The proposal is intended to block the return of New Hope ministers and MKs Gideon Sa’ar, Ze’ev Elkin, Sharren Haskel, Benny Begin and Michal Shir. It is also aimed at deterring current Likud MKs from leaving the party to join the coalition and receive cabinet seats. The Knesset passed a law enabling four MKs to break off from a large faction like Likud.
It also singles out anyone who formed or joined a government that sent the Likud to the opposition, including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (Yamina), Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked (Yamina) or Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu). The three were members of Likud but never MKs with the party before they formed their own lists following personal disputes with Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.The proposal also applies to anyone who called to vote for another party for Knesset.
Likud central committee chairman Haim Katz protested the decision, saying that the secretariat had no right to make it and only his institution did. He called the move “infantile.”
Haskel responded that “the Likud has become the Netanyahu Party” and that “he is their ideology and anyone else in the party are just disciplined soldiers.”
Sa’ar and Shaked declined to comment.