After becoming the third largest party in the Knesset with 14 seats, there is no doubt that the biggest surprise of this election cycle is the joint Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit party.
Otzma Yehudit's Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who is number five on the list and is slated to become the youngest minister in the government when it is formed, spoke with Radio 103FM's Golan Yochpaz and Anat Davidov on Thursday. When asked which ministry he's aiming for, Wasserlauf answers: "First we have to wait for them to finish counting the votes. We want to get all the details. Certainly, I think we brought victory to the right, they always thought that we would steal votes from within the bloc, but we proved that we took votes from outside the bloc. A third of our voters are people who didn't vote at all during previous elections."
Regarding the talk that Ben-Gvir is the silver platter that brought Netanyahu his victory, Wasserlauf states: "For sure. We got a great number of voters who didn't vote in the past, these are people who believe in us. We have a lot of voters who previously voted for [Benny] Gantz (National Unity), even for Labor, surprisingly. I think what we said in these elections, was the central matter, which is personal security. Personal security has been wavering over the past year and a half, especially when we saw the sale of this government to the Islamic Movement and [MK Mansour] Abbas (United Arab List). People were looking for something, somewhere to turn, that will ensure their safety."
When asked what his party's chairman, MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, will do as Public Security Minister, he answers: "First of all we say that there are a few matters that we think we need to proceed with immediately, like changing the rules of engagement and establishing immunity for police and soldiers. When a soldier goes to battle he shouldn't have to start deciding which lawyer to take afterward. I can only say one thing: We are not classic politicians who promise something before elections and afterward forget about it."