Likud ultimatum to Lapid: if you don't flex – we'll go to Haredim • Bennett: Forget it

Just before it seemed that a new government is established, the insistence of the Yesh Atid party on the education portfolio halted the continuation of negotiations, which is currently on the verge of explosion.

Likud officials said this (Wednesday) afternoon: "If the next few hours there won't be a breakthrough in negotiations between Likud and Yesh Atid, and party chairman Yair Lapid will not drop his excessive demands, the prime minister will start a speed dialogue with the Haredi parties."

The one who has been acting over the last day to bridge the gap between the parties is the chairman of the Jewish Home, Naftali Bennett. During the night he even met with Netanyahu and spoke by phone with Lapid. It seems that in the Jewish Home too they are unhappy at the lack of willingness to compromise by their formed alliance partner, and senior officials in the Jewish Home even announced today that the party would not support the election process.

However, immediately after the publication of an ultimatum by the Likud to Lapid, Naftali Bennett published a post on his Facebook: "A few minutes ago it was published as if Likud presents an ultimatum to my friend Yair Lapid. My Likud friends: forget it. It will not work this way. There are gaps gaps. We need to talk and compromise. All of us, until a government is formed. There is a state we have to worry about. "

At the same time, the relationship between Haredi factions and Likud is warming up. In recent days, there were many discussions between Minister Eli Yishai and officials in Netanyahu's office, and with the prime minister himself, and all possibilities are examined.

The outgoing interior minister, Eli Yishai, said today: "Yesh Atid prove there is no connection between raising the threshold and the ability to political blackmail. If the second step, after the boycott of the traditional public, by Yesh Atid, is an example and model of political blackmail, I'm afraid to know what will be its continued political footsteps.

"My heart goes out to the Prime Minister who is destined in the next two years, to be conducted as a prisoner to fulfill the whims of Yesh Atid and the Jewish Home. But mainly to the Israeli public who was promised a new politics, which seems, at the end of the day, the old politics with all its illnesses. I wonder what would have been said and written if Shas would conduct itself one thousandth of Yesh Atid's conduct in terms of coalition negotiations and generally. "

Likud-Beiteinu Knesset members also have relentless criticism of the conduct of Lapid. MK Danny Danon even hinted that there is an option to establish an alternative government, "Lapid got confused and thinks that he is prime minister. There are other alternatives - a government with the Haredim or elections."

The main dispute which prevents the signing between Likud- Beiteinu and Yesh Atid, is about the education portfolio. The Prime Minister wants to leave at the office the outgoing Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, while Yesh Atid wants the portfolio for MK Shai Piron.

Later in the morning, before Bennett went to meet with the Prime Minister, he stopped by Yair Lapid's home in Tel Aviv, where they talked for a while.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!