections later this month, N12 reported.

The next Knesset, Bennett said, will have a lopsided right-wing majority, and the resulting coalition government will reflect that.

“If there are 80 mandates that are more or less right-wing, of course you will have a solid right-wing majority,” he said.

Bennett emphasized that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s informal bloc of supporters does not reach 61 Knesset seats, he and others would form a right-wing nationalist government.

This government, he added, would include Gideon Sa’ar and his New Hope party — Netanyahu’s primary rival on the right — but also the ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalist parties, which are usually counted in Netanyahu’s bloc.

Bennett said, however, that he is unwilling to sit in government with Yair Lapid and his centrist Yesh Atid party, identifying the former former finance minister with the political left.

“I have said unequivocally that we will not sit under a left-wing prime minister,” Bennett asserted. The Israeli people, he said, “are not there.”

Although Netanyahu’s Likud party is leading in the polls, it is unclear whether he can form a coalition of 61 Knesset members and form a government.

Bennett, Sa’ar, and Lapid have all served in government with Netanyahu, but became alienated from the prime minister and are now running in what is informally called the “anti-Bibi” camp.

Elections will be held on March 23.

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