Yisrael Beytenu will not recommend Benny Gantz as the next prime minister of Israel even if Blue and White ends the September 17 election with more seats than Likud, Avigdor Liberman told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview.
Speaking exactly a week after he refused to join the coalition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to form, leading the Likud leader to dissolve the Knesset and force new elections, Liberman said that the only government possible would be one from the Right. Gantz, he said, did not have a chance.
“There is no chance [that I would] recommend Gantz,” Liberman told the Post. “He is a good guy. I respect him. But I don’t think he has a realistic chance to form a government. You can only form a government from the Right, and he has no experience in the civilian sector. You can’t come without any experience.”
Liberman did not rule out the possibility that he would run in the September 17 election as a prime ministerial candidate. For that to happen, he said he would need to see an increase in public support.
“I have to be realistic. I am not rejecting this possibility, but I am not blinded by it either,” Liberman said. “I borrow a phrase from Yitzhak Rabin, who said that politics are an option and not an obsession. We will see what happens, and if there will be an opportunity, then we will decide.”
In the interview conducted Wednesday, Liberman pushed back on the Likud’s claim that he used the haredi draft bill as an excuse to bring down Netanyahu. “It was in the center of Yisrael Beytenu’s campaign from the beginning,” he said. “Everything was clear in the campaign, after and now. We have a commitment to our voters.”
The full interview will be published in The Jerusalem Post on Friday.