Former ambassador to the US Michael Oren may enter politics on a new list being drafted by former welfare and social services minister Moshe Kahlon, the business newspaper The Marker reported on Wednesday. Oren is a veteran historian and an expert on US-Israel relations. Since his return from Washington, he has taught at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, explained Israel's positions regularly on CNN and expressed more controversial opinions than he did as an ambassador, endorsing a unilateral West Bank withdrawal. In response to the report, Oren said in Los Angeles that he was “busy defending Israel in international media and had no comment on the political sphere.” Other big names who have been mentioned as possible Knesset candidates on a list led by Kahlon include former IDF OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yoav Galant, outgoing head of the Council for Higher Education Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, former Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's daughter Prof. Adina Bar-Shalom, discount supermarket founder Rami Levy and former Bezeq director-general Avi Gabai. Kahlon indicated last Tuesday that he would soon be returning to politics after the security situation calms down. Asked at the Israel Medical Conference at the Jerusalem International Convention Center if he would return to the political arena after he decided to take a break and not run for the 19th Knesset in January 2013, Kahlon said he had “decided to form a political framework, but definitely not at this time.”
