Israel 11 days before the vote: Netanyahu targets Winter – Eisenkot aims for first place
Netanyahu is giving rare interviews and warning right-wing voters not to gamble. Ex-general Ofer Winter clears the threshold in more and more polls, while Eisenkot is already doing coalition maths.
Symbolic image · Photo: Clema12 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Eleven days before Israel's parliamentary election on October 27, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a series of rare media appearances on Channel 14, Channel 11 and Army Radio. According to The Jerusalem Post, he said "the race is tied," warning right-wing voters not to take chances. He aimed his attacks mainly at the party of retired Brigadier General Ofer Winter: "If he walks like Bennett and talks like Bennett, he's Bennett." Winter's party has crossed the 3.25 per cent threshold in 11 of 19 major polls since October 1.
Winter told Channel 12 that Netanyahu could "go take a hike" if he rejected his conditions; without a law on military service for the ultra-Orthodox, his party will not join a government in which they hold the balance of power. Former army chief Gadi Eisenkot wants to make his Yashar party the largest and, according to the report, is considering a minority government that could survive a Knesset vote if the Arab parties abstain. According to the report, Eisenkot repeated that Netanyahu must not be allowed to win by losing; in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth he warned him against staying in office through a caretaker government, saying "that will not happen."