Likudniks won't see deal before vote
Some 3,700 members of ruling party's Central Committee expected to approve merger with Yisrael Beiteinu despite opposition. 'Netanyahu is the only person who could ask us to approve an agreement without showing it to us,' says senior official
The committee members will be asked to vote on the agreement without seeing its content. The details of the merger were finalized between the two leaders in a verbal rather than written agreement, and all the 3,700 committee members received was the following message: "Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu's motion: The Likud movement and Yisrael Beiteinu party will submit a joint list of candidates for the 19th Knesset elections, led by Benjamin Netanyahu."
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The full details of the agreement – the number of spots each party will have in the joint list, or Netanyahu and Lieberman's level of involvement in determining the list after the Likud primary elections – will not be revealed to the committee members before the vote.
"Netanyahu is the only person who could ask us to approve an agreement without showing it to us," a senior Likud official said Sunday night.
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The battle between the agreement's supporters and opponents over the voting method continued Sunday. Netanyahu is demanding an open vote, but the agreement's opponents want a secret vote.
Minister Michael Eitan, who said the merger agreement would "destroy the Likud movement," is moving on with his efforts to recruit at least 10% of voters to impose a secret vote. The opponents estimate, however, that despite the criticism Netanyahu will succeed in convincing the Central Committee to approve the agreement.
On Sunday, Netanyahu invited Likud mayors and council heads to his residence to convey the importance of their approval of the merger agreement at the Likud Central Committee.
The majority of the participants left the meeting satisfied with Netanyahu's statements. One activist noted that Netanyahu had warned them of the repercussions if the merger falls through. "I don't want to tell you what would happen if this doesn't pass," the prime minister allegedly said.
In order to weaken the opposition within the Likud, the prime minister's aides mentioned President Shimon Peres, saying that if Netanyahu and Lieberman fail to merge their parties and become the largest party, Peres would like look for any excuse to task another party with forming the new coalition. The president's associates rejected the accusations.
Surveys conducted in the past 24 hours showed conflicting results as to the merger's success: In one survey, the merged Likud Beiteinu party loses several Knesset seats, in another it increases its power, and in a third survey it wins the same number of seats.
Senior Labor Party officials asked Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Sunday to order both parties to reveal the agreements reached between Netanyahu and Lieberman, stating that the public must know what Yisrael Beiteinu had been promised.
Knesset Member Isaac Herzog noted in a letter to Weinstein that since the merger was announced, different assumptions have been made about Lieberman being promised the Defense portfolio and other senior government positions.
According to a political source, "Both Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu members would like to know whether their leaders have given up on anything significant or if certain jobs have been promised. There is no reason for the attorney general not to order them to reveal the information to the voters before the elections."
Another source noted, on the other hand, that "there is no legal base for this demand, as coalition agreements must only be revealed after the government is formed. Agreements are finalized between political elements all the time before the elections, including in recent days in other parties."
Yuval Karni, Itamar Eichner, Telem Yahav, Roi Mandel and Nir Cohen contributed to this report
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