Likud and Kadima: Labor list is too left

Netanyahu says Labor MKs are good people, wrong on diplomatic issues.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
peretz to labor mtg 298 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
peretz to labor mtg 298
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu complimented the Labor list, saying that it was made up of good people who are wrong on diplomatic issues. "The question is where they want to lead us," Netanyahu told reporters ahead of a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos. "Labor at least says honestly that they intend to retreat more or less to the '67 lines. Kadima doesn't say it but that's what they intend to do." Likud and Kadima MKs expressed their disdain for the new Labor list. Both Kadima and Likud accused Labor chairman Amir Peretz of filling his party with Histadrut workers to stay alive politically. "Labor decided to surround its inexperienced leader with other inexperienced people who have only one thing in common, and that's the desire to succeed Amir Peretz even before the election, knowing full well that the job is too big for him," a Kadima spokesman said. Kadima candidate and former Labor MK Haim Ramon said the list was too leftist and socialist to appeal to the general public. He pointed out that the top 10 on the list features former Peace Now activist Yuli Tamir, former People's Voice chairman Ami Ayalon and Shelly Yacimovich, who sympathizes with the communist Hadash party. Former Shin-Bet chief Avi Dichter, who is also a Kadima Knesset candidate, said that he "couldn't tell the difference between Peretz and Meretz." Shas chairman Eli Yishai attacked Labor for electing too many Ashkenazim. He called Labor's Knesset slate "a list full of gefilte fish."