Yamina leader Ayelet Shaked accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having routinely sought to banish religious-Zionist parties to the opposition following his election victories over the last decade. Shaked also implicitly accused Netanyahu of having failed to advance right-wing policies, saying that in his BarIlan speech, while Netanyahu warily backed a demilitarized Palestinian state, she and her political partner Naftali Bennett had been promoting the annexation of 60% of the West Bank. “Netanyahu wants us to be small and weak,” Shaked said Monday night at a conference held in Jerusalem by Srugim, a religious-Zionist news website. “When we entered politics, Netanyahu gave his Bar-Ilan speech while Bennett and I put out our pacification program [calling for the annexation of Area C of the West Bank],” noted Shaked. “Everyone looked at us as if we were crazy – but today, everyone is talking about [Israeli] sovereignty [over the West Bank].” Shaked also pointed out that in 2009, Netanyahu had brought in the left-wing Labor Party into his coalition and kept out the hard-right National Union Party; in 2013, he brought in Tzipi Livni’s centrist Hatnua Party and sought to keep out Bayit Yehudi from the coalition altogether. “We will recommend Netanyahu [to form the next government], but Netanyahu can easily turn to [Blue and White leader Benny] Gantz and [Labor-Gesher leader Amir] Peretz to form a government, which would certainly put the control of the right wing in danger,” said the Yamina leader. if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("656089") != -1){console.log("hedva connatix");document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none";}Also present at the conference was Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud), who rejected complaints that Netanyahu gobbles up the votes of the religious-Zionist community in last minute “gevalt” campaigns aimed at frightening religious voters into choosing Likud. “There is no such thing as ‘drinking’ Knesset seats [from others],” said Edelstein.