B'Yahad Party led by ex-IDF general quits election

Polls taken for the party by two pollsters found that his party had the potential to win five seats. But Yom-Tov Samia decided not to take the chance.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Yom-Tov Samia (photo credit: Courtesy)
Yom-Tov Samia
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Former OC Southern Command head, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yom-Tov Samia announced on Monday that he had decided to end his B'Yahad party's run in the April 9 election.
Samia announced in January that he would run with B'Yahad, which was an acronym of the Hebrew words for security of Israel, socioeconomic and democratic. He then tried to merge the party unsuccessfully with Labor, Blue and White and the Achi Israeli Party of Haredi Women's College founder Adina Bar-Shalom that quit the election last week.
"B'Yahad tried to merge with other parties, both existing and new parties to build a significant political force ahead of the upcoming election in order to bring about change," Samia said. "But unfortunately, these attempts to merge were unsuccessful, despite the open-mindedness we saw in our contacts."
Polls taken for the party by two pollsters found that it had the potential to win five seats. But Samia decided not to take the chance.
Samia, who headed the Southern Command from 2001 to 2003, promised to keep his party going and prepare for the next election.
Without B'Yahad and Achi Israeli, 45 parties remain registered to run in the April 9 election. More small parties with very little chance of getting elected are expected to drop out of the race in the weeks ahead.
The Simply Love party, in which Jews and Arabs are running together, received an endorsement on Monday from former OC Northern Command head Amiram Levin, who ran for the Labor leadership in July 2017 and left following a spat with Labor chairman Avi Gabbay.