Zehut chairman and former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin denied Monday reports that he had issued an ultimatum to New Right party chairman Naftali Bennett, demanding that Bennett agree to hold joint open primaries for selecting the slate of a new unified ticket.
In a Facebook post Monday morning, Feiglin said that he had never presented the idea of running together with the New Right and holding joint open primaries for a united list as an ultimatum.
“We don’t issue ultimatums, and I’m saddened by the fact that this is how the media presented this. Though the window of opportunity for holding primaries is going to close, and it is the right thing to let the public know that.”
In the Facebook post, Feiglin also laid out the case for forming a united party out of the New Right and Zehut lists, calling such a joint list an “Israeli Republican party”.
“Naftali Bennett has done a great deal, and has many merits. A union of Zehut and the New Right is the right thing to do, and could go on to form the foundation for a new Israeli Republican party – a coherent combination of nationalism and liberalism, identity [Zehut] and liberty.”
On Sunday, Channel 12 News reported that Feiglin had demanded that Bennett commit to holding joint primaries by the end of the week.
If Bennett refused, according to the report, Zehut would run separately, as it did in the April 9th election, when neither faction managed to cross the 3.25% electoral threshold.