Meretz head Nitzan Horowitz criticized Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday for not meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Speaking on the Jewish calendar anniversary of the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Horowitz told his faction in the Knesset that Rabin decided to seek peace for the good of Israel and the Palestinians.
“We need to finish his work and bring about two states,” he said. “There is a partner, and whoever doesn’t talk to him strengthens Hamas.”
Horowitz also slammed settlers who have attacked Palestinians, calling them the successors of Rabin’s assassin.
Bennett urged his cabinet ministers on Sunday to halt internal disputes and “stop rocking the boat” ahead of key votes on the state budget. Spokesmen for both Bennett and Lapid declined to respond to Horowitz’s attack.
There was also tension on Monday inside the opposition. Likud faction chairman Yariv Levin, who just returned from sitting shiva for his mother, convened the heads of opposition factions at the Knesset.
Shas and United Torah Judaism tried to persuade Levin to end the opposition’s boycott of Knesset committees that they began to protest what they deemed an unfair allocation of the committees in favor of coalition MKs.
But Levin said after the meeting that the boycott would continue.