A majority of the Likud’s 27 MKs oppose reserving slots on the Likud list in the
next election for Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his Independence Party allies,
Likud MKs Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely said Sunday.
Danon and Hotovely
have drafted petitions signed by MKs in the Likud faction against reserving
slots. They intend to present the petitions to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
in an effort to preempt him from initiating such a move.
RELATED:Likud ministers unite against Barak joining party Likud votes to move up primary “Barak is a
Trojan horse who would harm the Likud,” Danon said. “He shouldn’t start learning
the Betar song, because we won’t let the man who advanced the Oslo agreements
sit under the pictures of Begin and Jabotinsky at Likud events.”
Danon
has drafted the so-called “Barak Bill,” which would require a politician to be a
member of a party for six months before running for Knesset with the party. The
bill, which will be brought to a vote in the Ministerial Committee for
Legislation in two weeks, would apply to the three parties that choose their
Knesset slate via primaries: Likud, Kadima, and Labor.
Hotovely praised
Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon for coming out strongly against reserving slots for
Barak and his allies. She said that when she started petition campaigns to
protect the land of Israel, no minister volunteered to lead the effort but on
the Barak issue, Ya’alon would lead the way.
She also intends to get
Independence Party members to sign a petition urging Barak to allow the party to
run independently in the next election and not join Likud. Hotovely’s associates
said the time had come to reach out to the grassroots in the new party and let
its members have their say.