Likud, Bayit Yehudi MKs: Labor MKs visit to Abbas crossed line into post-Zionism

The delegation to Ramallah of five lawmakers was led by Knesset Caucus for a Solution to the Israeli-Arab Conflict chairman Hilik Bar.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Yoni Chetboun (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Yoni Chetboun
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Several politicians on the Right took the opportunity of the end of peace talks and the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation to turn their arrows on the Left on Thursday.
Communications Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) took to Facebook to criticize Labor and Meretz MKs for visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week.
The delegation of five lawmakers was led by Knesset Caucus for a Solution to the Israeli-Arab Conflict chairman Hilik Bar (Labor).
Erdan wrote: “I’m on my way to the cabinet meeting on the implications of the agreement between Abbas and the terrorist organization Hamas, and I remembered that a few days ago, MKs from the Left visited Abbas. They talked, they embraced, they took a selfie.
“They didn’t get a chance to ask about Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is near. Abbas tried to minimize the Holocaust in the past. I’m interested in how they felt when they heard about the reconciliation,” Erdan said.
A Bayit Yehudi spokesman said opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Labor) is “challenging Peace Now from the Left” and that his party’s MKs’ visit to Ramallah during the funeral of Baruch Mizrahi, whom Palestinian terrorists killed days earlier, crossed a redline from Zionism to post-Zionism.
Coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud) said, “This is the time for the Left to publicly back the prime minister and allow the formation of a united front against Palestinian terrorism.”
MK Yoni Chetboun (Bayit Yehudi) went further with his demands of the Left, saying that it should give up on the two-state solution.
“There is no choice but to find a sane diplomatic alternative that doesn’t react to what Palestinians declare but progresses with what Israel does,” he said.
Bar, who is abroad, responded to those who criticized the delegation last week, calling them “right-wing extremists” who should “stop taking [advantage of] the bereaved families to promote narrow interests. It’s shameful and embarrassing.
“I’m not going to be lectured by the extreme Right, which is sitting and getting budgets from a government that promotes a two-state solution but does everything to sabotage talks,” he said.