Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that if he elected he would work to “neutralize” Israel’s recently inked maritime border deal with Lebanon, while maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount. Speaking with Galei Tzahal on Monday, on the eve of Israel’s fifth election in under four years, the Likud chief said he would treat the new maritime border agreement with Lebanon – signed by the Lapid government last week – the same way he did the Oslo Accords during his first term as premier in the 1990s. “I will behave as I did with the Oslo Accords,” Netanyahu said. The agreement “wasn’t canceled, it was neutralized.” During the interview Netanyahu also responded to Otzma Yehudit chairman MK Itamar Ben-Gvir’s demand that he be appointed Public Security Minister in a future right-wing government. “I’m not ruling Ben-Gvir out as Public Security Minister, but there are many candidates,” Netanyahu said Monday morning. The former prime minister also told Galei Tzahal he would maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount, despite pressure from Otzma Yehudit to curtail the site’s administration by the Waqf, the Jordanian-based Islamic trust in charge of the Mount for decades. Netanyahu denied knowledge of a secret campaign conducted by his party, according to recent reports, aimed at reaching out to Arab voters. “I have no idea about what this advisor was supposed to be doing, I don’t deal with that,” Netanyahu said. According to an investigative report by Channel 13 , beginning in 2021, the Likud has operated a secret outreach campaign aimed at securing three seats’ worth of votes from the Arab sector, spending over 1.2 million shekels on the campaign during a three-month period. While the Likud’s Arab campaign in 2021 worked to draw Arab voters to the Likud, according to Channel 13 ’s report, this year’s campaign also worked to reduce voter turnout in the Arab sector – a claim the Likud has denied. The report named Gita Hazani-Melchior as the chief of the campaign, dubbed in internal Likud documents as a “strategic advisor on Jewish-Arab relations.” Hazani-Melchior founded and from 2003-2014 led the NGO Mosaica – The Religious Peace Initiative. During this year’s Knesset campaign, the report found, Hazani-Melchior received half a million shekels for her outreach efforts.
